To give a pouch of baby food

It's fine. Give them a multivitamin if you are worried. Babies are hard to feed, it will get easier to feed them more nutritious foods as they get more capable at chewing and used to more foods.

As long as they're getting some nutritious food every day it is fine.

I fed mine a lot of jars / pouches as I was working full time once they started eating. I bought organix on the basis that would be better. My child is now a teenager and perfectly fine. Please don’t feel guilty about the occasional pouch or jar, although if you have time you could always make and freeze some purées to defrost when needed

I get it. With my first all the rage was 'baby led weaning' with all these Insta accounts showing babies grabbing fistfuls of spaghetti bolognaise and smearing it on them, and dire warnings about how purees and spoonfeeding leads to lazy, fussy eaters who won't ever eat food with a texture (I mean, ffs!!!).

Well my DC1 ignored or threw on the floor any food that was put in front of her for the first couple of months and I felt like the worlds worst mum for resorting to making healthy purees that she actually ate 🙄🙄🙄

She is now 4 and I can confirm she has no problems with texture and eats completely normally (aside from the usual kid fussiness at this age). I still laugh at how ridiculous I was at the time. DC2 is now 14 months, happily does baby led and spoonfeeding and eats whatever I give him and I couldn't give two shits that he started off on purees.

There will always be another stick to beat mums with and at the moment it's food pouches. They are not cocaine and are fine for a meal here and there. The problem is when people use them as a baby's main source of nutrition on a daily basis with little to no other variety.

Absolutely fine to give her a pouch. However, if you are going to have to go to a shop to buy her a pouch anyway then couldn’t you just buy something else that you’d feel happier giving her?

The odd pouch is fine, just the same as the odd happy meal or sausage roll from greggs is fine when they get older.

I cook healthy, homemade food for my baby and toddler most of the time. But they have both had pouches occasionally to make life easier (travelling/days out, if I’m sick, we’re late home, if I’ve cooked something that isn’t suitable for babies).
The occasional pouch isn’t going to do them any harm at all (just like the occasional ready meal in an otherwise healthy diet wouldn’t do you any harm).
Part of having a healthy relationship with food is allowing some flexibility and not always worrying about it being nutritionally perfect!

Gosh people are just shocked that shelf stable mush in a jar isn’t the same as fresh food, because they wanted to believe it and the companies making money were pushing it. Lots of people were convincing themselves that feeding their child only pouches was fine and obviously it isn’t really ideal.
it isn’t poison though.
And a pouch occasionally is ok.

I made my own purées, I’ve never fed dd any sort of ‘junk’ even the junk aimed at babies and people are always commenting on what a good diet she has, how she’s so adventurous with food etc. but about once every 3-4 weeks I give her a pouch. she often has the pouch with some fresh fruit or veg on the side, but if it’s been a rough day then I think it’s better she has a less frazzled mum, than a homemade bowl of pasta or whatever.

other quick options would be cereal, a bowl of fruit, a slice of toast with a nut butter or cream cheese, or a scrambled egg. But if you’re going to do the pouch don’t also feel guilty about it, that defeats the point of it saving you energy

Please, it is definitely ok to give bubs a sachet of baby food.
With this heat it will make things less stressed for you and baby.
Even a nice fruit purée would be fresh and cooling, or baby yoghurt.
Baby food is good quality. My babies had it occasionally many years ago, and all 3 healthy young adults.
Or the pouches they can suck on, they weren’t available back then.

The occasional pouch is going to do absolutely no harm. In this heat they may actually be better than homemade because of the amount of water in them. Pouches of fruit puree are a normal snack in France, even for older children, and when my then 4 year old got heatstroke in France many years ago the doctor told us to feed her fruit puree to help rehydrate her.

There's so much pressure, don't worry about it. I used jars of baby food for both my kids, as I wasn't a confident cook. They're both in their 20s and absolutely fine. And ignore the critical comments on here - I doubted myself all the time ....xx

In the same situation, I would have given the baby some of the takeaway. It's easy enough to keep the salt below the limit with the quantities they eat. My daughter loved curries and daal.

Why can't the baby eat what you're eating from the takeaway? Mashed up if needed

Of course it won’t hurt. Scrambled egg is also an option.

I'd give one if I had one in the cupboard, but to go out and specifically buy one? No I wouldn't personally. Just give her some porridge for her tea, or beans on toast.

The advice isn’t to never give them. It’s to not use them as regular daily meal replacements

A one off pouch is fine, but with this heat I’d honestly just do a picky tea and call it a day.

My daughter is just over 1 and for tea tonight she (and we all) will just be having a cold picky tea with some bbq bits, cucumber sticks, cubed cheese, some chicken/sausage/burger, some raspberries/strawberries/grapes, some crackers etc. it’s one night.

DT’s were weaned on pouches as I didn’t want to do blw. Perfectly healthy - now in their mid 20’s.

No problem with a pouch now and then - had my daughter thirty years ago and gave her the occasional jar of baby food if we were out and about. She seems okay now - still eats all her veggies and is a very good cook!

It's fine but why go out specifically to buy it when you could just do toast, fruit, cheese and crackers, etc. When one of mine was a baby one of her favourite foods was cold prawns dipped in plain yoghurt!

The odd one here and there for convenience will be fine. We didn’t use them regularly but for days out we sometimes did.

Caught my toddler yesterday sitting in the paddling pool, with the dog, drinking the pool water out of a watering can.

The odd one is absolutely fine. Even the NHS website says this. Being a mum is hard, don’t feel bad ❤️

I would occasionally give my baby pouches entirely guilt free and would do so again.

Just get one with savoury food in it, not that is mainly apple or similar so it’s really sweet.

Their diet doesn’t need to be 100% perfect all of the time, it’s just another exhausting standard mothers are being held to.

Yet

DS1 had allergies that restricted options. I used to keep long-life toddler ready meals in the changing bag for emergencies. I was into Baby Led Weaning (mainly because it easily fitted with cooking anyway) but there were many times that a pouch was handy as a back-up.

I would rabbit on about how healthy he is now etc but he's a bottomless carb pit of a teenager