First foods question

[hercules]

Am going to start dd on food next week sometime and just wanted to know how quickly or slowly i should take things. I read somewhere that if you wean at 6 months you should get them on to a varied diet quite quickly. Is this true? Or is it better to take it slowly ie introduce one food at a time every few days? Can she have meat yet? And lastly is organic stuff better or does it make no difference?
tia

i take it that dd is 6 months...so you can be much more varied, but i would still start slowly and introduce things one at a time every couple of days...yes you can give meat at this age, which is good source of iron which starts to get depleted around now...i think organic stuff is better fwiw...no pesticides, no antibiotics, no gm etc and over and above all of that, tends to be more nutritious as the soil that it's been grown in isn't stripped of all nutrients by intensive farming...definitely go organic for meat IMO, they feed intensively reared animals so much crap, i'm sure there will be another mad cow type scare soon...and whatever you do do not eat farmed salmon (only buy if it is marked wild) this really is going to be the next mad cow type thing...v toxic...sorry i've gone on, hope this helps!

ermm
right dd weaned at 6 mths and she spewed on apple and pear, she liked baby rice, sweet potato and pumpkin, carrot, sort of root veges... Found these did not upset her diet (or nappies) much at all. I took it easy at first... Keeping it simple
A few weeks after starting she was on ready brek for breakfast with stewed fruit (stone fruits like paeches and apricots suited her best) we often get these from organic jars... They do taste better, less watery and more fruity IMHO
Otherwise anything with cheese sauce was a go er. She hates chicken, but liked mashed steak and veges... tried her on meat first about 7.5 mths
You can make some good dishes with chicken and apricots too... Also finger foods went well son after that, with the usual suspects...
HTH prob not LOl
xx

I started with a bit of carrot, then mixed that with potato. Then thought, bu**er this and gave dd anything we were having, liquidised minus salt of course. Also used packets and jars for convenience. She very quickly got up to 3 meals a day - over a couple of weeks really. Didn't bother with baby yogurts and stuff. Had petit filous etc. Never used organic food because the rest of us don't. The good thing about weaning at 6 months is you don't need to fiddle around with baby rice

Mine HATED baby rice (used to spit it at me...) I used veggies (wasn't keen on cauliflower to begin with, but now okay...)and fruit - banana a big fav. use ready brek, porridge oats (with fruit in) and cheese sauce (if you are being lazy Cow and Gate do a baby cheese suace - I wack it over pretty much everything...). Like mears mine rapidly progressed to three meals a day (and reading his nursery book gets all sorts fo goddies there I don't give him!) Dp reckons ds is better fed than he is....

How do you make a cheese sauce for a baby?

Thanks for replies, all good advice!

I made normal cheese sauce but used unsalted butter and mild cheese.
As in white sauce with cheese, I have used it to mask all sorts of things, dd loves it!

I would let your baby guide you - bit naff thing to say but your DD will let you know if you are going to fast - ie. bringing it all back up all the time! I would spend the first week going really steady on baby rice, puree apple/pear, carrot, butternut squash is a good one (sweet and very smooth) and see how she gets on - same for quantities.
The reason that the health care professionals like you to get a "move on" with the variety and texture thing is that they need to learn to chew and cope with lumpier food by the end of 7 months or some children can find it difficult to learn to deal with lumps - something to do with the way children automatically learn stuff (sorry not very techinical, just trying to remember what my HV said). This is growing to be a problem (if you believe my HV who seems very experienced and genuine) if you leave weaning much later. Personally I haven?t heard of any child having this problem but worth bearing in mind - don?t keep your DD on smooth foods for too long and aim to have them coping with fairly lumpy in about 4 weeks time. Good Luck.
Organic stuff is great - but doesn?t guarantee your baby will enjoy it any more, just potentially safer in terms of being pesticide and chemical free (not that non organic stuff is full of them!)

Cheese sauce q. - the Cow and Gate one is okay from 6 months (and the advantage is it takes as long to make as it does to boil a kettle! - no salt and all that too....) Boots sell it

I've wondered this too (theoretically as don't yet know when I'm going to wean ds2). What about all that stuff about 'introduce one food at a time every three days' to check if there's any 'reaction'? Does it somehow just not matter if they're 6 months plus? Or is it useless advice at any stage? Presumably you shouldn't start with wheat, dairy and meat etc even though they are 'allowed'.
I can see the point about lumps (though personally it seems to me to be a much more individual variation thing) but it's easy enough to make a single food slightly more lumpy.
I do worry a bit about going from carrot or pear puree to meat and two veg in a couple of weeks!

There is so much bollox talked about weaning - going slowly and only introducing a new food once every X days is really only for people with time on their hands IMHO....or if they think they have an allergic baby, or if their baby is young for solids (under 6 mths).

Yes a baby of 6 mths can have meat; varied diet - where's the rush? Just give your baby non-salted, non-sugared versions of what you are having and think of it as a stage in her development, with ups and downs and steps forwards and back, but not worth making a song and dance over

I think my ds's real first food was a bit of muffin that he was ogling while dh and I were having a coffee in the park cafe. He's never looked back, muffin-wise.

my homemade banana cake was one of my daughters first foods after she made a lunge for it.
Shame as she was badly allergic to egg... proceed with caution

i found that ds wasn't too keen on weaning at all when i gave baby rice at the suggested consistancy. it "fell out" of his mouth. so one day i thoght b*er it and made it more porrige-like and hey presto the boy is a major foodie now.

i'm doing the organic thing cos it taste better and i'm trying to get us all to go organic.

cos ds was 5mths we did the carrot, sweet potato,etc thing first and now at 6mth we're doing protein. he's started to eat our food or rather we're eating baby food pre-puree but we're now missing the salt and it's not too difficult to grind pepper.

we're NOT missing the salt or was that a freudian slip?

Not sure if you saw this Hercules but I posted this info which is a recommendation of foods to introduce according to the age.

I agree with sophable re Organics.
But conventional horticultural production has improved considerably in the last decade. I used to work in the apple industry and the regulations on pesticide usage has become alot more stringent. British supermarkets are quite strict on how produce is managed.

There is a lot of fuss made about weaning, particularly all this stuff about giving them bland milky baby rice, both my kids hated it - they much preferred something with a bit of taste and would wolf it down

I started weaning DD at 4 months and she's been used to varied stuff right from the start. Just made sure it was sloppy enough for her to slurp down and gradually increased the thickness of consistency as she got older. I have a mini liquidiser into which goes most things. Just add water from the kettle to make it the right consistency. I put fruit into it raw and give it a quick whizz and voila, instant baby food. She particularly liked mango, banana & pear.

She wasn't mad keen on baby rice either but have you tasted it?? It has to be the blandest thing ever.