What age did you wean your baby ?

[Ellarose23]

Out of curiosity, what age did you wean your babies ? How did you do it ?
did you expose to allergens early ? Or later ?
if doing purées , what do I give to my child to expose her to allergens ? Would it just be the likes of eggs / nuts etc blended ?
is BLW better ?
my hv is useless and I can never get through to her to ask.
my plan was to do some veggie purées then work way up to finger foods , thoughts ? She’s just turned 4 months a week ago.

We started just before my little one turned 6 months old and used a mixture of purées and finger foods right from the start. Solid starts is a brilliant app where you can see how to prepare different finger foods safely for different ages. With regard to allergens we used a variety of nut butters either on toast or stirred into Greek yogurt or porridge to expose him to different nuts, you can get ones that don’t have any added sugar or salt.

All of the baby fruit/veg pouches are great treated to very high temperatures which destroys some of the nutrients. Better to make your own. Or just skip and wait until 6 months and just give appropriate portions of family foods...its a lot less hassle doing it this way!

Well this is over 34 years ago so not relevant but my DD was a large baby and constantly hungry, she had a bottle every 2 hours around the clock, I was exhausted. At 3 weeks the HV advised mixing Weetabix in the bottle to make her feel fuller for longer. I also started baby rice and rusks in milk at this age, starting with one meal a day and working up to 4 including all the bottles, 6 in 24 hours. It was bloody hard work. There is no way she would have been satisfied with just milk for 6 months! Did the same for the next 2 kids too.

I must have been a glutton for punishment😂

Slowly and gently at 6 months- and fully at 9 months, with still a night BFeed at night time till about one.

Blimey!
Crazy how things change, I couldn't ever imagine weaning a 2 month old into solids now!

Is there a limit to how much salt baby’s can have ? I know people saying just make own food , but isn’t bread high in salt ? Or any other proper adult foods that they’d be eating ? Il try my best to give her whole foods but as everyone knows that can be a pain every day ?
can u tell im a first time mum 😩

@Houseplanter "30 years ago I started at about 9 weeks, as suggested by my HV at the time."

Blimey-things must have changed really really fast- it was 6 months in 1996!

@Ellarose23 Just don't add any salt to your cooking. You can add it at the table for grown ups.

I’m talking about the food that has added salt in it not table salt sorry should have clarified

I would wait to closer to 6 months OP. Giving her food won’t give her extra calories it will just fill her tiny tummy so she has less room for milk which should be her main source of nutrition for months yet.
I do understand that it’s exciting but it will still be exciting to start in a few weeks time.

As for salt, the NHS site has all the information you need.

@Ellarose23 Ah, I can't help then-I'm one of those tedious people who very rarely buys ready made food!

@Ellarose23 Check NHS for salt etc but as a general guide if u had given my DD something that I knew had salt like bread etc then I'd make sure whatever she ate the rest of the day had minimal/no salt to balance it out

It was 4 months NHS guidance when mine were born

But basically you can tell once they're getting hungrier

You just know they're ready

Guidance is just guidance

Use your instinct and common sense

We did 5.5 months. Charlotte Stirling-Reads book, How to Wean Your Baby was super helpful with advice

No idea why they changed it to 6 months because most babies are starving on just milk by then

Does everyone just follow books blindly these days and not go by maternal instinct anymore ?

Weaned at 6 months as per recommendation ( oldest now 16 and back the. it was also 6 months and baby led weaning).
Did baby let weaning.
I had breastfed so exposed to aligens throughout pregnancy and via breast milk and then directly via food. I breastfed until minimum of 2 years also alongside food.
I never puréed anything with mine.
They all eat well with no allergies.
The lack of allergies though is most likely genetic luck.

What I did find though is the less fuss you make the better the child is at eating and the less fussy.

DD 6 months to the day.
DS 4.5 months under advice from paediatrics (allergies) - he was a whopper though about 18lb at that point and had pretty good neck control, he was sitting completely unaided by 6 months

Started with vegetable purées, then brought in lentils, mashed potato, rice and finally fruit and meat.

I had mine in 2001 and 2004 and it was 4 months then!

@Yepidid in my anecdata, breastfed babies are more likely to have allergies. DD was mix fed for 6 months, no allergies at all. DS has been EBF from day 1 and has CMPA which I think will hang about as one attempt at the milk ladder brought him out head to toe in eczema. Same for other babies I know.

Now all the BF weirdos come out

Hope you didn’t mean me?!

If your baby is small, I'd stick to the milk as I wouldn't want them to fill up on foods with less calories than milk. But I'd advise speaking to the GP rather than the HV regarding reflux.

I weaned mine at 6 months.

Late 80s it was 3-4 months. So yes it was early, but in our case my HV was happy to suggest it and it wasn't at all unusual amongst my peers.

@Ellarose23 babies under 1 can safely have 1g of salt a day, so you have to bear it in mind, but equally they eat very small amounts, one whole slice of bread is half their salt allowance, but not many babies will eat a whole slice until older. Under 2s it goes up to 2g a day. i kept an eye on it and balances more processed with less processed but I didn’t even use baby stock cubes - just standard reduced salt ones. The reality is that if you’re just giving them a couple of tablespoons of bolognaise the salt quantity will be negligible anyway.