How should I feed my baby?

[Carin81]

Everybody,

I am a new mother and my daughter is 4 months old. It?s my first child and I need some advice. Where can I decide on the best things to buy my baby? My question is, where can I gather reliable information about baby food and other things.

What should I look for when buying food for my baby? Do you just go in the store or should I inform myself at home about the products before?

Thank you very much for your help. I am looking forward to rearing from you.

Carin

Hi Carin, I am a mother of 3, so have had a little experience of weaning babies. My baby is 6 months old now and has just started to have food and so far it's going well! Have you been to talk to your health visitor? They don't advise weaning until 26 weeks, so if you can hold on until then you'll find it much easier in the long run.

I started weaning DC3 on one meal a day and we have slowly increased to 3 meals now. My baby has breakfast in the morning (weetabix or ready brek mixed with a little puréed apple) after her milk. She has a mid morning milk feed and then lunch at around 11.45am. Today she had 'courgette Gratin' (it's a recipe in the Annabel Karmel book) which consists of mashed potato, courgettes and cheese. She also like mashed banana, apple-parsnip-butternut squash combination as well as simple fruit.

I would definitely talk to your health visitor as they will provide you with a leaflet which you'll find really helpful and they can talk you through it all much better.

Hope that helps a little.

oh, one more thing when you do start to wean your baby it is helpful to research some recipes first so you know what food you will need. You can make a pots of different recipes and freeze it so it is much easier for you on a busy day.

It's up to you really - do you want to go down the traditional puree with some finger foods route, or the baby led weaning route?

Mine didn't seem to know a lot about BLW, which was what we chose to do, but they had a lot of information about traditional weaning.

Do you have the NHS birth to 5 book? There's an excellent chapter on weaning, about what food they can eat at what age. Like growing3rdbump says, the current recommendation is near 6mo and showing the 3 signs in this page. So you still have a bit of time to plan what to do with weaning.

If you want a more help then the NHS book, then a lot of mums follow Annabel Karmel (see this book). It should have everything you need, like recipes, meal planner etc. If you can't cook, don't worry. The recipes are very very simple. And it's a great time for you to start learning to do some simple stuff. If you start on jars, what do you plan to feed your toddler once they are off baby food? Unless you are thinking takeaways!

Like Flisspaps says, there is another way to weaning then the puree with finger food route (ie like Annabel Karmel). My DD would not let me put a spoon near her, so we are doing baby led weaning. If you find yourself in that situation, then this website and this book can help.