Weaning

[Nicky79864]

Can anyone recommend a good book on weaning? My son is 3 months old so I have plenty of time but want to read ahead but be as informed as possible.

Thanks

The Gill Rapley Baby Led Weaning book is interesting, even if you are not (or aren't yet) thinking about trying baby led weaning.

Also, the River Cottage Baby & Toddler cookbook is a great recipe book and has a long section at the beginning about weaning generally which I found useful. It covers purée weaning as well as discussing BLW. All the recipes have notes on adapting them for different age children, from babies to older toddlers.

I would suggest borrowing from your library first though before parting with cash, just in case they don't appeal

I liked the Annabel karmel complete baby and toddler meal planner, or something similar. Great, easy to make recipes and it explained things well.

River Cottage Baby and Toddler Cookbook by Nikki Duffy - really good and is very balanced covering both traditional and baby lead weaning and just a good objective approach - best one I've come across.

I second the Annabel Karmel complete baby and toddler meal planner. If this is your first baby then it lays everything out so simply and has a big range of tasty purees to start with, and meals to move onto, plus tips on freezing portions and finger foods etc. I recommend silicone baby food freezer trays as well, as they are so much easier to get the cubes out of. I used these ones:

www.amazon.co.uk/SILICONE-BABYFOOD-FREEZER-TRAY-PINK/dp/B000T7EBGS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1395052282&sr=8-4&keywords=silicone+baby+tray

Everyone is different but I preferred to start dd2 with more veg purees than fruit. Ds1 has a very sweet tooth and I didn't want to encourage that with dd2 by giving her fruit as her first tastes. That's just my experience though.

I thought Annabel Karmel was bunk, to be honest. Too much emphasis on making faces out of chives and bits of tomato. I like a bit of the Baby-Led Weaning book by Gill Rapley but I don't believe you can solely BLW as (particularly as they need more solids) they often can't efficiently feed themselves enough.

Your best bet at this point is probably the NHS weaning leaflet and it would be worth asking your health visitor if they do weaning workshops - they're often offered around 4-5 months.

Slightly sidetracking, apologies OP, but Zuleika - I did solely do BLW and I'm not the only one I know who has. Maybe I was fortunate as my ds quickly (and literally) got to grips with feeding himself. Never felt like he wasn't getting enough nutrition.

I expect that it can work to just do BLW, but having tried to do pure BLW with DCs 2 & 3 I found that they would both get frustrated with their inability to get to grips with something and would seize on an extra bit of spoonfed food to fill themselves up properly.

I always gave food about an hour after a bfeed so that ds wouldn't be really hungry and so was happy to explore and learn with his food. Took him till about 8 months to link food with hunger anyway so if he was hungry he would want a bfeed rather than food before then.

The thing with weaning (and all baby relating things really) is to be responsive and not dogmatic. So 100% BLW suits some but not others.

Thank you so much