What first foods would you start/did you start your baby on?

[mrsm22]

I have heard loads recently about weaning your baby and am about to start this process in a couple of weeks and would like to know what people would advise to start my baby with first. It seems that most or a lot of mums start their baby on baby rice for the first days but I have heard recently that this contains toxins that are in arsenic poisoning, which has worried me a bit. I am planning to give my baby his first spoonful of food somewhere in the morning between his first and second bottle feed but am wondering what would be good/ideal to try first for the first few days. Do people think go for baby rice, baby porridge that you mix with baby milk, baby porridge from a jar or something completely different? I like the idea of boiling my own pieces of pear and blending that and possibly adding some formula milk but I'm not sure if this should be one of his first tastes of better for later after a breakfast type food is tried first. Can anyone advise or share their opinions?
Also when babies first try foods are they likely to experience tummyache or gripe while their bodies are getting used to the food, and should I expect this?
A friend of mine suggests that I buy the Annabel Karmel complete guide to weaning baby book. I think its called something like that or meal planner.
Any advice appreciated and thank you in advance!

what age is your baby?

I just fed mine mashed own salt less food. Broccoli is a good finger food, I think was the first thing my DD had! Honestly, babies need normal food not stuff out of jars or weird baby porridge.

Dd had mashed carrot
Banana
Broccoli to chomp

DD is just 6 months and will eat off a spoon or suck finger food if you hold it. If you give it to her she bangs it on the table. Not very successful with rice cakes.
So far she's had:
Regular porridge made with whole milk and raisins.
Rice pudding with no sugar, whole milk, with banana, or with stewed Apple.
Purée fruit pot (DS finishes the pot for her)
Sucked a potato wedge, sliver of roast chicken, and roast pepper.
Pear off a spoon (just raw but soft) and ditto banana.
Rice cake with butter.
Banana scone ditto.
Broccoli and mushroom pancake wedge.
Mashed potato, ditto sweet potato, carrot.

My baby is 5 months old and I want to start weaning him at 6 months.
Thank you for the responses so far. Obviously your own food is better than jars but what can you give for breakfast or in the morning other than baby rice then because surely they can't have things like Weetabix at 6 months as it wouldn't be runny or smooth enough?

drspouse - that's an impressive list! Am I being really thick? Doesn't everything have to be blended and totally smooth? When you say pieces of soft pear and banana off a spoon, surely if it's not blended they would choke? When you say porridge, do you mean the normal oats porridge that we would eat and again this is quite lumpy and doesn't seem ideal for the first tastes at 6 months. I'm really confused as I thought everything had to be very runny and smooth.

There is no need for a baby of 6 months to have fully blended foods. A developmentally normal, healthy baby of that age is perfectly able to cope with either going straight to finger foods (which goes by the slightly naff name of BAby Led Weaning) or a combination of finger foods and purees.

I have never pureed- life is too short to puree a butternut squash IMO . DS's first foods (he's now 7 months) would have been:

broccoli
cooked carrot sticks
potato (roast, mash off a spoon, chips, wedges, boiled)
cucumber sticks
tomato wedges
green beans
pear
banana
plums
grapes (cut in half)
toast
soup, from a wedge of bread or thick soups from a spoon
chunks of meat from a stew.

Oh, breakfast now would be

fruit
yoghurt
porridge
Weetabix
mini shredded wheats

depends what his sisters are having.

Penguins - Thanks! That's really helpful. At 6 months are yoghurts fine to give?

weetabix with lots of milk (it soaks up loads) is fine at 6 months - I used to heat it in the microwave.

ready brek also good. I did use baby rice and dd/ds liked it with pureed pear mixed in

Finger foods are ok from 6 months too

yes, yoghurt is fine from 6 months too

you can give most things from 6 months except honey, whole nuts, high salted/sugar foods, etc

Yup. You might want to watch overall sugar intake. I think with my first it was natural yoghurt not petit filous, but DS is no. 3 and gets what's going!

It's about learning a different way to eat. Purees get sucked to the back of the mouth, like soup off a spoon. That is great, but it's not much use for lumps. They also need to learn to move food around their mouth. When babies were weaned shockingly early (10 weeks in my case!!), of course they needed purely very thin purees. At 6 months, they really don't. They can either just have finger foods, or have a mix of purees and finger foods.

Honestly, broccoli is one of the best first foods going. Overcook it a bit so it is soft It has a handle and comes apart. See what your baby does and take photos and laugh.

I never pureed with DS except for Mummy's Special Unbinding Porridge which contains prunes and apricots but he won't eat them if not pureed. DS would put anything in his hand into his mouth so finger food worked well but as I say DD majors in banging on the table, so we just hold it for her and she sucks the food (and our hand). Absolutely no need to puree. Yes to normal adult porridge, ditto rice.

Full fat plain yoghurt from 6-12 months is fine. DS still thinks plain yoghurts are "licious" and he's nearly 3.

I forgot, DD has had Weetabix too.

With DS I did buy baby muesli (I think the 10m plus stuff but gave it from about 8 months) because I never remembered to soak regular muesli overnight and the raisins were a bit sticky at first if not soaked or cooked (both of them have had raisins in porridge from day 1).

Oh the other thing we were told to hold off on till a year was sausages - not just the salt, but nitrites? I think?

Things to avoid - honey (until 1), choking hazards (whole grapes, cherry tomatoes), nuts (in chunks, potential traces in other foods isn't the issue). Think that's about it.

I didn't blend anything, just whole or mushed a bit. If they do look like they're struggling, this is normal as they need to learn to swallow. This may mean lots comes back out too, which is also fine.

I don't personally like baby rice. Very highly processed. Bit nothing-y. Have never used it. Smells and tastes vile too.

My DD loved yogurt and fruit, but it was too runny for her on a spoon so I use to just mix a bit of baby rice in to thicken it up and she would shove it into her mouth by the handful spoonful.

She's 2 and half now and asks if she can have butter for lunch .

I am planning to do either mashed butternut squash or oat porridge at first/ Probably the squash because it's a gentle and sweetish taste without being too sugary. Then introduce more vegetables before moving on to more complicated things in no particular order. I am planning to spoon feed him mashed up food but offer finger foods as well. Holding off on sweet fruits until he is used to different types of veg (although maybe that will turn out to be one of those naive things that you plan before actually experiencing the reality!).

Great responses, thanks ever so much. I'm making mental notes of all this. When we are eating, he really watches the food and tries to grab your plate so possibly is ready now although the health visitors say 6 months. I'm looking forward to seeing how my little baby does with the first things he tries!

I don't really plan to use baby rice - not because I hate it like some people seem to, but I'm just a bit uninspired by it. You can make home made brown rice cereal I saw on the internet somewhere (if you have time for that, which you probably don't ), which seems a bit more substantial.

zzzzz, I think one of the reasons baby rice has a bad reputation is because when people wean too early it's usually with baby rice so it's associated with that. I agree that it's not really that different from any other 'white' food in the carb group.