Really struggling with weaning

[blueberry71]

I have a 7 month old daughters and really stressing about weaning. I feel out of my depth with it all. I’ve been giving her wheetabix in the morning which she doesn’t eat a lot of. Then the rest of the day I have no idea what to give her. I’ve been giving her puréed apple and carrot but not sure how to move on with it. Please can anyone give me any tips? It’s really getting me down now as I feel I’m failing at being a parent.

What do you eat? Can she have some of that? There's very little she can't have now apart from honey, whole nuts, sanity foods, etc. She can have bread, meat, dairy, fruit, veg, etc and it can be a mix of puree, mashed, chopped and finger foods

Salty foods *

Get the Annabelle karmel complete weaning book. It literally gives you meal planners for the days and takes the stress away. It is purees tho so if baby led weaning, it may not be for you. Worked for me tho!

Thank you so much! I will look into that! I also cook every meal from scratch so I’ll introduce a little bit more of our food. Thank you for the advice.

whatever you're eating, give her some as well. Obviously just don't add any salt onto it or any spicy food.

I know how you feel, DS is 8.5 months and our weaning so far has been slow and I felt a bit lost with it. Making progress now. He likes sweet puréed veg, e.g parsnip, red pepper, butternut squash, sweet potato. It goes down even better if I add in fruit like apple, pear or peach. He loves Ella’s Kitchen - any of it! So I add some in for extra flavour sometimes! I’m now trying to make the purées thicker to emulate shop bought stage 2 purée.

I offer finger foods, rarely get eaten but I encourage him to play with it. Noodles and pasta are a hit. He may have eaten tiny amounts but mostly he likes playing with it.

He can’t have dairy right now (suspected intolerance) but I used to give him natural yoghurt and fruit purée for breakfast, which he really enjoyed, and grated cheese to play with!

I know they’re not the best from a nutritional point of view but he likes those Organix snacks - I think they were the thing that got him interested in finger food to be honest!

Hi blueberry

I really recommend this leaflet I got from our health visiting team:

www.healthscotland.com/uploads/documents/303-Fun%20first%20foods-July2017-English.pdf

It provides reassurance about how they learn to eat and gives some ideas for first foods and safety tips

The first few (6?) months of weaning rare tough because you are still doing all the milk feeds and trying to get solids in as well so it feels like all you do for a while.
Once you crack it and you only have to offer one type of food it gets much easier!

Once she’s done the basics of puréed i’d Just whizz yo what you’re having (and freeze a spare portion or two for the days you want salty/mega spice etc).

Kxx

I felt exactly like this at 7 months and got quite stressed, a friend told me just to relax and give him a bit of whatever we were having, and by 8 months my DS was a tiny human dustbin and ate everything we did including curries, chilli con carne etc. I think he just wasn't keen on my lovingly blended purees and much preferred a more baby led weaning style of eating.

Agree, give her what you eat. Also, you don't have to do every meal. We started out with just lunch at 6 months, then breakfast around 7 months, then added in dinner most days (but not every day really) around 7.5-8 months. What you are eating is good. Sandwich fingers, toast with hummus or nut butter or mashed banana, soups with toast fingers, pasta (dry is usually easier, like without sauce), you can start doing strips of roast chicken or flaked up fish, etc. Just find some way to make whatever it is you're eating easy enough to either feed her or offer to her for her to feed herself. It does take a bit of practice just figuring out what sizes are best and how to make things that aren't so slippery that they can pick up, etc. but you'll get the hang of it.

If you have a children’s centre locally try asking there about any weaning drop ins they’re running or any support they’ve got.
Try not to stress about it too much during meal times (easier said than done I know) as your daughter will pick up on that and it’ll effect her eating.
Also what everyone else says about trying all your usual food with her.

The Annabel Karmel Superfoods book is good as is the one recommended by pp. Uses both these with my dd ans using them again with ds. I do mashed banana and milk, any fruit cooked and pureed, mashed sweet potato, mashed carrots with cooked tomatoes and cheese, toast fingers with butter or peanut butter, grated cheese. As he's becoming more used to it I'm gradually introducing new foods. Some days he's not interested but I just try it again a few hours later. I also give him tastes of whatever I'm eating as he's quite curious.

Thanks everyone! Will take all of that on board. Does anyone have any tips on getting your little ones to take a beaker as well? I’ve bought a beaker as I’ve heard they need to start using these from 6 months but my baby is not interested in it at all! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

What type of beaker have you tried? We found the tommy tippee free flow one best as a first cup, tried a couple with valves before that and he couldn't seem to get the hang of them.

Another one for the Tommy Tippee cup with the free flow spout. He also got on fine with the TT cup with straw, and the Doidy cup, but tbh they were more fiddly for me to use so I stuck with the free flow spout. At first he mostly chewed the spout, now he likes splashing the water out everywhere!

Once my DS got to the point of pouring the water out (which he thought was hilarious) we moved onto the nuby 360 mini no spill cup which is brilliant

We went with a doidy cup for both of ours. We found they were able to then transition to an open beaker very easily.
DC1 couldn't work out how to use a sippy cup until she was nearly 12m (we tried a sippy first), but got the hang of a doidy almost staright away. DC2 got the doidy and sippy very quickly so we stuck with a cup at home and sippy when out for ease.

Tommee tippee first cup worked here. Could be used with or without the lid. Didnt like the doidy cup as it had crappy wee handles

Thanks! I’ve got one with a straw but I’ll get the tommee tippee one today instead. Fingers crossed!

Baby led weaning literally makes it so easy! They eat whatever you're having, there is no pressure for them to eat, they eat what they want and if they don't want to eat that's fine too as the premise is that most calories at this age are still from milk. I cannot recommend the book highly enough - read it through now and it will really help you. Very interesting points too about what children need from weaning xx

Baby Led weaning - Helping your baby love good food by Gill Rapley incase the link doesn't work