Weaning advice

[Twinmumessex]

Hello all.

My twins are now 6months old and I started the weaning process a few weeks ago. I’ve been following Annabel Karmel’s book and giving them purées. At the moment they have 3/4 spoons of baby porridge in the morning and 3/4 spoons of whatever purée in the afternoon. They haven’t reduced their milk intake at all, they have their purée and then milk as usual afterwards. I’ve heard the phrase ‘food is for fun before they’re one’ and also understand that initially the feeding is just about tastes and giving them a variety of flavours to get them used to food.

What I don’t understand, and what the book doesn’t seem to address, is how you get from tasting a few spoonfulls, to food entirely replacing a milk feed, and then eventually them eating 3 proper meals a day. The babies are still little as were born 2 months early (we started weaning at 4 months corrected age, as per hospital dietician advice) so I don’t want to rush anything with them. I just have zero clue at this point how to know how much I should be feeding them, and how and when to make the call to not offer milk for a feed and give them purely food? And how do then know when they are full??

I feel a bit thick about this so any advice and shared experience will be a great help!

Thank you

I think you just follow their lead and play it by ear. If they're getting food for their breakfast and snack, they will probably not finish their bottle if they're full. But as you say, 'food is for fun...', so expect them to still want a lot of milk.

I started purées around 5.5 months and BLW at 6 with DS and I would just let him chew/gnaw things as he wished at breakfast, lunch and dinner, then offer milk (BF) as usual. He dropped his afternoon feed at around 9 months, followed by his lunch feed. At 1 he still wanted milk at breakfast and after dinner. They're all different but hopefully they will let you know what they need!

You just feed them whatever they want at the times you offer meals and follow their lead. Eventually they will eat more and more and a wider variety of things, more like an adult meal. We never did purees or spoon feeding, so slightly different, but still very similar, I think. Mine mostly just tasted and played until she was about 9 months. Then she started to eat more in quantities, but not of a wide variety of things (she was also really poorly that month and on antibiotics, so I think that's why). Starting one day when she was 10 months, she just started to shovel food in. She ate half a small quiche in one sitting and then would regularly eat a full adult sized bowl of porridge (loaded onto a spoon for her to feed herself) plus a whole banana for breakfast. In our case, meals didn't really replace milk. She had them at different times so they weren't in conflict, but we eventually started to offer snacks in place of milk (which she had between meals) around 10-12 months and these eventually sort of replaced milk feeds. But I didn't see any decrease in milk intake until 9 months, so 3 months after we started weaning, so it likely won't happen very soon.

Thanks both, I’m going to start offering finger foods this week so that should be fun for them. Trying not to get so bogged down in how much they eat, and focusing on variety instead. I’m also hopefull that once weaning is more established, I will eventually be able to drop their 2am feed (wishful thinking?? 😂)!