Weaning plan is this ok ?

[booksNstuff]

Ds is nearly 6 months and we want to stay weaning soon I was thinking of doing this
Baby rice and breast milk for a few days
Then veg purée then perhaps some baby porridge mixed with formula (he’s breastfed but I want to use formula with porridge for convenience in mornings)
Once he’s having a variety of veg puréed etc I would maybe try some fruit?

Dont bother with the baby rice, it has no nutritional value. You can get baby porridge that you mix with water to save you buying formula if you don't plan on using formula for baby to drink, I think it is a Heinz one.
But your plan with veg before fruit is a good one

I would also introduce fruit and veg finger food alongside the purees, chunks of carrot, broccoli, really ripe pear, banana, sweet potato etc.

DD is 6 months today. DH is just boiling some broccoli and carrot for her to pick at as her first food while DS has his tea. Some might go in, most won't and we'll carry on with a variety of foods like that.

Technically it's her second food as she ate some grass last week.

You can use just normal milk or water. You don’t need to use formula (or bm). You don’t actually need to do baby rice at all. Just normal fine ground porridge is fine made with milk like you’d make it for yourself.

I agree forget baby rice. It's a waste of time. No cows milk before 12 months though. It's hard for them to digest. I used formula to make baby porridge etc. you could always do half breast milk, half formula to get him used to it. Pear is a very good purée to start with. Easily digestible and inoffensive taste for them apparently. Peal, boil and purée. Mine were both weaned under the guidance of a gastroenterologist due to silent reflux and all that helllish stuff! So purées were pear, papaya, peas, avocado later - then moving on to more adventurous stuff.

Have you considered blw? So much easier, and although they take a while to get the whole chewing / swallowing thing it’s actually much better for them in the long run. Their hand-eye coordination improves quickly, it’s much more interesting that being spoon-fed mush, they learn to eat ‘normal’ food straight away, so trying to get them to eat lumps etc isn’t an issue. Self-feeding is good for babies to regulate their own appetite, so you generally end up with a child/adult that doesn’t overeat for the sake of it. Something to consider!

Dont bother with the baby rice, it has no nutritional value.

Why do people keep saying this exact sentence on Mumsnet, over and over? It's blatantly untrue. If it has calories, it has nutritional value. Baby rice is also fortified with various vitamins and minerals, including iron which is essential for breastfed infants from 6 months onwards. In fact, fortified cereals are the most efficient way to get iron into your baby - and low iron levels in infancy correlate with lower exam scores in school years later. I didn't make use of baby rice and cereals this time around (I spend too much time on Mumsnet ) but I will definitely be using them next time.

OP, you can do whatever you like. There's no one way to wean a baby, although there is a definite preference for BLW on Mumsnet for some reason. Whatever you do will be fine. Just keep an eye on your baby's iron intake, avoid whole nuts, salt and honey, and try to introduce potential allergens fairly early on.

No cows milk before 12 months though. It's hard for them to digest.

Formula is made of cow's milk.

Cow's milk should not be their main drink until 12 months but it's fine to use in cooking, porridge etc.

My DD just turned 8 months, so I did this recently! She will eat anything, although I also have a picky toddler who ate anything as a baby too, so I know it might not last.

I did rice cereal for either of my kids. Just started straight into the vegetable purée. I did that for about a week once a day, keeping her milk feeds the same. Then I started giving her more real food, so still the purée to start so that she was eating something, but sticks of soft veg, toast, pasta, shredded meat, sliced up fruit etc afterwards for her to pick at. At first she never ate much of them, but now she wolfs down everything in sight. After a couple of weeks we then gave breakfast too, usually porridge or weetabix.

With my son we made his porridge up with formula. It was an unnecessary faff in my opinion. DD just has cows milk on hers. Especially if you’re breastfeeding, I wouldn’t buy formula just to put in cereal

That should say I never did rice cereal. Lots of friends have done though. It’s basically just thickened milk

Fatniss baby rice is just that - ground rice. It’s a pointless food. Babies will do a lot better with a varied diet straight from the off, getting the nutrients they need from real food, rather than powders made purely for companies to make money.

OP I suggest looking into blw. Traditional weaning and all the stages scared and confused me. I have post graduate qualifications but I could not get my head around purées but blw although very messy I found to be very confusing.

OP your plan sounds great and I'm doing fairly similar - baby porridge, veg purée and fruit purée. Not keen on BLW though may add in a few bits of finger food as we go along. You'll get lots of conflicting advice here, just do what you feel comfortable with and follow your baby's lead. Good luck!

Fatniss baby rice is just that - ground rice. It’s a pointless food.

It's plainly not that, and it's fortified in the same way that many, many other adult foods are - like milk and cereals. White bread is fortified by law.

Babies who are weaning are at risk of low iron because they're not eating much yet and they're not getting much from breast milk. Fortified baby cereals are a helpful product that can go some way to mitigating any deficiencies in a baby's diet.

Just because it's made by a 'company' doesn't mean it's a bad product. In fact every good, useful product we have (medicines, foods, car seats, grobags, safe infant mattresses) is also manufactured by a company, because that's the way our society works.

It's plainly not that,

And by that I mean... I agree that it's ground rice (obviously) but it's not JUST ground rice. And what's wrong with rice anyway? That's a normal human food

NHS advice about cows milk for babies is here:

www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/milk-and-dairy-nutrition/#dairy-intake-for-babies-and-children-under-5

It says that full fat cows milk in food for babies from 6 months is fine. So no need to buy formula or express to make porridge unless you want to.

I've done BLW twice and it's worked very well for us. I'd read the original BLW book if you're interested (Gill Rapley, bound to be in your local library) and see what you think.