Struggling to get into a routine with weaning

[Hayley2407]

My 5 month old son is always looking at our food and seems to enjoy little tastes of bits and bobs and the health visitor said he's ready to start weaning.
I'm just struggling to get into a routine with it, like when are the set meal times?
When should I just be doing breakfast lunch and tea?
Any advice would be great!

Don't over complicate it, just give him bits of your food (obviously making sure they're suitable). You can do three meals a day or just one - it's just about them exploring food in the early days so just do what works for you. Personally I just did one meal a day to start with because I couldn't face cleaning up the mess more than once a day!

Five months does seem a bit early though unless it's been recommended for medical reasons.

We did milk at 6ish when baby woke, breakfast at 8ish milk about 11ish, lunch around 12:30, milk about 3, tea (and milk - can't remember) about 5 and milk at bed time. This was my first bf baby.

My other kids just had to fit in with the others - but no doubt sat for food at the 3 meal times.

It's a little early to have started, so I would hold back for now if you can.

After 6 months I would just offer food at your normal mealtimes -- breakfast, lunch and tea (or start with one of these at first). Even if you're feeding mainly purees it still makes sense to eat together.

Advice is to stick to your baby's usual milk routines at first and cut back on milk by the age of one year (unless it happens naturally before then).

When mine were this age they would have milk first thing in the morning, breakfast, milk mid-morning, lunch, milk mid afternoon, tea, milk before bed and then milk if they woke in the night for it. I was breastfeeding on demand so this was just a natural pattern that usually fitted in with them and also with me. I breastfed more or at different times if they wanted it or needed the comfort.

We started at 4.5 months (on consultant advice before the weaning police get upset) & graduated up.. so we started with just lunch at lunch time, after a week or so, we added breakfast and then finally tea. We did tea time around 4/4.30pm for the entire first year of eating as bedtime was 6-6.30pm at that age for us!

Initially, we would do milk about 7am, breakfast (porridge/toast) 8/8.30am, milk 11am, lunch 12.30 (initially veg purées, at 6 months a mix of baby led/roughly blended ‘normal’ meals), milk around 3pm & tea around 4.30ish (as above). Milk at bedtime.

Butt she dropped the 11am & 3pm feeds around 8 months! She just started drinking about half an ounce so I stopped it & offered a small snack & she much preferred that! She still had a big morning & bedtime bottle, milk in porridge, milk in the rice pudding I made her for pudding, yoghurt, cheese etc so plenty of calcium!

Just fit it into your life best you can I say!

@Bol87
Thank you! Yeah people have told me I'm starting too early and initially I did want to wait untill 6 months but he's been interested in food and the health visitor said he's ready so I'm not going to let it get to me!
I'm going to give this a go as my boy is around about the same milk routine now.
Thanks for the advice 😊

We started around 5.5 months just with the odd bit of food, not set times. It took a couple of months to transition to three meals a day so I wouldn't worry too much about that to begin with. We didn't even do it every day at first, we just let ourself be guided by DD and went at her pace. She's 11mo now and a little piggy