nervous about weaning!

[tartanbow]

hi all,

my dd has just turned 6 months so I am about to start weaning her. I have baby rice, Ella's kitchen pouches and finger foods and also have carrots in to make myself if I feel confident enough.

what would you start with? have seen some say baby rice is a waste of time

do Ella's kitchen pouches need to be warmed up?

I'm so paranoid of her choking!

thanks!

It made me nervous too. I didn't do finger foods until ds was 1 for this reason.
I started him off on purees I did myself in the blender , fruit , veg etc. At that age it's just a taste anyway , as they still need mainly milk.
I worked up to lumpier foods like mashed banana, scrambled egg , weetabix etc then soggy toast , cucumber , chopped apple as he got older .
I know at nursery they started him on harder stuff haha
It did him no harm and it worked for us , but there will always be the 7 month old on here that ate T bone steak or a vindaloo!
Good luck , it's a lovely age .

We did baby lead weaning so started with carrot sticks and broccoli florets. It was great fun. I’d really recommend watching some videos on back slaps for choking. Knowing the difference between gagging (normal and no problem) and choking (urgent and serious) and what to do if they choke will give you a lot more confidence and let you relax and enjoy the experience. The cleaning up is an absolute pain though!

@Dontforgetyourbrolly I think I might try with Ella's kitchen pouch initially to ease myself into it more than anything!

haha that vindaloo comment!

@dorothea I really wish I was confident enough to go that way as my friends daughter who is a few weeks older has gone that way - she loves pasta! I will check out what to do in case of choking, hopefully will make me feel a little bit more at ease

I found weaning quite anticlimactic. DS wasn’t that bothered for the first few weeks, certainly not about finger food so I lost patience with the baby led weaning idea very quickly - I hate food waste. We did purées for about a week (I bought a hand held blender especially and wish I hadn't bothered for the sake of one week - hard and pouches would have done the trick!) then I mashed stuff up and then he was soon eating soft whole food. It seems really daunting to start with but it’s actually very straight forward - there’s so many ways to wean that I don’t think there is a wrong way, except for the obvious safety issues. Go with what works for you.
And my DS enjoyed baby rice...

Oh yes the cleaning up !
If I had hindsight I would have bought the ikea high chair every one on here recommends.

We did baby led weaning too but regardless of the route you take, if you are nervous do a baby first aid course once lockdown allows you. In the meantime check out the videos on gagging versus choking as a pp said. Try not to panic when they gag, itll just make the wee one upset, gagging doesn't usually upset them at all. Staying calm easier said than done!

There's Infirmation online about helping a choking baby. We had a look at that. We started weaning a week ago. It's good fun. We're doing a mix of baby led and traditional. We're just about t start giving him a little porridge for breakfast. He has veggies at lunch and he loves it. Quite a fan of the carrot he had today, likes the taste of avocado but it's very slippery so he can't get a hold of so easily and he likes broccoli too.

We started with a time of day he's usually awake, so lunch time, then got the high chair set up and gave him whatever we were giving him. Then once he's covered himself in whatever he's eating we clean him, give him a bath if necessary and give him his milk. The main downside of him eating now is that if we dare to have a snack ourselves he tries to swipe it for himself.

we tried sweetcorn puree (pouch to start with) and she loved it! so did her bib and the floor mind you but the facial expressions were worth the mess lol! trying carrot later then peas tomorrow. enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would

That's great! Well done!

Well done you! Glad it went well. It only gets easier (but oh so very much messier.....) from here on out.

Definitely get the Red Cross or St. John's first aid apps. Both amazing and invaluable free sources of first aid information. Knowing what gagging looks like, and what to do should baby choke definitely made the early weeks of weaning easier on DH and myself.

Well done, it’s very daunting at the start!

One thing I would say is try to do a bit of baby led weaning alongside the purées if you can. My DS is 13 months now and I was too nervous to try finger foods until around 9/10 months and now he’s so lazy and would rather wait for us to just feed it to him, even though he can do it himself no problem!

I combined baby led and purées. Nice soft fruits, weetabix , yoga, eggs. It was a fucking chore but all worked out fine in the end .

I pretty much gave DD what I had but left out chilli and salt and cut the vegetables into sticks. When I didn't have time to cook I gave her pouches with strips of crusty bread or toast to dip in it. I heated the pouches up a bit in a mug of hot water.

She also liked scrambled eggs and baked beans and I squished the beans up a bit to start with.