Easy weaning foods

[leonaaaa]

Hello new mummy starting to wean my son any easy weaning food recipes to start off with 😇 Thank you.

Look into blw for ease.

Dont be drawn into BLW by the fanatics. I mean, its fine, if your baby takes to it. Spoon feeding is also fine. A mixture of finger foods and spoon feeding is fine too. Your baby will guide you.

Depending on how you do it will guide what recipes you use. There are a load out there. I used the Nanny Louenna app quite a bit as she has a fair few recipes.

Thank you :) x

My daughter loved puréed apple with cinnamon.

Nice and simple. Mine had mashed banana, and hand blended versions of whatever we were eating minus the salt and copious amounts of chilli of course! When they were very tiny it was a little carrot and a couple of peas and mash. Jars are fine for out and about, but they seemed to stain clothes.

@leonaaaa I was a bit confused as to what route to go down with all the spoon feeding vs BLW stuff so I did the first couple of weeks with single flavours of veg. Day 1-broccoli, day 2-carrots etc. Each day I puréed some and spoon fed it and gave DS a piece of whatever it was to explore himself as a finger food or whatever. I wanted to see what he’d take to better. He seemed to be happy with both so we just stuck with a mixture of things. Annabel Karmel “Weaning” book and What Mummy Makes recipe book have been great for us 😊

Aww thank you ever so much everyone this is brilliant advice for me 😇 I was getting anxious about it, like finger foods for instance he hasn't got any teeth yet so how can he chew what if he choked so I dont really want too, then with freezing the foods and defrosting and heating it up, then making sure its the right temperature for him to eat, then how much food to give him I dont want to overfeed him or under feed him with food or his bottles if use get me :) x

Try not to over think weaning.

The basic principle is that over the next 6 months baby naturally moves from having all milk and no food to all food and little milk.

That means it's ok for them to start preferring food and to drop milk feeds.

As to how and what you feed - it doesn't matter. At 1 they all go through a phase of refusing all food that isn't beige lol.

I personally was all about spoon feeding as I can't deal with the mess from BLW. Add to that and I used pouches too as life it too short to steam carrots lol.

I did have dietician support with weaning my first and her advice was as follows;

Start with breakfast and keep it simple. Nothing wrong with just porridge or baby rice, weetabix with some formula or cows milk. Keep this meal the same. Start here because it's an easy meal to make and you're always at home.

Next comes dinner as again you're always at home. Do lunch last - put off meals outside the house as long as possible.

@leonaaaa

Aww thank you ever so much everyone this is brilliant advice for me 😇 I was getting anxious about it, like finger foods for instance he hasn't got any teeth yet so how can he chew what if he choked so I dont really want too, then with freezing the foods and defrosting and heating it up, then making sure its the right temperature for him to eat, then how much food to give him I dont want to overfeed him or under feed him with food or his bottles if use get me :) x

@leonaaaa it can seem like such a daunting thing, but honestly once you get started you’ll be fine. Follow baby’s lead and just go with it. Spoon feeding or BLW or a mixture are all fine! My baby had no teeth when we started weaning either but their gums are so hard that they can chew fine 😊 just make sure if giving finger food that’s they are cooked nice and soft 😊 look up the Solid Starts app - it’s great for telling you how things should be cooked/cut to give to babies at different ages if you want to do some finger foods. With freezing and defrosting, if you’re batch cooking and doing portions then everything is in such small quantities that it defrosts quickly. Reheat it to piping hot then wait for it to cool 😊 leave it to cool until it just feels warm to you 😊 They’ll likely eat very little at the start then it’ll gradually increase. Just continue giving the same bottles and as his food intake increases he’ll probably start drinking less milk. So mine had a 7oz bottle when he woke at about 7am, then we did breakfast at 8am, playtime, nap, bottle about 11am and as he started eating more and more at breakfast he naturally started taking less of the 11am bottle until eventually he wasn’t asking for it anymore. He didn’t stop any bottles until he was on 3 meals a day though which was about 9 months. And even then, he had still been waking in the night for a feed up until then so the night one was actually the first one to stop 😊 He’s now 11months and still takes bottles in the morning, at night, and small one after his afternoon nap. He’s just not ready to give that one up yet 🤷🏻‍♀️ Just go with what works for baby and try not to pay too much attention to what they “should” be having at each stage.

@Twizbe is right too...the mess from BLW can be unreal 😅

This book is perfect, highly recommend.

I'd also recommend the app 'solid starts' as it tells you how to serve food for each age group.

Another vote for solid starts, they give a recipe, how to serve and other useful information about majority of foods. Have found it really useful. For the most part I try to give my baby similar if not the same as we eat. So salmon or haddock or cod, sweet or normal potato mash, steamed broccoli. Shredded chicken and rice in a tomato sauce from slow cooker. Courgette batons and cous cous with bits of shredded chicken or cheese mixed in. Risotto using baby stock cubes.
I've found keeping it basic and then changing up the seasoning or what goes with what quite simple.

Tiny things to pick up are good for pincer grip development. I used rice crispies for mine as they melt on the tongue.
Banana and avocado make a lovely smooth sweet spoon food.
It's been years and I know that fashions change but anything smooth without added salt or sugar is worth a try.