Overwhelmed by weaning

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Mummy who is overwhelmed here. We just started weaning and it all feels overwhelming! So many questions. I thought it was overwhelming when we were learning to breastfeed - now I find myself in square one once again....

If you do baby led weaning what recipes do you cook that can be easily adapted for babies and don't take ages?

What sort of foods can you get straight from the supermarket to make simple meals? (Like buying Greek yogurt with mashed fruit)

How do you entertain baby whilst you're prepping? And after? (There's usually a lot of mess to sort and clean for which I need some time! and obviously the baby to clean!)

How to know how much to give? When di I know it's time to stop? Baby is 6 months, will happily sit there ten minutes playing with the food but then after that he has enough and cries. Is that normal?

How to know when baby is ready for more than 1 meal?

Any other top tips??? Xxx

Following this, and hopefully bumping, as our little girl is turning 6 months just after Christmas and I'm finding the thought of weaning so daunting and overwhelming already!!

Hi will try and share a few things I did for weaning my children:

1. I have done a mix of blw and purées. I currently offer purée for lunch and early tea (4pm meal) and then finger food at toddler tea time. For quantities - babies stomach is the size of their fist so they can't eat much

2. babies need to try food multiple times before they will accept it and they accept much easier if they see you eat it too

3. for actual meals - grab joe wicks weaning book. Most of the older baby food can be blw. My children ate a lot of left overs. So make too much veg and serve again the next day. Quick food is pasta, pesto and cream cheese with anything added (tuna, veg etc). Easy also is jacket potato and beans

4. clearing up - put a splash mat under high chair. If you can't tidy immediately fold mat and clean later

Hey op,

Welcome to the world of weaning. I found it messy but fun, so hopefully you can too

I started out with the what mummy makes book and the free Ella's kitchen weaning chart. We started with purees for 2 weeks just to get the tastebuds going. They you can move onto steamed solid versions of the same veggies.

I'd also suggest following a few Instagram accounts for weaning as I found them really useful for ideas.

It's quite messy so a decent bib (or 5!) And a lot of cloths!!

Prep is key, I used to prep the puree when my son slept. Or sit him up in the highchair with a toy whilst I did it

Have you seen the book ‘How to Wean Your Baby’ by Charlotte Stirling-Reed? That’s really useful and even gives you a day by day plan for the first weeks if you want to follow it!

I haven’t done very well cooking something we can all eat and giving the baby some as we tend to live off ready meals / convenience food these days! 😂 I bought a little blender and have made some veg purées but often buy the little jars of pre made baby food. For breakfast I do baby rice or porridge and sometimes mash up a bit of fruit to go in it.

I pop baby in the high chair with some finger food while I get the puree ready then I wipe down the high chair and floor before taking baby out so I don’t have to come back to it later - as I know I won’t get a chance! I use ready made finger foods (wafers / puffs etc) as I tried veg sticks but can’t cook them to the right consistency so they are squishy enough for baby to chew but not so squishy they just fall apart when picked up!

I think in terms of increasing meals it depends how baby is taking to it. Once we were getting through most of a portion for a few days in a row I went up to two meals and then about a week later up to three. My baby does seem to be really hungry though! 😆

For portions I tend to make up one scoop of baby porridge / rice or about 60g of purée. I bought some little weaning storage pots and they hold 60g so I figured that seemed a reasonable portion! We weren’t getting through all that to start but the last few days we have been, so I will start to increase the portions I think.

I found it really daunting to start with but quite fun now I’ve got into the swing of things trying out different flavours to see what they do / don’t like. I’m less keen on the messy aspect of the whole thing though!

Hello! Fellow mum of a 6 month old here and this feels pretty familiar as I have another who is not yet 2! The Joe Wicks weaning book is my Bible and I can’t recommend it enough. All very helpful, practical and just fab.

I've done BLW twice because I'm lazy😄 I just take off a small portion of our dinner for them (DS had paneer and spinach curry for his dinner). I don't use any extra salt, use low salt stock cubes and generally eat pretty healthily day to day. I do the odd batch cook for things like a pasta sauce or some veggie muffins so I've always got something quick in the freezer but nothing onerous. The Gill Rapley book is good and there's a few BLW groups on Facebook. I'd try your local library for cook books/weaning books, our one has a really good selection.

I use plenty of supermarket stuff - yogurt is a staple "pudding", bread sticks/rice cakes/oat cakes are a great store cupboard for easy lunches with some cream cheese or hummus or mashed avo, Ella's Kitchen melty sticks buy you enough time to neck a cappuccino in a coffee shop in my experience. They can take a while to get used to it - DD took a couple of weeks to get into it but DS was around 8 months before he looked like he was starting to enjoy eating.

OP, humans have been raising their young for 300,000 years - please don't stress out about doing it 'by the book' and end up getting overwhelmed, it just isn't necessary! There are a few important things to remember:

Limit salt and sugar (just leave out stock and added salt when you make the meal, and you and your OH can add yours at the table if you like. Avoid offering baby sticky toffee pudding and Mississippi mud pie, but a little Greek yoghurt and fruit if you feel they should have 'dessert'

Avoid bones and hard, round pieces that could stick in baby's throat, so steam any veggies and cut into batons rather than circles. Sausages, grapes and raw apple are buggers, so should be peel and sliced very thinly before being offered

Some things will 'get things moving' for baby, like apricot, pear and prunes - helpful to know if they're ever backed up but don't offer to routinely otherwise or you'll get interesting nappies!

Purees are fine, baby led weaning is fine, a mixture is fine. Just go with whatever

Pouches are very convenient but they can be sneaky! They mix fruit into savoury meals, which sounds nice and healthy on the packaging but is a way of subtlety sweetening their food so baby will prefer shop bought over yours! Just something to be aware of. Also know that shop bought 'baby snacks' in little packets aren't great. Ok in an emergency but real food will always be preferable.

DON'T WIZZ UP POTATO! It'll turn to glue. Just mash it instead.

Baby will make it clear when they've had enough, so don't get upset or resort to doing silly tricks and shoving it in when they're distracted. It's really important for little ones to learn the connection between being full and stopping eating! If they're too full of milk they won't want food, so swap round the order of bottle and meal if necessary.

Supermarket eggs should be fine to offer soft boiled but farm stand type eggs you should only hard boil or use in baking for the next few years due to salmonella risk

Honey, whole nuts and crazy weird stuff like swordfish should be avoided the first year or 2

Baby will show more interest in food if you eat at the same time. They'll always prefer what's on your plate to theirs, even if it's the exact same thing. That's just the way it goes!

They will drop their utensils and big pieces of food everywhere. I recommend a clean splat mat under the chair so you can just pass it back without worrying about bacteria.

Yeah, just don't stress! Relax and enjoy the weaning process, and take plenty of pics of them with yoghurt smeared into their hair so you can embarrass them on their 18th!

I think you're overthinking this.

At 6 months I just offered simple purées of single veg. Then combinations of things & quickly moved on to puréed versions of things I ate myself.

I would cook the bulk of the meal and then separate hers out before I finished cooking mine - that way she wouldn't have any of the salt or spice.

I tend to do my cooking in the morning literally straight after waking up. I'll bring the high chair into the kitchen with me and cook while she eats breakfast.

Cooking things like chicken/fish you can literally just chop everything up and bung in the oven that way you don't need to be watching it 24/7.

Follow baby's lead - for the first few months they may not eat a lot at all but that's ok as most of their nutrients comes from milk.

Start with whatever meal is easiest for you to introduce. Pretty sure I started with dinner, then breakfast and then finally lunch so now she's on all 3.

It's still hit and miss though and some days she barely eats anything but as long as you keep offering that's the main thing.

The joy of BLW is you just offer the same food as you are eating (minus salt). So for example, for dinner, we might have salmon fillet, new potatoes, broccoli and green beans. We’d cook without any salt and just give a small amount of each item to the DC. Same with meatballs and pasta (use penne or similar for babies) or vegetable curry (you can use spice but limit chilli) for example. Basically we’d make healthy/normal meals and all usually eat together. We might offer some leftovers for lunch. For breakfast, we had lots of egg-based dishes - such as poached egg, avocado and toast, or veg omelette cut into strips - or porridge or things like banana pancakes (banana and egg and a bit of flour mixed together).

Things like Hummus and veg/bread or cheese and cucumber are quick options for when you are short on time.

Someone up thread mentioned Charlotte Stirling-Read - her insta has lots of great ideas for weaning. One thing I followed from her was the idea of giving bitter vegetables at the start rather than sweet fruit. So at the start, we offered things like broccoli, courgette, aubergine etc, before offering fruit a few weeks later.

As for mess, BLW is messy! I had friends who opted for spoon-feeding because BLW was too messy for them. For BLW, the key for us was to have whole body bibs - they have sleeves and are wore over clothes and make cleaning up the baby much easier. A plastic sheet/piece of oil cloth on the floor makes tidying up the food that will without doubt end up on the floor.

I found weaning so much fun, if you embrace the mess and sit down and eat at the same time as your child. Good luck!