Weaning, steaming vs boiling?

[August24Mama]

Hi everyone, about to give my 6 month old her first taste of food tomorrow. I want to BLW and was gonna give her a bit of broccoli and sweet potato. I've read that steaming is better because it keeps more nutrients, but I don't have a steamer. Would it be ideal to steam it or does it not make much difference to boil it?

Also follow up question, I'm not expecting baby to eat much so not gonna offer loads. I have little pots for breastmilk that would be perfect for storing food too. How long could I store cooked food for in an airtight pot in the fridge for?

Also (sorry for all the questions haha) what schedule should I do? I normally nurse her first thing in the morning, should I offer food right after? An hour after? I'm so new to all of this and want to do everything right

I think boiling would be fine. Maybe get a steamer further down the line if you prefer but boiling won't be much different.

Id keep cooked food for 2 days, airtight, at the back of the fridge. Otherwise, if there's a lot, you can freeze some as soon as its cooled

In the early weaning days I think I used to breastfed first thing and offer breakfast 1 hour later. Gave enough time to digest most of it but not so much that they were getting grumpy.

I found a steamer really useful when doing BLW so perhaps look at getting one in the future. I breast fed when my ds woke up as normal and then we had breakfast together a bit later. However when I initially started BLW it was at the evening meal with ds having finger sized steamed veg. We then expanded to lunch and breakfast. As we moved on I would steam chicken / fish and I would steam apples and pears so they were softer.

For DD1 i just boiled and made purees separately but for DD2 I bought a steamer / blender all in one and it was much less faffy to be fair and generated less washing up! So for that reason I'm in favour. If you have a metal sieve, I'm sure I've read that you can boil a pot of water, put the sieve over the top with the food in and use the steam from the pot to steam the food? Maybe have a Google for that method?

Look up @ sr_nutrition on insta (Charlotte Stirling Reed). She is an NHS nutritionist who has written lots of brilliant blogs and books on weaning, including schedules, when to reduce milk etc. The baby book is called How to Wean Your Baby.

You can also steam food in the microwave, which is very quick and easy to do just a few pieces.

I also recommend steaming in the microwave - so quick and easy. You can buy a special box for it (I have one from Sistema from Amazon) or just use any vented plastic container. We started with lunch and timed it an hour after milk. You can also do a mix of finger foods and purées to get a mix of textures so cook something and mash up half of it.

Hardly any will go in so I wouldn't overly worry about cooking method. I offered food after breastfeeding at the start so they wouldn't be cranky from hunger then as they started to actually eat (quite soon with second but not till 10 months) I offered solids before milk so they would eat more.

We started our first on three meals a day but did it gradually with our second offering an extra meal after a couple of weeks. I don't thinks it matters with BLW.