Weaning - help

[Hoppyhops]

Hi,
I’m just looking for some advice on weaning. DS2 is 6 months old and I started weaning 2 weeks ago- initially just giving him a little taste of baby porridge and then pureed carrots, sweet potato, pears, peas, etc. The problem is, he’s quite reluctant to try anything. At tea time, he’s starving for food but usually only wants porridge and won’t open his mouth for anything else. He wolfs down the porridge and shouts for more.

I had a checkup with the health visitor last week and she said he should be on 3 meals a day by now (he wasn’t even 6 months old at that point) so I’m totally confused on the conflicting advice. I thought he was meant to be in the ‘first taste’ stage but now I’m stressing out trying to get him to eat 3 meals a day which he inevitably refuses and then I end up binning it.

Any advice or tips? I get such anxiety around the kids not eating.

DS1 was a starving baby and just wolfed down whatever I gave him. I did purées with him and then a mix of puree and finger food from about 7-8 months - he’s nearly two and generally a very good eater. I wanted to do the same with DS2.

Current feeding schedule:
7.30 - 6oz bottle
8.15 - breakfast - puree and yoghurt - doesn’t eat any
10.30 - 7oz bottle
11.30 - lunch puree carrot or sweet potato - sometimes eats, mainly refuses
2pm - 6oz bottle
5pm - dinner - pureed peas and some porridge - will eat it all if there’s more porridge than peas
6.15 - 7oz bottle
10pm - 7oz bottle
3am - 6oz bottle

Just to add - I’ve tried the sweeter fruits and veg first, just to entice him to try some flavour, but even that doesn’t seem to work.

First of all, ignore the HV. NHS guidance is that babies should be moving towards 3 meals a day between 7-9 months, so she’s full of shit. But even then it’s a spectrum and not every baby is the same.

If he’s not interested then he’s not interested, he will develop an interest when he’s ready, just keep offering & modelling eating and he will pick it up in his own time.

My daughter is 13 months now but from day 1 of weaning we have always just ate our meals together so she watches us eating, chewing, putting food to mouth etc, and prepare/offer some for her. She wasn’t immediately interested, there’s no magic button at 6 months that makes them all ready, it’s a process and takes time.

This information seems to change all the time...when my mum was raising us in the 1980s/1990s she was told to start feeding solids by 4 months. When mine were babies, 10-14 years ago, introducing solids before 6 months was absolutely frowned on and the idea was that by 12 months, they were supposed to be getting more solids than milk... But basically up until 12 months it's a gradual process, as much about learning as eating, and so long as the baby is gaining weight normally it's fine if they're still taking more milk than solids.

Yeah this.

Try finger foods / BLW and see if he'll have interest if he can explore it with his hand, too.

Good luck

Suggest playing with the timings as he doesn't sound hungry enough for breakfast at 8.15 - do a snack later, before bottle?

Is the porridge sweetened?

Thanks all. I felt like we were on track with just first tastes and him getting used to food but the Health Visitor really made me feel like it’s wrong for him to be still on so many bottles, which confused me because DS1 was taking the same amount of bottles until he was about 9-10 months (plus food- he was and is a very tall, hungry boy). So I just thought DS2 was following the same sort of pattern.

Anyway, relieved to be reminded that he doesn’t need to be eating so much yet. Funny how much I’ve totally forgotten in such a short space of time.

Also to the PP, no the porridge is completely plain- so he’s literally only going for flavourless solids atm.

Your HV is absolutely wrong. You start weaning around 6 months when they can sit well and showing interest. It takes a while to introduce all the purees etc and for their digestive system to get used to it. You start with one meal, then a second, then towards 8/9 months you likely introduce a third.

For my baby, he was too tired to try new things in the afternoon. I started mid-morning, he was more receptive in the first half of the day.

Absolutely disregard HV, nonsense that he should be on 3 meals a day after 2 weeks!! So stupid. All babies go at different rates, he’ll get there I promise. Check out Charlotte Stirling-reed for excellent weaning advice on instagram.

from your schedule I would say the milk is too close to the meals, they have to actually be hungry especially when it’s all new. So I would do breakfast at 9, lunch at 12.30/1 and work on dropping at least one of those bottles in between (or in the evening - does he really need one at 10.30?)

Thank you! I’ll check out her Instagram.
My issue is that I can’t really space meals out any longer after bottles as those are the times that he’s napping.

I agree he’s probably not hungry enough though as he usually does best eating at around 5pm ish, when he hasn’t had a bottle in 2-3 hours. I think I’ll try reducing his 10.30am bottle by a few oz and see if he’s hungrier for lunch, using the leftover formula with that, and just ignore breakfast for the time being.

Unfortunately he still wakes, shouting, for the 10pm bottle as, ideally, that would be the one I’d choose to go.

His body is really working hard to digest too, bless him, he’s always been quite a constipated baby and now he’s suddenly pooing all the time! He’s probably wondering that the hell’s going on.

My daughter was more like 15 months before she was really eating 3 meals a day. She was very slow to wean

2 weeks into weaning she hadn't eaten a single mouthful. Once she did start she only ate food if it also had spinach in. She's nearly 5 and only recently accepted having things mixed into porridge! We tried to add all sorts of yummy fruits to porridge or Weetabix but she rejected anything that wasn't super plain.
We offered food 3 times a day but she only ate once a day if that but it was different times of day each day!

Thank you! It’s good to hear that they don’t all just get on with it so quickly. I definitely think I’ve freaked out after the HV’s comments and am expecting too much so I’m reining it in and lowering my expectations. Today he’s been offered three meals and eaten one. That’s just where he is and that’s OK!

Thanks everyone for your help and advice.

We kept hold of rejected food and offered them again the next day before throwing them
Frozen veg and fruit can be good for doing tiny portions as you can literally just defrost a single slice of peach for example.
At 6 months I'd play around with size and textures.
We found that my daughter much preferred big food - paid no interest to slices of apple spent ages munching on half an apple though! We discovered this after she pilfered a 1/3 of a cucumber from the fridge and spent the entire afternoon eating it!
Just to increase the variety in what she had it wasn't until she was eating regular meals that we did appropriate food at respective meal times so don't get too hung up on breakfast lunch and dinner. Just offer food regularly and a mix of different foods.

Just wanted to add that you might want to check out the Weaning Section, under Feed the Family as you’ll also find lots of support on there