Tell Organix your weaning stories and you could win a £200 John Lewis voucher! NOW CLOSED

[AngelieMumsnet]

We've been asked by baby and toddler food brand Organix to find out about Mumsnetters' experiences with weaning.

So, when did you start weaning? How did you feel about it? What were your questions and how did you get the answers? Was there anything in particular which surprised you about weaning? Which foods did your little one love during weaning, do they still love the same tastes now?

Share your thoughts on this thread and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £200 John Lewis voucher.

Please note your tips and comments may be used, along with your MN nickname in an email MN will send out. They may well also be used elsewhere by Organix.

Thanks,
MNHQ

Dd hated baby rice but loved purees, particularly pear. Happy with various veggie sticks and batons of fruit. What she loved the most, a bit later on was avacado. There was a lovely book at the time which was called 'Avacado Baby/ /this was her! She still loves avacado and makes guacamole herself. She also had a strange early interest in lemon segments complete with funny faces

oops avOcado of course...

I started weaning ds at 6 months old. I hated doing it and really struggled to fit mealtimes in as he was still breastfeeding every 2 hours and having 3 naps a day. I had a lot of good advice from mners. The best piece of advice I had was to remember that however I did it, by 1 year old he would be weaned. I've had that as my weaning mantra and it's really helped me to just relax and go with the flow. I do sometimes find myself worrying when I'm out with friends and their babies are eating loads while mine just sits there waving a green bean in the air, but I know he'll get there in the end .

At 8 months old his favourite foods are broccoli, kiwi, mango and cheese.

DS1 didn't take to eating very well, he only got the hang of it at around 9.5 months. I was despairing of him ever eating more than an inch of banana or 2 spoons of weetabix then overnight he started eating everything I offered. (for a year, then shut back down and became super fussy overnight again, now at 4 I can never tell if he's going to eat something or not so I just offer it and ignore).

DS2 stole a breadstick from my plate aged about 22-23 weeks and that was it, he went full on for both finger food and spoons straight away. No holding back, no doing anything for him, he did it all for himself, still does. He has an enormous appetite, eats everything and anything and finishes before DS1 is even a quarter of the way through his plate.

Very very different children with very very different attitudes to food despite similar routes to beginning weaning.

Both DDs hack their first bits of finger food just before they hit six months and both took to it very well. I only gave purée or mush when out and about or for snacks.
I've been surprised that both DDs have preferred stronger flavours, the only savoury pouch either of them would tolerate was a minted lamb one, they both like their Mexican food!

We started at 5.5months mainly because my daughter was swiping food off our plates and eating it, so it seemed sensible to give it a go. At the time I remember feeling sad about it as I had been lucky and really got into the stride of breastfeeding and so weaning seemed likea step back and being tied to the house again. However, once I had gained a bit of confidence about what to give my daughter we were well away. I was hugely surprised by how much she can eat - and still am!

What we are now doing is transitioning to her feeding herself with a spoon, which is messy but good to see progress.

We started with both dc's just before 6 months once they were sitting up & trying to grab things off our plates. We're currently going much faster down the route to normal family food with dd as there's less time for making special baby meals, & at 6 months dd enjoys broccoli trees, toast & banana chunks already. I do think their preferences & fussiness are more to do with personality than any different approaches parents take with weaning. Luckily both mine loved water from the start, both hated avocado though!

Ds1 started weaning at 5 mths, and was spoon fed all home made purees (perfect new born) I found it really messy and time consuming and a pain if we were out and about.

Dd didn't wean until 8mths, her choice. She was offered whatever we ate and I found it much easier and stress free.

Ds2 weaned at 5 mths, again no purees and he just had whatever we had.

I was determined to wait until 6 months to wean my twins. At 5 1/2 months, DT1, who was sitting on my lap, reached out and grabbed a piece of my marmite toast, got it into his mouth and started gumming it. He began weaning then, I suppose!

DD was a spoon refuser (and still at 2 gets very cross if you try to dictate anything ). After a few days of mush on a spoon I just gave up and did BLW (was planning on a mix). Tbh, it wasn't easy. I wanted it to be fun and exciting but (first child) worried about her nutrition and struggled for good ideas. I think I managed to force myself to be pretty relaxed, I certainly resolved it would never be a battle. At about 9mo she started eating appreciable volumes (demolished a whole punnet of blackberries - she is a fruit bat to this day) and now at 24mo she is a good and adventurous eater. But I still struggle to think of interesting things to feed her, or quick nutritious meals (SAHP).... I find the whole food side of family life quite demanding tbh, I miss the days of being single when I could just eat beans for a week, or ice cream, and not have to think about food and shopping constantly!

Phew, that turned into a bit of a rant

I started DD1 at 4 months, which was the guideline then (she's now 21) and she was fed almost solely on jars. We lived in a really grotty bedsit and I didn't want to cook in the kitchen for her. I took weaning in my stride and DD ate anything.

15 years later and I had DS1. I was a lot more nervous. We had waited a long time for him and I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. This time I cooked from scratch and he ate most things apart from soups. Everything became 'yucky' to him when he turned two and, although he is better than he was, now aged 6 he is a fussy eater and will not eat meat apart from an occasional sausage, nor fish apart from fish fingers. Very frustrating when he used to eat most thing prior to this.

DD2 now 16 months was weaned and 6 months and we did a mix of baby led weaning and feeding her mashed up things. Her favourite thing is to throw lots of food all over the place and to the cats!! She eats breakfast and dinner well (her favourite is shepherds/cottage pie), but isn't so keen on the bread/toast with her lunch unless she's eating it off the floor.

It's a bit early to tell how she will be, but she seems happy with her pretty varied diet at the moment.

Two premmies here. So both weaned at 6 months I corrected age. Eldest was a dream - are masses, loved everything and he still has varied eclectic taste now five years on. He will give anything a go. This one is more tricky - he needs lots of distraction to eat. His tastes change daily as does his love of lumps. He does like finger foods as well and won't eat a lumpy purée until he has finished his finger foods. And oh boy does he have a sweet tooth!

Started at five months. She'll try most things but can eat a particular food like a pig one day and refuse it the next! Typical toddler...

Her favourite thing to eat, (and the reason I had to comment) is Organix carrot sticks. We call them Baby Wotsits. And she'd quite happily eat a packet of those instead of her homemade risotto or whatever we've made!

I was a bit later with DD2 as she was quite prem. Prob 7 months or so (maybe a little before). She loved banana. I did not do BLW with her but did with DD3. I found it a bit stressful as a first time mother but there was a lot of stress that year for lots of reasons. Perhaps that had an impact! It was a lot easier for DD3.

We started weaning DD at 6 months. It didn't go very smoothly as she turned out to have/develop multiple food allergies.

She lived, and loves banana and weetabix ( alone or together). She wasn't too fussy then, and as a toddler remains a reasonably good eater.

With dc1 I weaned at 5.5 months, following Annabel karmel's book - doing it just as she said (DH did comment at that point the baby often ate better than we did). Then introduced some jars after a while. He was (and still is a little), very fussy.

With dc2, she just refused to take food from a spoon, but then at just 6 months helped herself to food from my plate when sat on my knee. So we accidentally did blw, just giving her some of our food to play with (this did mean she tried peanut satay before yogurt). She has an amazing range now of what she'll eat and quantity wise eats a lot more than dc1 did at this age.

She seems from day 1 to have preferred strong flavours and not "mush" texture. But the biggest difference has been she wants whatever dc1 has got!

With ds I puréed everything and introduced one taste at a time. It wasn't very successful and he hated lumps and it wasn't really until he was 2 that he would eat a variety of foods. He lived on pasta. He is 5 now and not fussy at all.
With dd we did a mixture of mashed food and finger food and she got on much better. She are really well and now aged 2.5 will eat most things too.
Neither of them particularly likes meat tho and ds is only recently eating things like roast beef as he doesn't like chewing meat.
I used the annabel Karmel book and mumsnet for ideas and answers to questions.
I found the whole thing really daunting first time around but was more relaxed with dd and used some Ella pouches if we were out and about or for fruit on the go.

Oops I should have said ds was 7mo and dd 6mo

I started weaning at 6 months with both. My first daughter wasn't very impressed by the whole thing. I'd give finger food and she'd sniff it and drop it on the floor, she'd occasionally eat a few spoonfuls of puree. I spent a fortune on little jars and pouches, baby cereal etc. It took until about 13 months for her to start enjoying eating and be able to eat different textures. She preferred food from a jar, didn't like anything I cooked, loved yoghurt, but that was pretty much it. She eats pretty much everything now though (except yoghurt, which she hates!) I found it all a massive stress, and I hated it.

With my second I didn't puree anything or cook anything special, never gave her a jar or anything specially marketed for babies, didn't bother indroducing things one at a time, just mashed a few things from my plate and gave them to her on a fork, put finger food in front of her, she ate everything, and was eating normally prepared food, just the same as we had, using cutlery herself, from about 9 months old. No stress at all, and she still eats everything.

Ds1 : started weaning in a very traditional way at just over 4 months I think. He was prem and low birthweight and seemed to be showing the "signs". In hindsight now I would have done it differently and waited longer but he didn't learn to bf until he was 15 weeks and everything had been a bit messy. He did seem to enjoy it though, just baby rice and pureed one vegetable at a time. He did seem to enjoy pretty much all the tastes and always ate loads of breakfast, particularly the banana porridge type ones.
Had some very traditional advice from the HV at the time which I don't think I would follow now, using baby rice and baby veg powder etc, no mention of BLW.
DS2: Very different, didn't wean until 6 months. In some way it was a more easy going experience but in others less so. He was never a good eater until much older. A mixture of helping him with a spoon and finger foods but he wasn't hugely keen. Mostly wanted milk. Heavily relied on pouches of baby food whereas with DS1 had home prepared pretty much everything.

I found both weaning experiences pretty hard and HV help preetty limited. I mostly relied on web articles and other mums for advice.

i did baby lead weaning along with puree foods from 6 months. it surprised me to see her holding a chunk of crusty bread and enjoying it, chewing and tasting it, at 6 months. i got a lot of looks at the cafe. although, having a variety of foods hasn't stopped her being the fussiest eater ever now shes 3. cheese strings were her favourite.

I did blw with both of mine at 6 months. They both loved it. In particular they both loved fruit, bread sticks and anything covered in soft cheese. The only thing dd1 wouldn't touch was potatoes and she still doesn't like them now at 5yo. Dd2 would try anything. Dd1 went though a stage where she would only eat a very limited choice of foods from abit 2 yo, which she cane out of in the last 6 months. Now she will eat a really good variety of things.

Started weaning at 5 months - easy with baby rice mixed with milk. Loved porridge type foods and so forth. With first baby, I did lots of frozen icecubes of different blended fresh foods.

With baby 2 this went out of the window and relied on quality jars of baby food etc. Felt a bit guilty, but with 2 boys under the age of 2 - and working part-time- there was plenty to do!

The boys are now age 15 and 14 and are 5'8" and 5'11" respectively - so I don't think the jars of baby food harmed their growth in any way!!

we started at just shy of 6 months, i was a little nervous with ds being my pfb, we did a mixture of both methods. ds is coming up to 18 months and doing really well now, he eats the same as us now