Help on weaning a 6 month old for a first time mum.

[babypink2010]

My baby is now 6 months and 2 weeks old. I started weaning her when she was 4 months she had baby rice and loved it. I have tried the pots you buy from the supermarket but she doesn?t really like them that much because there so pureed not thick enough I think. But then I made her potato, butternut squash, parsnip etc pureed it and she nearly throws up. I have ran out of ideas I don?t know what else to try. Can I start giving her toast, bread and butter? I?m scared to give her solid things as I think she might choke? Any advice would be very helpful.

At 6 months she can have anything except whole nuts and honey - though you might want to hold off on eggs for a little while longer if there is any history of allergies in your family.

I started weaning at 5 months and skipped purees and went straight to finger foods and mashed stuff. My ds had things like toast with cream cheese/avocado/hummus, steamed broccoli florets and sticks of carrot and courgette, rice cakes, breadsticks, banana, roasted veg sticks like parsnip, carrot, potato wedges and sweet potato wedges.

I also gave him stuff off a spoon like yoghurt, porridge, and whatever we had for dinner mashed up.

My ds doesn't really like shop bought baby food either - I think it's quite watery and tasteless.

Often the problem with purees is they learn to suck or drink them, so when they move to lumpier food on a spoon the lumps are a suprise and they gag or choke. With finger foods they know the lumps are coming! My ds has gagged when he's bitten off too much but he's always managed to cough it up.

dd has exactly the same as us, except for the whole nuts. everything is cut into pieces she can pick up herself, so mostly chip shape, although she is already starting to develop a pincer grip at only 7 months. She also has loaded spoons of things like yogurt, porridge (made quite thick). She's in control of what goes in and has only slightly gagged on a couple of occasions, but that's just her body's natural reflex preventing her from choking. If you're worried about choking the hold off a little on harder foods like raw carrot/ apple (although cold raw carrot is great for teething) and let her show you how amazingly well they can chew at this age despite the lack of teeth.
So long as you're eating healthily there're no need to make special meals. Even if you don't want to do the blw route, you could mash up what you're having. At 6 months she should be starting to get used to lumps and having finger foods anyway.

We did 'baby led weaning' with our twins at 6 months. They had strips of toast, weetabix or porridge, banana (well, most fruit except apples which were too hard with no teeth) al cut into finger-sized bits.

Basically, what jandmmum said. Don't mess around with purees, let your DD eat proper food. Till one, she'll get most of what she needs from milk.

ps gagging (when they make a hhhhur noise like they might throw up) is completely normal and NOT the same as choking. WHen they start to learn to eat solid food they will usually gag lots until they learn to keep it away from the back of their mouth where the gag reflex is stimulated.

Avoid whole grapes and baby tomatoes - cut them in 1/2 or 1/4 as they are common choking hazards for babies.

We did purees with DS1 and BLW with DS2 and I def recommend BLW. SOOOO much easier!

Another BLWer here - would definitely recommend it over purees. Way easier and less faff, plus they get a wide range of foods from the beginning. Just chop up whatever you are eating (assuming you eat a healthy diet) into chip sized chunks.