No arguments but... can you share your experiences on weaning?

[Elf1981]

I just wanted to know a few things about weaning. Such as, do you have any pros / cons about early / late weaning. Did you wean early / late / baby led. Have you had more than one child and followed different routes of weaning?

I'm only asking because on this site, there will be tonnes more people who have weaned recently compared to the people I know in RL who have weaned in the last ten(ish) years. So I just wanted to get some up to date experiences to help me make decisions about weaning my own DD.

I weaned at 5.5 months. I felt that ds needed more food during the day. He was and still is a very big boy and needed more than milk.

I had no major plan on how to do it. Started with just a few spoon fulls of mashed up fruit or veg for lunch and over a few weeks the spoonfulls turned to 3 'meals' with milk.

Once I had sorted the 'meals' out, I then changed the bottle for a cup for lunch and tea times.

Ds is now 13m and today I started work on changing his morning bottle for a cup. He still has a bottle at bedtime, but I am slowly decreasing the amount and plan to change it to a cup once I have sorted the morning one out!!

I like to work in 'weeks', each week I try to progress with something ie changing to cup or making food more lumpy.

It has worked for us!

I weaned ds1 at 16 weeks and ds2 at 20 weeks (4 and 2 years ago respectively). Read all the books (most useful ones for me were Annabel Karmel and Gina Ford, but I also had Carol Timperley's vegetarian one and Suzanne Oliver's , among others - I'm a bit of a bookaholic ). Did it pretty much the 'traditional' way - puree to mash to lumpy stuff with finger foods from about 6months. All home made. Found we progressed through the stages pretty quickly. (IME, 'baby-led' has always meant go pretty fast, they're loving it!)
Found it pretty easy, ds's loved their food, I enjoyed making up the ice cubes - but it did take a LOT of my time.....
I found reading a variety of books quite helpful as it made you realise which areas there was debate about and which there was agreement on.
hth

Hi Elf1981.

My DS1 was hungry for food by the time he was 12 weeks old. I know this isn't recommended, but it worked for DS just trying flavours and mush once or twice a day. He is 2 bnow and an excellent eater! OTOH DS2 wasn't interested in food whatsover, despite being a bigger baby (9lb!) I tried every couple of weeks from him being 4 months and it was only when he got to 6 months he took a real interest. Even so, he's not that bothered now, if he has the choice over mummy milk or food I'm pretty sure it would be milk! (saying that he did start smacking his lips together when we were in the supermarket on the baby food isle!)

I don't have any pros or cons, I just followed what my DS's wanted at the time.

HTH!

DD is 18 weeks old. She was a big(ish) baby, 8lbs 13.5oz when born. I tried her with a bit of baby rice on Monday, she ate about a teaspoon full and then gave up, but she did eat a bit of baby youghurt later on in the day.
I brought a book about weaning from M&S, it's really useful, tells you hwat they can eat and when, and has recepies for different stages etc, will have a consult of that later today.
Bit confusing to know when they're ready, I know three people who have babies under three at the moment, all of them weaned just under four months old.

Pros of early weaning...there aren't any.

Pros of later weaning - their gut's mature, they'll be onto finger food and lumpy stuff immediately, you can feed them what you're eating (minus salt). I could go on. I have on this subject before, occasionally

I'm with hunker. Started weaning ds at 6.5 months. It took a while for him to get used, but he eats fairly well now (nearly 9 months), mostly finger food (he actually ate a whole banana the other day ), and hasn't had any allergy problems so far.

the recs are better to wait till 6 mths if you can, tho I know most people still don't. I wanted to do this as a) managed with ds1
b) ds2 still happy bfing c) we've got some allergies in our family so wanted to reduce risk..
Plan to start with baby rice then quick;y move on to mashed food then finger food so should be less hassle than constant pureeing!

Sorry, realised you asked for experiences of weaning as well.

OK - DS1 is 22mo and he first had food when he was 6mo. He's had a mixture of spoon-fed things (yoghurt, porridge - but soon worked out he could eat those with his fingers too!) and finger food, but predominantly finger food. He didn't eat much till he was 8 or 9mo but soon got the hang of it and has an enormous appetite now. The HV was amazed he was eating sandwiches at his 8m check (not actually at the check, you understand ).

I weaned at 4 months for both DS's (and that was knowing the 'guidelines' for DS2). DS1 was jar fed / as I simply couldn't get in the kitchen to prepare stuff (living with my parents). And I gradually increased the number of meals a day to 3 over about 1 month. Didn't give him any foods which he wasn't "supposed" to have until he was old enough.

DS2 was weaned at 4 months, straight onto our food and by 6 months was eating everything we were eating - just mushed down.

Never made icecubes of stuff did try but found it a PITA,
both are great eaters now - 5yrs and 2yrs.

No need to give baby rice first if you don't want to btw. Seems a shame that babies all over the country have wallpaper paste as their first introduction to food

To some extent it depends on the child.

dd, now nearly 5, was weaned at 4 months and took to it straightaway. She is still a good eater.

ds, now nearly 2, was weaned at almost 6 months, and wouldn't touch mashed food or finger food. I had to start him on purees. He is still a poor eater!

ds only has a range of fruit (banana, apple, pear), veg (e.g. carrot, pumpkin, sweet potato, broccoli) and (oat or millet) porridge so far, plus still quite a lot of breastfeeds. We introduce one, sometimes two new things a week. We have allergies in the family so are leaving wheat, eggs and cow's milk until 1 year.

oh yes baby rice - tried it for 2 days with DS1 - he hated it, DS2 never had the torture of eating it - don't really see the point in it TBH.

I know - but a couple of boxes, "just in case" have been gathering dust in my kitchen cupboard..maybe I'll mix the rice up with a veg to make it more interesting!

I've felt very intimidated about weaning, not sure how to go about it, partly fear of allergies (dh has multiple food intolerances), partly MIL bashing my ear about it, partly ds didn't seem very bothered. At 7 1/2 months, he's still only having two 'meals' a day and often will skip one of those if he's having a particularly pukey/refluxy time of it.

When you're ready, just offer the food at a regular time of day, don't be surprised if baby isn't that fussed at the start. We had a phase with ds where we had to have two spoons on the go, one for him to hold/fling about, the other actually containing food.

I'm wanting to cook it all myself but am short on time and it gets frustrating when he's not interested, so at the moment I'm using some organix jars - I don't mind if half a jar of stuff ends up on the floor/in his hair/in my hair (just before I go to work, argh) if I haven't lovingly peeled, cubed, steamed and pureed the veggies all myself!

I weaned at 4 months which was the advice when mine were little.

I have 2 allergy prone children which I think was at least partially as a result of weaning too young.

They have dairy, egg, tomato, strawberry allergies. All of these reasonably severe. They have lots of other minor allergies too, which occur so frequently we have never managed to pin down exactly what is causing them.

Quite frankly, I would say follow the later weaning advice, you may very well get away without weaning earlier but you may not! There were no histories of allergies in my family either!

(BAM, are you who I think you are? Wondered where you'd gone )

I weaned DS at 6 months straight onto finger foods. Took him a couple of weeks to swallow without gagging a bit, but now he's a little pro! Still prefers milk if he's feeling off-colour but otherwise has happily eaten everything we've put in front of him - apart from avocado. A lovely stress-free way of weaning - I never have to worry about over or under-feeding, and he's now even able to feed himself yoghurt etc from a loaded spoon. If I had another baby, I'd do the same again! (Despite the phenomenal mess...)

I weaned DS at 6 months straight onto finger foods. Took him a couple of weeks to swallow without gagging a bit, but now he's a little pro! Still prefers milk if he's feeling off-colour but otherwise has happily eaten everything we've put in front of him - apart from avocado. A lovely stress-free way of weaning - I never have to worry about over or under-feeding, and he's now even able to feed himself yoghurt etc from a loaded spoon. If I had another baby, I'd do the same again! (Despite the phenomenal mess...)

I weaned at 6ms-ish (now 7.5ms).

Pros - He'll scoff anything! His chums, who were weaned at 4ms-ish still won't accept lumps and the like. He was able to hold his body and use his motor skills a lot better when he started. Which helped him accept it, and enabled me to be more relaxed and confident about offering him food. I haven't had to keep pureeing stuff either - i just mash/cut stuff up.

Cons - enduring the endless comments about 'when are you going to wean him, he's very light...yadayadaaa'. Sometimes it made me feel crap, but i am so glad i was stubborn enough to wait, it was well worth it.

I was really apprehensive about weaning; how it might tie you down, having to cook etc. but it's been a lot less of a hassle, as i haven't needed to puree very much at all (bar the first couple of weeks). I've learnt that it's all about confidence. My ds has really surprised me about what he will accept.

I've used organic jars at weekends, if out and about - really handy, and nothing wrong with them. (most stores won't heat food up - just water for you).

Go at your own pace.

I weaned DS2 at 15 weeks. This was down to him being so hungry. Inspite him being on Milumil to fill him up, he was taking so much milk, up to 10oz at a time, his stomach couldn't hold it and he would be sick. He had also started waking at night for a feed after sleeping through from 6 weeks old.
He was 10lb 7oz at birth and was about 20lb when weaned. My health visitor was aprehensive but we couldn't think of anything else to do. So I started slowly and gently introduced simple vegetables and fruit and he took to it like a fish to water, we never had a problem with him. He has just turned 1 and has a good healthy diet and refuses to eat anything out of a jar after having home cooking the whole time.
After my own experience with my two DS's, DS1 was a nightmare to wean, and from the other mums I know it seem every baby is different and ready in their own time. If it doesn't work first time, wait and try again later.