Just starting out - questions

[ballroompink]

DS is 24 weeks and we're gearing up to start weaning. Up until now he's been BF, quite happily taking expressed milk from a bottle when I've been away from him. The plan is to so a sort of mixture of traditional and BLW, sticking with the BF for the time being. I want to see how it all works out as I go back to work full time when he's nine months old. Anyway, thanks to all the info out there I have a few queries - please help!

• Am I right in thinking that since he will be 6m when we start weaning, we don't need to do all the pureeing, and that he can eat most of what we eat (with the obvious exceptions, watching out for salt etc)? Did any of you who started weaning at 6m start off with purees, or just mash stuff up, or go for pure BLW? Can I basically ignore all this "Stage One/Two/Three" stuff that we see on branded baby food or does there really need to be a transition from totally smooth to slightly lumpy to larger lumps?
• One of my friends has told me that since I'm going to continue BF I need to give DS Healthy Start vitamins? Have no problem with doing this if it's the case but had never heard about it before!
• If I continue to BF on demand and offer a good selection of food, we'll be fine for nutrients won't we? I've heard a few people getting concerned about the amount of milk their DCs are taking in once weaning starts. If DS quickly starts to drop feeds is this a problem?

All help much appreciated :)

I'm no expert, but we started BLW with DD a few weeks ago and we're loving it! I was fairly open minded and actually thought I'd end up doing purees, but giving her real foods was just so much more fun, particularly for her!

We actually started just before she turned 5 months, just to keep her busy while we ate, really - she was itching to join in! But there is really no rush - their main nutrition comes from milk for a while yet and at first they mostly just create utter havoc play with food.

Gill Rapley's book is a great guide. I'm sure some of the claims are a bit tenuous, but there's a lot of interesting stuff in there and it's useful if you don't know where to start, like me. At first we just gave her grabbable chunks of stuff like steamed carrots, sweet potato, pear, etc., but increasingly we're giving her bits of what we're having. Last week we even took her to a restaurant! (Great advice I saw on MN recently: take wipes, leave a big tip!)

As for the vitamins, I'm not really sure, but I think the NHS recommends giving drops, mainly because lack of sunlight in the UK means most of us are deficient in vit D, so I think I'm going to start her on them, particularly as the days are getting shorter and dingier. I'm also bf, so not sure what the advice would be for ff babies.

Sorry for the essay - as I say, I was open minded about the BLW thing before we started, but I'm borderline evangelical now! Good luck with it all and tarpaulin the house have fun!

Well done for getting to 24 weeks with bfing .

Yes, at 6 months there is no need for different stages of food, you can just dish up whatever you are eating, provided you eat quite healthily. As for the sale, you can buy reduced salt stock cubes from most places these days.

I think the NHS recommend vitamins now for all babies, however they are fed. Can't do links ATM but try googling NHS baby vitamins.

As for reducing bfs, I'd start by offering a bf roughly an hour before solids so that DS fills up on BM and doesn't start reducing his bfs straightaway.

When you are thinking of returning to work you need replace on feed every two weeks to reduce your risk of mastitis. It is possible to continue bfing if you want too, say first thing, when you pick him up and before bed.

I'd give one of the bfing helplines a call and talk through your return to work plans with them.

Is there a le lache league group near to you? They sometimes have talks on weaning and the leader will be able to answer all your questions too .

Xposted with mummy