First baby - am I on the right track with weaning? Comments welcome!

[MrsPercyPig]

I will be starting to introduce solids to my baby in a few weeks when he will be 6 months. He's bottle fed at the minute.

I'm a bit confused about whether I need to purée everything or whether weaning is all about texture - how can I do both?

Anyway for the first 2 weeks I was going to give baby rice with a little bit of fruit. Is this too long?

Then after 2 weeks gradually introduce new foods like bananas, potatoes, parsnip, natural yogurt etc

After this when I'm starting to introduce a more regular 3 meals idea - do I need to mash up and purée everything? I'm so confused about this and it's making me really nervous about starting to feed.

How many bottles do I give ds? Currently he takes 5 x 210mls

Also, my ds has no inclination to hold his own bottle at the minute, does this mean he's not ready for weaning? (Silly q maybe?)

How do I know for sure he's ready for solid foods?

Also, people are putting pressure on me to start to wean now and not wait but isn't 6 months the guide?

Sorry, forgot to add my ds shows absolutely no interest in food presently. I bring him to the table when we eat but he doesn't take any interest I our food. Having said this, he's not a 'grabber' anyway as when we read books, he won't grab at the pages etc or grab jewellery etc.

am worrying now in case this isn't normal

Get the Annabel karmel book, I was confused and this lays it all out for you. You don't need to follow it to the book, I don't. Milk is still their,main food source until 1 so don't cut out milk feeds all of a sudden but follow what your ds wants. Mine has started not wanting so,much milk in the morning or early evening so I have cut these feeds down and will gradually stop them.

I am,mainly doing,purees but when you get to 3 meals a day with 2 course at about 7 months I give him finger food after his puree.

Get the book, it's useful.

Have you heard of/thought about doing baby led weaning? There is a book by Gill Rapley (called Baby Led
Weaning) that explains it all.

I did it with my ds, now 1, and enjoyed the process. I would recommend it!

Everyone does it differently and there aren't many 'wrongs' in terms of texture or purée. I personally enjoyed blw but what you suggest sounds fine. Good luck!

Oh and my 9mo was blw'ed and eats everything now. My neighbours 9 mo went very slowly with purées and also eats everything now.

We baby led wean, but we also have a very grabby baby so has worked well for us. We started with fruit, so don't see why you couldn't just purée fruit and forget about baby rice. My DS also quite likes porridge, just the regular oats in a bag not the super expensive stuff you find down the baby aisle. I'll mush some banana into it, or sprinkle some cinnamon over to keep things interesting for him.
With milk our DS was on 240ml 5 times a day, which is what filled him up. We're still giving him that, although he's skipped his final feed a few times. I give him his bottle, then an hour or so later his breakfast. Just see what he wants with milk, I can't remember when DS started holding but it'll come to him eventually.

Have you looked up the NHS signs of readiness? You shouldn't start at 6 months on the dot "just because". Wait until he shows an interest in grabbing food and gumming it.

Baby rice offers very little in the way of nutrition or flavour, so think about starting with more tasty things, when he is ready.

I think I gave baby rice once, and then moved onto simple mushed up vegetables. Sweet potato one day, carrot the next, parsnip the next etc, then started combining them. Also did fruits (apple and pear are good starters, again, soften in a pan or microwave with a dash of water, and then puree with a hand blender).

I started off just doing lunch for a week (offering it about 45 mins-1 hour after his mid morning bottle), and then started doing breakfast well in week 2 (again, an hour after his early morning milk). Then in week 3 I introduced dinner as well - around 4.30pm, to ensure he was still hungry enough at bedtime to drink his bedtime milk.

I started weaning at 5 months though, so I wanted to take it slowly with introducing the different meals. If your LO is 6mo and seems to enjoy the food, you could always introduce each meal more quickly. Be guided by your baby: even if you use purees, weaning should be 'baby led' in the purest sense of the words :)

Try to relax and enjoy it!

I never did baby rice at all as it just looked so vile. I started at 24 weeks and did a few weeks of mashed sweet potatoes and other veg, then from 26 weeks moved straight onto 3 meals a day and a mix of spoon feeding and finger foods. I never pureed - I just felt that if I wouldn't want to eat it, I wouldn't want to feed it to my baby. I spoon fed porridge, weetabix, yoghurt, fish pie, things like that. Then I give him sandwiches, fruit, pancakes, omelettes, meat, veg etc to eat himself. He is 9 months now, starting to feed himself with the spoon (in a very messy way!) and eats everything on his tray table.
For me, doing a mix of approaches worked well I think. He gagged a bit in the early days but always brought everything back up fine and never had any issues with lumps as a result. We had a BBQ on saturday and he had lamp chops, steak and bulgar wheat salad.
I found starting a bit overwhelming I remember, however, what I now realise is that it doesn't really matter how you get there as long as your baby is healthy and happy. It's all the same really. It's really fun watching them work it out too, be that taking the spoon like a little bird or figuring out how to pick up a quarter of a grape and get it in.

Ignore anyone who says that a mixture of BLW and spoon-feeding purees will confuse your baby. So many people told me to stick to one or the other - I didn't - and I'm glad. Also agree with delaying if you need to. DD was 7 months when I started to wean her - she wasn't ready or interested at 6 months.