About to start weaning - advice needed

[Starlight85]

My DD is almost 6 months old and is currently bf. I am a first time mum and not really sure what we need to try first.

I was thinking we would start with some vegetable purées and also some soft finger foods.

With the purees do I just blend cooked vegetables or do I need to add milk or water as well? What are the best vegetables to start with?

What sort of finger foods can we try?

We started with things like sweet potato, broccoli or pea puree. You can always add a little milk (expressed bm or full fat cow's milk) if the consistency isn't right. I just steamed or boiled the veg and then used a hand blender or masher to begin with. Avocado is another thing which mashes well with just a fork, and banana.

Finger foods we started with were fingers of toast with unsalted butter, steamed broccoli florets, raspberries. Things that can be gummed basically

Just checking that yiu know there is no need to give purees at 6 months? They are fine if that's what you want to do but babies this old can go straight onto normal food

I'm not really sure what is the best thing to do, is it better to just give food rather than purees? I thought I might do a mix of both

You can do whatever you like

I've weaned 2 one on purees and then purees and finger food and one who snatched a sandwich and scoffed it at 23 weeks. She then became a total spoon refuser.

The second was so much easier. You can just plonk the food down and eat your own

I agree with everyone plonking food down and eating your own is much easier!

I only started with a few purees because as a ftm I was a little bit scared of choking I then read up on the difference between choking and gagging and after a few weeks I felt much more confident. DS now feeds himself most things but I do roughly mash up some things for him and after allowing him to feed himself yoghurt with a spoon and almost having to redecorate I do still spoon feed runny things now and again

I had a spoon refuser, it was so much easier just popping food down cut into grabbable shapes. Felt great not spending all that time steaming, blending, freezing, defrosting and warming food that the little bugger refuses or spits out anyway

I started with soft finger food and added spooned stuff later - she still eats from a spoon (and feeds herself from a spoon initially until she realises its quicker with her fingers!)
I looked into purees and used pre-made now and again depending on what we were eating but thought the ingredients on the premise stuff looked good enough to not bother making my own!
Veg and fruit first, then we added pasta/bread (she still struggles with rice tbh) and cheeses/meats/yoghurt/fish but quite quickly so she could be offered the same as us. We initially spoon fed stuff you'd eat off a spoon (soup/yoghurt) but she decides how to do it now (usually making the most mess possible)
She definitely experienced/played the first month or two but loves her food now.
I'd recommend berry pots for introducing a range as you have a few different types and if you do it thinking about how long each fruit lasts - you can have a weeks worth of fruit portions (we try to give more interesting fruit with breakfast - later she gets standard cheap fruit banana/apples)
Remember portion sizes are small! A fruit pouch could go over a few meals when she started out (initially on a spoon - she ducks it straight from the pouch now)

We started with purées at 6 months and slowly moved onto finger food, I tried her with finger foods at first but dd is unreasonably greedy and would just shove the whole thing straight to the back of her throat and start gagging. The choking risk was too high at that stage imo so I waited until she had better hand eye coordination to start finger food again, now she has a mixture of purée and finger foods, and despite having no teeth yet at 9 months she can bite through sticks of cucumber no problem and chew pasta and lumps of mince or fish too.

If you are bf the advice is to give a milk feed an hour before food so they aren't filling up on 'proper' food which is less nutritionally valuable to babies at this stage, lots of people on here end up with nighttime sleep issues as the baby suddenly wants more breast milk in the night as they are having too much food in the day and still need the nutrition. Remember that 'food before one is just for fun' some babies take to weaning well, others not so much.

Toast soldiers and cucumber batons are good for when they are teething.

Make sure to give cooled boiled water to drink alongside meals as they can get constipated very easily when weaning and it is not nice when they are in pain when pooing.

Just like adults, babies prefer different things so be flexible. My first DC was weaned on mostly purees as we weaned her early due to reflux. My second was much more of a mixture. Most fruit and veg can be given in chunks although mine preferred some to be pureed (especially the slippery ones.) Some babies like a runny purée, others prefer it thicker. Just try a few things out and see what works.

By about 7 months, DC2 (who had no allergies) would mostly eat what we ate. If it was soft, eg shepherds pie, I whizzed it up a bit and spoon fed her. If we had something like Roast Dinner, I just plonked it on her tray.

The best thing is not to be too rigid and remember that milk is still very important. So long as you remember key rules like no salt or honey, there isn't really any right or wrong way.

I think the really important thing is that you eat at the same time. Even if it's just a cup of tea. Partly because eating should be ingrained as a social thing from as early as possible. And partly because you don't want to focus all your attention on the baby-you don't want rood to become a "thing" . Not too much praise for eating or angst for not- just calm, matter of fact "Try this, it's called carrot - what do you think?"

Have you got any books on weaning OP - two I found useful were Weaning made Easy - quite a balance approach in that it discusses "traditional" weaning ie purees and also baby led weaning

the second is the river cottage baby and toddler book which again talks about both approaches and has lots of family recipes that are also suitable for baby