Starting weaning

[Gilldav]

Help, I’m after some advice, my LB is 5 months and I’m starting to think about weaning and haven’t a clue where to start. Any advice would be appreciated regarding what they did, how they started to introduce food etc. Thanks

I started weaning 3 months ago. Food needed to be a lot more watery and runny than I expected. Even if you’re planning to cook at home, buy a supermarket pouch to see the consistency. I was also surprised how little babies eat - only a couple of tablespoons.

When baby is around 6 months, can sit, pick things up and bring them to their mouth and has lost the tongue thrust reflex then shove a few bits from your plate on their chair tray at meal times and let them crack on.

We did blw with both of ours so we just put them in the highchair and offered bits of what we made for our meal or something similarly baby friendly. So my dd’s first foods were roasted carrot and parsnips, mash and Yorkshire puds. My ds’s were cucumber sticks, melon and toast. Basically whatever we were eating that meal that we could make it easy enough for them to eat. We offered about a meal a day to start. You don’t need to make anything special really as they hardly eat much to start and there’s a lot of waste. Floor coverings (we use a big bath towel that can be shaken off outside after and then thrown in the wash every couple days). That’s it really. My ds is 7 months now and tonight he’s having roasted garlicky veg, some cheese and a bit of wrap (we’re having veg and bean fajitas).

Go to your local library and have a read of Gill Rapley's baby led weaning book and look at Annanbel Karmel's and Ella kitchen books (traditional weaning - puree/mash & finger food - although AK has recently published a BLW book) and see what you think is most suitable for your child. I preferred traditional weaning as that worked better for us but there's nothing wrong with BLW. Babies barely eat anything in the beginning, it's just giving them the chance to try solids. Also, don't bother with baby rice - it's disgusting and has no nutritional benefits. Further, just buy readybrek or blend down normal porridge - it's significantly cheaper than the baby branded ones and readybrek is just oats and flour fortified with vitamins and iron.

BLW didn’t work for me. My baby vomited and choked on any lumps, he needed purée until 8-9 months. He did manage to eat baby rice wafers by himself though. It depends on your individual child.

I’m also utterly clueless about weaning. I’ve read a lot about it but they always say things like ‘Gradually introduce thicker purees/other foods’ - but how long is ‘gradually’?! Where we live, they recommend starting with baby cereals as early as 4 months - they think the 6 month rule is outdated advice - but we’ve waited til over 5 months anyway because we just don’t know where to start. We think we’ll do a mixture of cereals, purees and finger foods but we have no idea which ones. If you did traditional weaning, how long did you do cereals and purees for? Did you mix them with water or milk? Did you use only single-ingredient foods and if so, how long for? Similarly, if you did BLW and gave baby food from your plate, did you offer only single-ingredient foods, without any seasoning or whatever? How did you know when you could move on to normal mixed-ingredient, dryer, harder foods? Sorry for hijacking the thread but since my question is the same I thought it would be better to post here than starting another thread!

I did BLW as it was much easier than doing purée and it meant child is always used to feeding themselves and not have you do it.
Seasoning is fine as long as not salt. And make sure the food is chunky so baby can grab it and hold it.
No honey.
No nuts as a choking hazard but peanut butter is fine (as
Long as no suspicion of an allergy).