Some ideas please for 7.5 month old

[Alicia870]

Hi all

Really really struggling with the while weaning process. Basically dd started off great and then took a nose dive just getting really picky with her food. I get that it's about being relaxed and just introducing them to everything, but it's just that I feel really stuck with what to give her other than pouches and finger foods.
Finger foods we're good with- she doesn't eat a lot but picks at different things like banana, rice cakes, toast with cream cheese, cheese, mandarins etc

However I really want to get her eating what we eat and I'm so stuck with how to do it. It works for me to feed her from a spoon also but I feel I'm just giving pouches all the time. Bought a stick blender at the weekend so can anyone give ideas of what you give to this kind of age? Eg tonight we're having meatballs and mash- can I just mix/purée up some of the meat with the mash? This might sound silly- but what does everyone else spoon feed their baby?
I really don't have time to bake butternut squash etc from scratch and blend it. Thank you!

With my DS last year I just gave him exactly the same as us, we didn’t overly blend or anything as I was too lazy but you could do. It took him a little while to get used too feeding himself but now he’s 16 months and comfortably and relatively neatly feeding himself every meal, it’s great as we all get to enjoy a hot meal together!
Don’t stress, let him explore, and don’t over complicate it. If blending stuff down you may need to add additional moisture to get it spoonable. It took my son a fair while to get up to eating decent amounts but once he mastered it there was no stopping him. We had a doddl cutlery set to start with that he found easier to feed himself from.

In your example i would just give the meatballs to them as finger food, and then use a spoon for mash and the sauce.

I'd quarter a meatball for him and then give the mash as is (or spoon feed if you prefer). Most things can just be given as they are, just try to think about cutting things into shapes that he can pick up (eg, if I was dicing a pepper into something, I'd also leave a few bits as strips that my DD could hold).

Ok great, thanks. So that's what we're having for dinner but for lunch today again I'm stuck! I just boiled some macaroni shapes and cut them up and was just going to mix them with a ouch purée as I really don't know what else to do!

Is it possible for you to knock together a very simple tomato sauce? Tin of chopped tomatoes, grated carrot, mixed herbs, courgette / onion, water - cook then blend and freeze in an ice cube tray (then transfer the cubes into a freezer bag once frozen)?

Then on days when you're stuck you can quickly put together baby pasta with tomato sauce with maybe cheese and / or tuna?

Hope this has helped, good luck

What do you normally have for lunch yourself?

The macaroni I would just make a pasta sauce for , with any veggies like mushrooms for example and then both eat the same for lunch. You dont need to cut macaroni up, they can eat that as it is.

I only use a blender to make actual soups.

Some lunch idea maybe:

• Platter of random things from the fridge. Bread, cream cheese, cheese chunks, boiled egg, Raw tomatoes, some avocado. Whatever you have in.

-falafels and houmous

-Scrambled egg

-pasta with sauce, plus any veg you have in. Ie pesto with broccoli, tomato with roasted veg

• leftovers from last night dinner. ie if your doing meatballs and mash tonight, a couple of leftover meatballs you could give with some avocado or some peas or similar.

We gave whatever we were having. Meat cut up very small, everything else mashed. Always made too much and froze a portion so we'd have something when we were having curry or something like that.

Remember that food is fun until they are one.

Which means that most of her energy is coming from milk ( formula, breast or both ). The food is just for her to get used to tastes / textures and have fun playing with it.

Stop expecting her to “ eat “ , just picking at things is fine. You are expecting too mush from a 7.5mo. Mostly she will play with it on her high chair tray or rub it in her hair.

Just give her what you are having , unless it’s got a lot of salt or sugar.

So if you have vegetable curry, keep back some veg before you put in the sauce and give her the veg and rice.

Give her a meatball in pieces and some mash ( without salt ) .

If your meal is totally unsuitable then cheese, eggs, fruit, veg is all fine.

If you keep mixing everything with pouches then all her food will taste the same and be the same texture. Which defeats one of the purposes of weaning IMO.