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Weaning

Find weaning advice from other Mumsnetters on our Weaning forum. Use our child development calendar for more information.

No idea what I’m doing!!

4 replies

Newbiemum76 · 12/12/2022 17:17

My DS turned 6 months old this month, we’ve been weaning for nearly 2 weeks - he has a mixture of mashed/puréed and fingers foods.

At the moment he only has one ‘meal’ a day, this is usually around lunchtime and has some mashed/puréed veggies and 1 piece of finger food. For example today he had mashed carrots and a melty carrot stick to hold.

Is this enough? Should I be introducing another meal? If so what time? I honestly have no idea what to do and I don’t really know what to feed him! Me and my partner don’t usually eat till 7.30ish when he’s back from work and I don’t want DS eating that late.

Any tips on what to give him as well would be great! He’s not a massive fan of veggies but don’t want to introduce sugary/sweeter things yet.

OP posts:
user2391 · 12/12/2022 17:44

You can't really go wrong tbh. If he's enjoying what you are giving, introduce another meal at breakfast or tea. Some babies take to it almost straight away, some aren't really interested until they are a bit older. Just keep offering a variety of tastes and textures. Some ideas;
Cooked veg in sticks
Toast
Hummus & pitta
Omelette cut into strips
Porridge
Pasta bolognaise

Plenty of baby cookbooks in the library if you want to look up recipes.

Tasha80 · 12/12/2022 21:47

My DS is 8 months so we're a little bit ahead of you.
I did 1 meal a day for around 2 weeks by doing single veg purees & a finger food option - broccoli, cauliflower, avocado etc.
I started with dinner because it meant I had plenty of time to prepare his meal before hand but he has his dinner at 4:30/5pm and I eat dinner later with my DH at 7:30pm after DS has gone to bed.
After 2 weeks he seemed to have understood that food was meant to go in his mouth and be swallowed so then I added breakfast (which I always eat with him) and then 2 weeks later I added lunch.

There's no rush though - I think the NHS suggest that by the end of 9 months they should be eating 3 meals a day so go at your baby's pace.

I found the advice to just involve your baby in your own 3 meals really unhelpful because a baby's day is much shorter than an adults so I'm not ready for lunch & dinner when he's hungry for them.

If I'm not eating a meal at the same time as DS I prepare a little bit extra and eat some with him to model it for him.

I find making freshly made food a bit stressful (he's very clingy at the moment so cooking around him is not possible) so once we got through the initial puree stage I just batch cook some meals, chuck them in the freezer and every evening I take out some bits to defrost for his lunch & dinner the next day and work out what finger food to serve with it.
Hopefully when he gets a little bit older he'll chill out a bit and I can put him down long enough to make some fresh meals for him.

PritiPatelsMaker · 14/12/2022 06:59

Personally I'd leave introducing Dinner until later. The NHS only recommend moving to 3 meals a day between 8 and 9 months, at babies cues. This is to stop them dropping milk feeds too quickly.

Once I was offering 3 meals a day I ate my Dinner with the DC and DH had his warmed up when he got home. He didn't work regular hours though so it was easier for me to do it that way.

Cormoran · 14/12/2022 07:08

Melty puffs are not food, there are a baby version of Cheetos, an extruded snack made of corn flour and oil. Given the absence of salt, evaporated veggies powder are added to give saltiness from the minerals and putting a big picture of said vegetable on packet whereas actual content is a few%

Most industrial finger food labeled as "great for coordination" is pure junk which tastes like nothing in real life and is engineered to fit a baby's taste, so if your baby food are baby junk food such a puffs, baby crisps, baby rusk, baby rice cakes, ..... you are just putting your DS in the fast lane to develop a strong taste preference for ultra processed food.

Think of the food you want your son to grow up eating and focus on that. Finger food was invented for people standing up at parties and needing to be able to eat without cutlery, with one hand holding the plate, so most finger food have always been party food.

As a non-brit, I find this whole spoon vs finger very puzzling. Especially the (Marketing) claims that finger food are needed for development. French kids are not known to have particular development delays with hand coordination (I would also argue, the cursive we learn at school is ten fold harder than the one taught in UK schools). Paediatricians tell us to use spoons for food a spoon is used for (soups, mash, stew, soupy risottos) , a baby fork for a soft version of the food we use a fork for, and fingers, you get if, for food you eat with your fingers, such a blueberries, the hard end of a baguette, ... French kids are also known to eat whatever they are given and open to new foods.

Focus on the quality of the food, not the way it reaches the mouth . Understand how deglutition and salivation works to lubricate the food, think wider with more soups to which later you can add small bits, like baby pasta, or minuscule pieces of meat, make sure to include lentils and other pulses, dhals and the Italian minestrone which at first you blend in a very liquidy form, but then week after week, you introduce hall liquid half dense.

Don't overload the spoon until mastication is well mastered. Put just a tiny amount on it. Imagine if someone gave you a full spoon of mash which you have to swallow without chewing and releasing saliva. It would get stuck . A way to stimulate chewing is to put a very small amount on tongue. I really can't understand how such a crucial development phase is left unguided by the NHS, and mothers have to rely on social media or some trust (and when you see the food these suggest, no wonder, the amount of fussy kids UK has. Tasteless)

You have this amazing taste window opportunity in which kids are more prone to accept non sweet tasting food, embrace it. Roast a variety of vegetables in the oven, use garlic, onion, rosemary to flavour it. Then blend it or use the back of a fork to make it more or less mushy. Cook some rice, with a fistful of lentils in an homemade broth, and serve it with some liquid left, a small bit of butter or extravirgin olive oil. Bonus if you add some real Italian parmesan.

Don't waste this window on baby junk, he will get plenty of it in no time.

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