Weaning age and first foods

[sunshineandrainbows01]

What age were your babies when you started the weaning journey? I know the earliest some start is 4 months but personally that seems too early 😬 I'm interested to know when you started with your little one and what was their first food you tried them with? 😊

I started my ds at 5 months and tried banana baby porridge after his first morning bottle and he loved it now he's on 2 meals a day at 6 months old with a few snacks in between and still has 5 bottles a day

6 months. Mashed sweet potato was first food I think. Mashed banana, mashed avocado - you name it I mashed it.

Didn't bother with purées. Ready Brek is identical to baby porridge (money saving tip!).

DD snatched a sandwich at 23 weeks and scoffed it pretty quickly. We were hoping to get to 6 months but she sort of demonstrated that she was ready a couple of weeks before.

Have you had a read of the signs of readiness?

DD1 little smears of mashed potato at 8 weeks. DD2 peach yogurt at 9 weeks - fed to her by DD1 (aged 18 months at the time!), who was wandering around with her yogurt pot and a spoon and stopped by baby’s bouncer.
They are in their thirties now. We weaned much earlier in those days, but three to four months was probably the average then.
It is now known that early weaning helps prevent food allergies, so the NHS is in the process of changing the advice from the frankly ridiculous 6 months, back to the traditional 4 months.
As a retired doctor, I’m sure my colleagues will be delighted to see a reduction in the epidemic of peanut allergies, and a return to the days when peanut butter was almost a toddler weaning food of choice!

I've been on MN for 17 years. I wish I had a pound for every time somebody has said that they're about to reduce the weaning age advice.

Started mine at 4 months and glad I did. He loved his purées

Four months - started on milky baby rice , then watery pureed carrot , apple ,pear , cauliflower ,parsnip , mashed banana , sieved soft fruits , just anything I could buy at the market to get them used to the tastes of fresh foods .

6 months.

They are what we did by mix of spoon and finger good. No purées. No baby food.

4 months with puréed fruit and veg. I hadn’t intended to wean so early but she started to reject her bottles.

I then added in yoghurt, cheese, meats, eggs, peanut butter and moved onto puréed meals from Ella’s kitchen as they have a huge variety of organic ingredients in each meal, and I am keen to vary her diet as much as poss to improve her gut health.

By 6 months there is nothing she hasn’t tried, and she is a fantastically keen eater! I can’t spoon it in fast enough! She still has three bottles a day too, plus I mix 3oz of formula into her solids. She will also grab finger food and bite it and chew it just fine as a supplement, but this isn’t her main diet.

Have fun! I absolutely love feeding my LO, it’s such a pleasure seeing her enjoy so much variety 😊

Also, be wary of heavy metal exposure from too much rice, cereal and grains:

https://solidstarts.com/foods/rice/#:~:text=When%20can%20babies%20eat%20rice,around%206%20months%20of%20age.

Research on giving peanut butter at 4 months:

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/17/give-peanut-foods-babies-four-months-cut-allergy-risk

5 months but only on the advice of our doctor (bad reflux, milk rejection had started and a drop in percentiles). He stopped the reflux and massively cheered up!
We started with purée - all the veg, then fruit. At 6 months we introduced yoghurt, cheese, meat and finger foods.

Six months. We followed the How to Wean Your Baby book by Charlotte Stirling Reed - it is excellent and goes into enough depth without being overwhelming while sleep deprived etc. She suggests a mix of finger food and mashes but she explains why it is important to offer a variety of textures quite early. I have since bought the toddler version.

6 months both times. First time we started on porridge and fruit or veg purees. He never really liked them though so moved on to finger food by about 8 months. Second time we did baby led weaning (fancy name for finger food), she mainly just had a go at whatever me or the toddler were eating or toast fingers if what we were having wasn't appropriate.

Mine was 6 months old. We started with veggies.

Eight months.. my daughter was breast fed and put on very healthy weight..l tried at 6 months but she wasn't interested...First food l always mixed with breast milk.. cauliflower/ banana etc.
She was breast fed for two years.

5 months with both of mine. Eldest was baby porridge. Youngest got ready brek.

5.5 months with both. DD1 started on purées and quickly moved to just normal food. DD2 skipped purées and started on toast, pasta, etc. and very soon whatever we were eating. Both took to it very quickly and ate everything offered!

Oh and both had peanut butter from the get-go. It's such a good first food to put on toast or fruit.

Six months for both.

Eldest had streamed veg and then sweet potato puree. Quickly preferred finger foods so largely had what we were having. Lots of healthy, fresh cooked food.

Youngest was weaned the week my dad died and so was weaned on bits of toast and apple thrown her way. Never even tried her on a puree.

Both ate brilliantly as babies and toddlers and are currently going through the delightful phase of refusing anything that isn't beige.

The only advice I have is to make sure to give the common allergens and to keep giving them (provided no issue obviously!).

5.5 months, he had a chicken drumstick with the skin and pin bone removed, peanut butter on banana, sweet potato sticks.

6 months. Because that was the guidance 25 years ago.

4 months (as recommended at the time). Interesting to read that the advice is going back this way.

First foods both times were purées. The very first would have been mashed banana. Once they were happy with that, I started adding other fruits such pear, stewed apple or kiwi. I also gave them vegetable purées involving various combinations of carrots, swede, sweet potato, potato, broccoli, spinach and peas.

At six months I introduced chicken, fish, cheese and eggs as well as finger foods such raw carrots, cucumber and toast 'soldiers'.