What food when?

[megthemum]

Hi all, FTM to 6 month old and absolutely overwhelmed with all the weaning info! I know 10000% I’m overthinking it but what do you do when!?

We’re in the middle of week 1 and I’m giving her 1 new veg pureed every evening which I’m planning to do for 2 weeks before I introduce fruit etc. Once this two weeks is up, I’m reading so much conflicting info about when to give meat, allergens, dairy, when to move to lumps, when to combine different purées, when to move to the same dinner as us but baby-fied… I don’t even know where to start! How did you do it with your babies? Thank you x

EDIT: To note as well as the purées I am combining with some BLW, i.e. broccoli yesterday she had puree and a well boiled piece of broccoli too.

To note as well as the purées I am combining with some BLW, i.e. broccoli yesterday she had puree and a well boiled piece of broccoli too.

Honestly you are overthinking the whole process. Avoid added salt and sugar and honey but otherwise just skip the purees and give her what you are having. Have a look at Gill Rapley's books on BLW.

It's absolutely fine to give purees at 6m! And NHS recommends finger foods too as you are doing.

It's sensible to serve single foods first and monitor for a reaction as well as the allergens, appropriately spaced, before combining foods you've covered.

Look at First Steps nutrition (charity) for guidance. Annabel Karmel and Charlotte Stirling-Reed have some good resources too.

Solid starts has lots of guidance of how to serve food for BLW but you can adapt it to purees.

You can always do the free trial too if you want an actual plan.

Main thing is to cautiously introduce allergens like peanut butter(see solid starts guidance and https://www.ellaskitchen.co.uk/helpful-stuff/introducing-allergens-in-weaning?srsltid=AfmBOoqlXOuhI5rPgyNhnBvOXD7OB0JHV52L0ofOMEr_wlgvr-YhQEQD).)

Are you in UK @megthemum?

If you are the advice is that you can give most things from 6 months. The list of foods to avoid is here.

The only reason that you’d need to introduce foods slowly is if either you or your DH/DO has severe allergies.

I think you’re right though to only offer food once a day but I’d try offering it at breakfast so tgat they’ve got plenty of time to digest it before bed. If teatime suits you better that is fine too

Sorry I didn’t want up put everything in one post as it woukd be ridiculously long

i think you’re a bit confused about the whole process too. Offering one food only is very, very old fashioned advice and it’s how babies were weaned in the last century when the advice was to wean at 4 months.

Like I said, you can give them pretty much everything now.

There are some suggestions of foods suitable from 6 months on the NHS Website here.

BLW is purely when you offer finger foods and no puree or mashed foods.

If you’re offering puree/mashed alongside finger foods, this is just traditional weaning.

Neither method is better than the other in my opinion. I’ve weaned one the traditional way and one the BLW way as they’ve second was a spoon refuser and honestly, there’s not much difference although I’d did find BLW a heck of a lot easier.

Its totally up to you which way you choose but if the LO were mine, I’d start offering a bit more variety

It hasn’t included my smiling emojis sorry!

This guide from the Caroline Walker Trust is useful too as it gives suggestions of first foods to try then from 7 months sample menus and suggested portion sizes.

The NHS only recommend introducing foods one at a time of either or both parents have severe allergies, or at least they did the last time i checked

Thank you all! Will have a look at those links and the recommendations, they’re all really helpful! And yes I am in the UK 😊

I knew she could have everything apart from those lists now I was more just not able to wrap my head around how to get her to try everything when introducing one thing a day but meant to be moving on to different textures in two weeks and mixed purées by 7 months - I knew I was overthinking it 😂

I’m not surprised you were confused. I’m not sure what you’ve been reading but it sounds a bit bonkers

I think the trouble is it was different bits from different places - one website says introduce one thing a day, another says smooth texture for the first two weeks and then go lumpier, another has an example meal plan for 7 months with puréed meat veg and fruit and another says to make sure to introduce a new allergen every few days in the first month… I could not figure out how to mesh them all together! 😂

It doesn’t sound as though all of the sites that you’ve been looking at are UK based or evidence based. Fir a baby of 6 months there’s absolutely no need to stick to smooth puree or introduce allergens slowly

I’d stick to the guide I linked to from the Caroline Walker Trust or this one from the NHS