Weaning tips and advice??

[bowsbunniesandbooks]

We are going to start weaning our baby girl next week. I have a few questions.

1. I EBF, what’s the best way to start weaning??? Do I lessen the milk feeds, will my milk supply drop?
2. I was hoping to breastfeed for another year or so yet, but how can I do this when she is weaned?
3. How and when to introduce allergens?

Any other advice? Thank you 🙏🏼

You don’t need to/shouldn’t reduce milk feeds yet. Try giving her either some finger food or purées and see what she makes of them. Most babies don’t eat much at all to begin with, the first few weeks and months are just about getting them used to food coming in a form that isn’t milk, learning to bring it to their mouth, wave it around, chew it, spit it out etc. Eventually some will be swallowed! I found baby-led weaning convenient - I just gave her bits of my food that were suitable either to gum on (crusts of bread) or to eat (soft cooked fingers of vegetables, bits of penne pasta, slow cooked meat, fingers of omelette etc)

@Abracadabra12 thank you for your comment! That makes sense that it’s just to get them used to it at first, I’ll look into the baby-led weaning! Thank you ☺️ shes very curious about food, always watching us eating and trying to grab food from us😆

Yes definitely don’t drop the milk feeds yet. They won’t get enough nutrition from the food just yet as you’re only advised to start off offering food once a day at first. The aim is to get to offering it 3 times a day between 8 and 9 months.

And your supply will be very well established by now so don’t worry about that. I went back to work at 9 months and fed on wake up, on pick up and before bed and carried on like that for a long time. There’s a good article on BFing and introducing solids here

And as for allergens the advice is that unless you have severe allergies in your immediate family you just offer them from the get go.

I do have allergies, Hayfever and CMPA but not anaphylactic so I just offered allergens from the start and both DC have been fine.

There are a few, very few, foods to avoid and they’re all in this article.

And this article from the Caroline Walker Trust suggests some first foods to try

@BunnyRuddington thank you for all the information and advice, that is incredibly helpful!! 🥰

No problem. Hope you Josh enjoy this new stage. We’ve been out for lunch today where a Mum was feeding her baby some mush from a jar and the baby kept reaching out for the Roast potatoes, it took me some restraint not to go over and just give the baby a potato to try!