What to expect??

[NoobieDoobie11]

Hi,

I'm 2 weeks into weaning my son and feeling 100% defeated already!

Ive been following the ‘how to wean my baby’ book so offering mostly veg and he won’t even open his mouth for most of it. I’m lucky if he manages a teaspoon for the entire meal.

does anyone have advice or is that pretty normal to start with? How long does it take for them to actually accept food/willingly open their mouths?

I feel like timing is so tricky too - making sure they aren’t too hungry or too tired - I never feel like it’s the right time.

any help would be much appreciated :)

We were about a week or so in before she suddenly opened mouth, swallowed something and light dawned so she realised what to do.
Started a couple of days before six months. By 7 months she was having 3 “meals” a day, although they were small. Just an ice cube size or two initially.
If he’s six months then you need to include all the food groups, not just veg.
https://www.nhs.uk/start-for-life/baby/weaning/
It also worked well to offer something she could hold herself (eg some broccoli or a toast finger) and something on a spoon for each meal.

When mine were little we followed the mantra Food Before One Is Just For Fun, try not to stress about it, it'll get worse before it get's better!

It's the one area they've got some control over, so don't get into it with them, offer it, don't put any heat around it, they will sense if you're tense and it becomes a game. It'll all turn out in the end, my brother didn't didn't eat much other than cheddar cheese til he was six, and he's turned out to be an excellent adult.

I found it easiest to start with breakfast as you’re nearly always at home and it’s easy to time between the first milk feed and the first nap. Also breakfast food is super easy! Toast cut into fingers. Natural yoghurt with a blob of fruit puree. Ready brek in the microwave. Mashed banana. Mashed avocado. Etc. etc. If they don’t eat much then who cares because you haven’t put much too much effort into it and even just touching and playing with the food is part of the learning process. Then once we added in other meals it was mostly just whatever we were having. They can’t have honey, whole nuts and you need to watch the salt content but presuming baby is 6MO then they can have all the food groups, not just pureed veg.