Weening at 6 months when in full-time child care - advice please?

[flamingnora]

DD will be 6 months (to the day) when she starts nursery full time when I return to work. I don't want to ween her before then but nor do I want her first experience of food to be from the nursery. I'm going to the nursery with her to settle her in two weeks before her start date & will discuss this with them then but would love to get others opinions - particularly any mums who have been through something similar themselves!

What hours will she be there?
There is nothing to say what time of day she has her first tastes of food.
You could give her some toast at breakfast time and some veg at dinner and let her just have milk at nursery?
Are you going to do BLW?
Also I'm assuming she will be with you at weekends? Why not start her on the weekend?

My son has been at nursery 3 days each week since he was 20 weeks (he's 8mo tomorrow) and the nursery have been great with weaning. I have told them what he can and can't have and when, e.g. protein at lunch, carb based for tea etc... and it's worked well so far.

Generally as I've been introducing different foods into his diet I have started off at the weekend and then told the nursery what we've done on the Monday.

DS is now on 3 meals at nursery (fruit mid morning, lunch and tea), plus 3 milk feeds: first thing, a short FF mid afternoon and then another feed at home before bed.

I've asked the nursery to make sure he finger feeds/BLWs his meals as far as possible and he has never refused food and we've yet to discover something he won't eat.

All of the nurserys we visited were happy to help with weaning and take their lead from me.

I was nervous too but it's working out well for us so far so I hope it will work well for you too

Ah thanks! Would like to do BLW.
She'll be in nursery 8am - 6pm most days. I think I'll try to have her exlusively on milk week 1 and then try to introduces some lunchtime protein at home at the weekend. Feels quite stressful but that's probably quite bound up with my feelings about leaving her at nursery in the first place!

DS was at nursery ft when he was 6 months (started at 4.5 months). I started at the weekend with breakfast, so he had a week of doing that with me, and then dinner at home, and then started having lunch and tea with them. They were quite happy to do BLW once I explained it, but I was also happy for them to help him with a spoon if they were having soup or something tricky.

When you're working its much easier to just chuck them some toast whilst you are getting dressed than spooning stuff in !

we did blw with nursery no problem. they understood it as she's not been weaned at 4 months so isn't having purees. she's straight to toddler food cos she's 6 months now. if it was soup they'd dip bread in soup and give her that. or they'd make her a sandwich. blw is easier for them when they've got a dozen mouths to spoon into.

can i do a quick hijack and ask waspie where did you get your info from re when to give carbs, when protein etc? i am really struggling with weaning i feel, and not really sure what dd should be getting - can't find a guide to that kind of stuff anywhere! thanks!

Hello Caz, I have no scientific basis whatsoever I'm afraid. It was just that by tea time DS was starting to get grouchy and rather more impatient and less tolerant of chewing (or rather gumming) pieces of meat for 10 minutes than he was of doing it at lunchtime when he was full of beans. I also went by received wisdom (i.e. non scientific!) that having ones main meal at lunchtime was better for us because we have longer to digest it before sleep.
So I decided that lunchtime for DS would be his meat, vegetables, proper pudding type meal and his tea time meal would be rather more along the lines of sandwiches/baked potato, green veges, dairy and fruit.

My first DD was in nursery full time when we started weaning her at 6 months. It worked out fine, started solids at weekends, and then nursery continued over the week.
Maybe you can get a copy of the menu from the nursery and see how you can incorporate that into your weaning plans (my nursery have a 4 week repeating menu that we get given a copy of)?
Please dont feel guilty about using a nursery, your DD will be fine.