Immediate disclaimer because the parenting world is mad, I am not a healthcare professional, nutritional expert or a weaning expert – I’m just a mum who has managed to get her child to eat a pretty good diet and I know I found it hard to find helpful tips during the weaning journey especially early on! We did a mixture of baby led weaning and purées!
How we began weaning!
Weaning should begin at six months, it used to be four, your parents will say they did it at four and packets say from 4m+ on, but the NHS say it should be 6 unless advised. There’s loads of reasons for this and it’s well worth looking into why you should wait until 6! That’s what we did and Romilly never had any problems with choking or any immediate problems with food/digestion etc.
Oh and before we get into it, no weaning does not make your baby sleep better through the night, it’s the same myth that formula makes babies sleep better – it really doesn’t!!
First Tastes
We chose lunch as our first meal to try weaning as it was the best time of day and generally when she was happiest. We begun with puréed vegetables such as broccoli, peas, potato, sweet potato, carrot spinach etc. These are quite savoury in taste so are great for getting used to that taste as opposed to sweet first. After a week or two of trying these vegetables, we moved onto fruits puréed. During this time once we felt confident enough, we would offer a stick of veg to go alongside the purée for Romilly to play with, taste, touch. Carrots and broccoli were obviously easiest for this. You basically nuke (boil) the veg so it’s so soft you can squish it with your index finger. This was a good way to expose her to food not just a bowl of mush.
Tips: We just used a mini chopper or a wand mixer for soups to puree. You can buy baby puree cookers and mixers but they are just a gimmick for their purpose and you probably would only use them for a month or two anyway.
Moving onto Baby Led/’Proper’ Food!
Once we ticked all the vegetables off in puree form, we looked at increasing the texture to something thicker/lumpier. Then we introduced well cooked, soft items such as pastry, meats, pancakes, yoghurt, cheese etc. We would offer a mix of sweet/savoury at meals. It would seem a bit unusual but it was a good way for her to not get sucked into just sweet offering.
Once lunches were pretty much sorted, we added in breakfast. This felt like a big deal because this meal was the one that meant we started to drop milk feeds and required more planning in terms of timing between feed and food/naps. Our 10am feed was the first to go I think but for the first few weeks it was a minefield and some days you would just have to do milk as well. It really was hit and miss for a while whether she would want anything, whether she would then drink her milk, getting the timing right but I found just sticking with the routine and ‘trying’ to be somewhat calm helped. It is easy to feel stressed about getting it right but there are so many reasons why they choose not to eat their food some days and we still have those days now at 16 months. The amount of meals you go to a great effort for, for them to reject is heartbreaking but they will eat it one day!
Tips: We used the 100 foods before 1 chart as a guide only, to help us offer a good variety and help us understand what Romilly had already been weaned onto. You start to forget what foods are out there. Whilst she never ticked all of these off our of preference to our lifestyle/meals, it was a great guide to refer too!
I think it took around two months until we were definitely doing two meals. This was a good mix of breakfast/lunch or breakfast/dinner. It would be a mix due to lifestyle, being out and about, illness etc. Cucumber sticks will be your go to for a good while! The fleshy bit especially!
Whilst this is more of a how to, I do think it’s about following your baby’s lead with adding more meals. We didn’t rush it and tried to follow her lead, once she ate more at lunch, we added breakfast and so on. You may find it takes a while to get used to different meals but Romilly loved trying new foods all the time. We only have just added consistent snack times into our days from 12 months as we eased off the milk feeds and moved onto solids being our main source of food. This was a tricky time because every child is so different and we got stuck on the 3pm cows milk feed between lunch and dinner even with a snack for a while but after a few weeks it did fade out. We tried to offer a meal about an hour or so after a milk feed.
I found adding dinner in the easiest because we pretty much gave her whatever we had. The main considerations are to avoid adding salt to veg when cooking, to avoid too much oil/heavy foods and some foods end up a lot softer than you may previously have liked. If you deconstruct most meals even fajitas, babies can have most of it, just cut theirs up or section some away if you’re adding too many spices or it’s too hard for them to chew/suck.
Two books you have to buy:
The BEST guides for recipes if you’re stuck with where to begin are What Mummy Makes by Rebecca Wilson. This is the bible of weaning and whilst she advocates a more BLW approach, its a great place to go when you’re stuck on meals you can all enjoy as a family that are baby friendly. We definitely utilised this after a few months when Romilly was comfortable with purees. We still use it to this day and will continue to do so, it’s healthy, tastes great and super easy to follow too!
Second on my list is the Holly Willoughby Truly Scrumptious Baby. Whilst I wouldn’t say I use this much now, because we began with puree and stuck with that for a good few weeks, it was the only book I read that actually helped me make puree properly. If you’re making it from scratch yourself, it can be hard to get the quantity of veg vs water right (and not make a stupidly large amount). It sounds so easy right but it took me a while to get it to a suitable texture and Holly’s book was super useful for explaining this as well as many other routines, what to expect and of course other recipes.
Tips:
Always have a good variety of fruit in the house. Most of our meals will have fruit with them, especially breakfast and snack time. Bananas are always a winner and cheap but we try to buy seasonally where we can. In the early days Romilly absolutely loved nectarines when they were in season, she would get through a couple a day! She now would choose fruit over cake although it’s slowly changing!
SLOW COOKERS ARE YOUR FRIEND. I definitely think the best meals are in the slow cooker and I find Romilly eats more when it’s a full flavour meal. This is so cliche so I won’t bang on about it but we never had one before Romilly and I’m glad we have one now.
A meal doesn’t have to be a whole song and dance. There are more nights than not where Romilly may have grated cheese, mixed vegetables, some left over meat and maybe some beans. It’s all healthy and it’s food! Just roll with it!
Yoghurts are your best friend. Don’t know what it is but babies absolutely LOVE yoghurts. Always have some in!
Don’t be afraid to use pouches in the early days and beyond. Most of the brands are 100% whole foods, no nasties, organic vegetables and fruits. Even the meal based options aren’t as bad as the days of our parents so don’t be afraid to use them. It can save time, stress and crying babies when you’ve had a long day, tiring night or just out of inspiration! We always have some in the cupboard even now!
Allergies
This is a WHOLE different subject and I am not an expert in life threatening allergies but Romilly had contact rash from tomatoes for a good six months and on one occasion turned her face completely red. We have also only recently found out that she is allergic to egg white. That took a long process of elimination and testing as it was affecting her eczema. I would suggest introducing allergens carefully (lots of the books explain this better) and watch videos and look up information on reactions so you know what to watch for. Contact rash and eczema flares were our main signs.
I’m going to create another blog post about must-have equipment for weaning as I think this post is long enough but these are just some of my tips for cracking the weaning journey. There will be days that your meal is completely wasted or even thrown up! Then they turn one and suddenly know their own mind anyway and it’s a whole new battle!
I actually loved the weaning journey because I felt like I was in control of providing great nutritious food for our baby! If you have any questions, do not hesitate to message me on Instagram or below!