Weening

[Hollie1234]

My baby is 5 months and really interested in food - will grab for anything anyone's eating and cries while we're eating dinner etc so I've started letting him suck on a bit of fruit once a day just to let him feel involved etc!

But I'm so nervous about the whole weening process! I'm planning to wait until 6 months to properly ween but where do I start? He's exclusively breastfed at the moment and never had a bottle and will feed often.

Is it just a case of a bit of something substantial once a day to begin with along side breastfeeding then increase??

Thanks for any advice!

[Daisy-Mae]

Hi, my baby is the same age so i am planning all this too. Do you have a local children's centre near you? Mine offer weaning talks and support from a health visitor as I'm a first time mum. They also have leaflets about how to start and what to introduce first. Perhaps you could contact them or ask your GP to point you in the right direction for support. Good luck!

[elizH]

Get him baby rice and baby porridge for while you are all sitting down having a dinner. Rusks are brilliant with a bit of milk just to give him something different. A baby will decide what they want and when they want it no matter what our timetables are

[KellyTrip]

We also started blw at 6 months with our exclusively breastfed son. We let him sit in his high chair at the table with us with a spoon and bowl to play with before 6 months so that he could see what we were doing. At 6 months we would give him things like cooked carrots and soft fruit. It gave me a heart attack at times but it worked for us.

[CVITA]

Hi there,

My baby is close to 7 months and I started early (at 5). At the beginning, he had nothing but homemade cooked mashed carrots, or pumpkins or apple or pears once a day very few spoons (he did not know how to swallow). For a couple of weeks it was just that, no salt, sugar nor oils. Milk was still his main meal.

Closer to 06 months I started to mix those bases (carrots + pumpkins and apple+pear) for about a week. Later, I added one other veggie to the carrot or the pumpkin and one cooked fruit (mango) to the apple or pear. two weeks ago I started to add chicken breasts (which he's not a fan of) to the soups and am planning on starting this weekend to prepare stews (still mashed).

My lil' one currently eats two meals a day, still no salt but with a dash of olive or coconut oil and take milks only at night. Weirdly, he loves to take the mash fruit with the soups, but that's his preferences. For the things he's not fond of, I simply decrease the amount on his next meal so that the flavour is not too intense, and gradually increase if necessary.

Try mashing carrots or pumpkins which most babies enjoy quite liquid at the beginning.

Best of luck

xxx

[roxannacar]

Different schools of thought with weaning- you can start by pureeing things and trying different fruit/veg and building up variety slowly.or you can do baby led weaning where you give the chunks like boiled carrot stick, potatoe sliced, fruit slices and thru suck and munch on them.

I used to do a bit if both.

If you have a children's centre/ sure start centre they normally offer advice or get in touch with health visitor.

I'd personally avoid rusks - bought some and tasted myself and realised they are full of sugar(only checked ingredients after I tasted!)

[claire16c]

I would look at baby led weaning. Babies don't need food til 6 months which means you don't need to faff with purée.

Gill rapley baby led weaning is a good book!

They can eat nearly everything we can which means just giving them finger food sizes pieces. So no extra cooking.

I wouldn't recommend baby rice it has no nutritional value x