Weaning

Health vistors now advise for you to wait 6 months to wean and to follow 'baby led weaning' but as all babies are not the same and because for some, the idea of handing your baby solid food is quite daunting, I thought I would share our weaning experience so far.



As Layla has reflux my OH thought weaning could solve all of our problems so was keen to begin the weaning using puree at 4 months. I wasn't. After lots of reading and talking to health visitors and other mums I really wanted to exclusively do baby led weaning especially after the option to breast feed was taken out of my hands. I didn't want to not give my child the 'best' option again. We went back and forth on this and I asked for opinion after opinion but nobody could give me an answer as to whether or not the weaning was going to help her reflux so at 5 1/2 months I threw in the towel and made up my first batch of homemade puree.




She wasn't a lover of food at first and it took her a while to actually swallow any food but we got there. She was having a puree 'meal' a day and I went down the full traditional weaning route and did 3 days of each new food getting her used to the flavours.



6 months came and I was so excited to try her with her first lot of finger food. Layla however was not impressed and proceeded to throw it all on the floor much preferring the puree food that I could spoon feed her.



I persevered though and now at 8 months she eats a great combination of puree and finger foods so much so she has completely gone off her milk feeds in the day!




Now that she is eating the new question is what should we feed her everyday?
Breakfast is usually porridge with fruit and the occasional crumpet or slice of toast, lunch a sandwich or wrap but tea time for me is always the trickiest. It's not just what to feed her for tea but also when as we still want her to be hungry for her bedtime bottle. I have taken to doing a combination of pouches or giving her our last nights tea depending on the time/night in question.




It's still a working progress and I think it will take us a long while to get it fully working for us but I can honestly say I look forward to meal times with Layla however messy it may be.


2 comments:

  1. It's impressive you've been able to get Layla only on daytime solid food already! My 8-month-old seems to have an insatiable appetite for both solid food and milk. She will eat every bit of food we give her and still wants to be on my boob throughout the day. I don't mind, she's still so young, I just wonder when solid food will be her only food, as it is with Layla now.

    My baby also spit up all the time. She was a fountain! Forget spit cloths; we would keep towels around everywhere. No one ever suggested weaning to us for that reason. Only in the past few weeks has she been mostly spit-up free, with just a little or none at all every day. It's interesting that you were told to wean her early and we were told to just deal with it, it's normal.

    We did baby-led weaning before even knowing it was a thing to do. She started grabbing food off our plates at around 5.5 months and hasn't stopped since. We never bothered with baby food or purees, never needed them. She eats just about everything. And yet is still small for her age - go figure!

    Is the tea hot? I haven't dared try to give her hot liquids yet. I don't know how hot is too hot or when it's cooled down enough. That's something for us to try in the future.

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  2. Thank you for taking the time to comment. Although I'm happy she eats solid food we are being referred to a dietician about the lack of milk so its great your little one was having food and milk.

    Did your baby have reflux? To be honest weaning early, as it had to be puree, just resulted in different coloured sick! Even now watermelon etc comes back up but it's nowhere near as bad as when she was on an exclusive milk diet but this could also be her medication.

    Wow grabbing food off your plate just goes to show they tell you when they are ready!

    I meant tea as in dinner or supper depending on what part of the country you are from I to haven't tried her with hot drinks yet.

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