weaning

Ro is 5 months old and I was wondering when is the right time to wean. Everyone says 6 months, but this little guy would eat a chicken bone if I gave him a chance. He looked hungry and showed signs of grabbing food off my plate or sticking his fingers into my yogurt pot or wanting to drink more milk.

The funny thing is that my sister and family came to visit in July and it was during the Olympics and we were out and about frequently. I didn’t have time to blitz veggies and freeze and try every vegetable or fruit under the sun to check if he was allergic. I went to Boots, bought a couple of Ella’s kitchen sachets and popped them in my bag. He loved them and lapped them up!

Turns out, he really liked them because the vegetable mixture had more of the apple part and hence he liked the sweet food. Clever trick you shrewd food companies! making the food sweeter than usual and if you check the ingredients, there is always a higher percentage of apple in the green beans and apple.

So, I panicked and thought Ro was only into sweet food. I then made only, green bean mush, only broccoli mush and so on. Then just went ahead and combined it. I didn’t bother waiting 1 week per food, but then the poor guy would be 8 months and trying every vegetable or fruit and checking if he was allergic. Ridiculous!

I read a lot of books on baby-led weaning and thought it would be a good idea to test this out. Ro was really good at holding things and he loved the idea that he could hold something and bring it up to his mouth and then taste/ eat it. Seemed to improve his hand eye co-ordination and gave him a chance to feel the texture in-between his chubby little fingers.

I highly recommend baby-led weaning BUT, not on it’s own. Your kid needs the nourishment of food and that’s why you should spoon feed them as well. If you just give them a carrot stick to hold they might think all foods have one taste. Do you know what I mean? making food you eat and blitzing it, will give them more flavours to try. I took so many videos of him tasting bananas and also whacking the banana against the table which was hilarious. Naughty banana!

His first taste was a grape. I cut it in half and put it up to his mouth and he licked and slurped that little grape. Very cute.

I’ll add some nice combos in another post – called ‘weaning recipes’.

I was really adamant that Ro was going to eat the same food as this.
I do not have the patience to cook separate food or tolerate him being older and me making only bland pasta for him.

Accessories for weaning: I thought oh how exciting! I am going to look at jojomamanbebe.com and see what cool nifty gadgets I can buy.

After, browsing and looking at amazon, I bought the following:

spoons from Morrisons – it was so silly to buy those spoons which detect if the food is hot. I wouldn’t trust it and a simple trick you can do is just put the food on your top lip before you give it to your baby and you can easily tell if if it is hot or not. The spoons were cheap and cheerful and did the job. Always keep a spoon in your nappy bag. You never know when you need a clean spoon. I was sterilising his spoons until he was over 6 months old. So, I would keep the spoon in a zip lock bag.

bowls – vital baby containers. My sis-in-law used Avent breast milk storage containers. These are great! and I bought them too. The lids twist on and off and you can pop it in the microwave and most importantly it doesn’t leak.

Feeding chairs – you get so many fancy ones and really expensive ones.
I wanted Ro to sit at the table with us and be part of the dinner table not sitting next to the table and having his own tray but rather eating off the same table as us.
In the house we were living in the dining room was not massive and buying a feeding chair was another piece of furniture. We went to Wagamamas restaurant and they had the Phil and Teds lobster feeding chair. I really liked the idea how it clipped onto the table and Ro was sitting with us and in on the action.
My sis in law in South Africa was coincidently also looking at feeding chairs and pointed out the Inglesina Fast chair. I bought this off eBay and paid under £70. It’s fully machine washable and handy to take to a restaurant (as some restaurants have really manky feeding chairs). Sturdy and padded, so it’s comfortable. My sis in law landed up buying 2 of them! and another friend also bought one.
Great value for money and its not another item of furniture that you stick in a corner.