Friday 11 February 2011

The Wonder of Weaning

Finley is coming up to 7 months old as per the current guidelines we tried to hold off weaning him till 6 months old. Finley however had other ideas and at about 5 and a half months old he started to refuse his milk and started to waking up more during the night. The classic signs of a baby wanting to wean is waking up more during the night, feeding more, showing an interest in your food and grabbing food from your plate among other signs. None of the books I read said that they may go off milk as a sign of weaning but this was the case with Finley.  We started on the baby rice for his evening meal and he couldn't get enough of it!
Finley's Christmas eve baby rice!
Then we moved on to mixing pureed veg with the rice and so on. We are currently on 3 meals a day with milk also and are trying to introduce new foods regularly. At the moment we are starting him on dairy such as cheese (which he doesn't like) and yogurt (again which he doesn't like lol).  It can take a baby a few times of trying something to actually like it so hang on in there if it gets regurgitated on first trials.

Now they do push on you the idea of 'baby led weaning' (blw) in that at 6 months a baby can eat finger foods instead of having to puree everything as they say baby is able to chew and digest foods at this age so we can avoid the pureed stage all together.  I decided to go down the traditional puree route after a scary moment when Finley choked on a small lump of carrot in his puree which hadn't been mixed enough. Having to pull a choking baby out of the highchair and being sprayed with mushed up carrot while patting baby on the back is not fun and scared the life out of me. I think I would be bald with worry had I gone down the BLW route and giving him solids at every meal! eek! BUT I do know mums who have done BLW and all as been going well so really the choice is up to mummy as to what suits her and bubba best.

One final tip is plastic bids - after having all my lovely baby Cath Kidston kids bibs stained by pureed banana and carrot I learnt the hard way.  Plastic bibs can be wiped clean and do not stain nearly as much as the fabric bibs as long as the food isn't left on them for too long.

There will be more posts to come on weaning I'm sure as we moved onto stage 2 known as 'The Lumpy bits' dun dun duuuuun!

Happy Weaning!

H xx

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