[Closed] STW Parents - weaning/first meals

Steamed and pureed fruit and veg, cereals in slop form, one type at a time for a few days and just a few mouthfuls.

We started on Baby Rice, might be hard if yours is breast feeding?

Ours slept much better on solids, keep 'em full for longer 😉

Make my own baby food now - lots of veggies (spuds, broccoli, sweet potato, peas, carrots) mashed up with fish, chicken or corned beef - she loves it more than packet stuff.

Are you doing baby-led weaning?

Baby led weaning is the goal, yes.

Are you doing baby-led weaning?

Financially I'm also glad I've only shelled out for a bloody Ellas Kitchen pouch twice in his lifetime, both when desperate at an airport. First time he vomited it up on the road to Morzine an hour later, the second time he refused to eat it and told me he didn't like it.

This is a great book If you don't have one. Lots of info about baby-led weaning and loads of easy meals to make.
I'm no expert but we've just been through it with our first.. Started at 6 months. She is now 15 months. Still gets a bit of breast on a night but pretty much eats what we do (obviously our meals are made with her in mind). It's amazing what she puts away!
Each to their own but it so nice to see when lots of people just feed them jars of mushed up food.
If there's anything specific you want to know I might be able to help (well, I'll ask the wife!) 🙂
[IMG] [/IMG]

we gave him what we ate, minus the chills or the wholemeal stuff.

Still breastfed at 15mo. Well done your wife! My wife couldn't with our first, she never got the hang of it, the second got banned once teeth appeared and decided nipple might taste nicer if chewed.

Still breastfed at 15mo. Well done your wife! My wife couldn't with our first, she never got the hang of it, the second got banned once teeth appeared and decided nipple might taste nicer if chewed.

Thanks. She appreciated that little compliment. Was hard work at the start but she stuck with it.
Save us a fortune in formula and I got a lot more kip 🙂

She'll be starting over again soon as we just had a 12 week scan today 🙂

What I ate but less spicy
I do eat pretty well though so it was not that hard

They will stop when they are full or you will stop when they puke on themselves 😉

There's a big differance between baby led weaning and letting nipper have the same foods as you but with a bit of help.

baby led weaning is seen as some as a 'holy grail' and, according to my dietition friend (who did do baby led weaning for her son) can often (her words) lead to an under fed and consequently malunitrioned baby. There's some utter shite spouted about it as well, such as baby won't ever learn to feed them selves, which clearly is total bollocks.

I'm not sure what the real benifits are to be honest, I filed it under 'new age hippy shite' and assumed, as my kids were incapapable of picking / killing, cleaning, prepping and cooking thier meals, that maybe a bit of help getting them into thier mouths wouldn't somehow set back thier development too far!

In answer to the op, I mixed some baby rice with milk, added some frut (bananas I think to start) then went on from there. Some batches of food cooked then frozen in ice cube trays ready for portion sized defrost and serve and I'd do things like a large batch of carrots so i could do mis and match dinners.
Oldest is now 4 and eats everything, younest is nearly 2 and tucks into almost everything including curry, chilli, fish, all meats most veg the odd home made pizza and goes crazy for a bit of crackling! He's just started to raid the fridge for food between meals so I feel like he's doing ok - I bet I get sick of than in the next 18 years!

Ours started on soft stuff (orange coloured for preference) then by about 9 months meat added, and now at 11 months she's into curries. Still has formula and boobs too, the little guts

Thanks for the cook book Stox, I'll see if it is at our local library. My hope is that he starts off slowly on mashed food that we make him and this reduces his night time feeds so he & mum sleep through the night. Progressing on in couple of months to eating along with us.

We started out daughter on solids at 4.5-5 months, just baby rice and puréed fruit to start. The night feeds stopped at 6-7 months. She's now 9 months and is on 3 solid meals and 3 formula bottles. The meals are porridge with fruit then basically mashed versions of what we eat mince & Tatties, stew, fish, roast chicken etc all with sweet potato, carrots, peas, lentils etc. no recipe books for us just use the web. We have used the pouches from Ella's kitchen and ALDIs own and found them to be very handy on the odd occasion - we got loads in the bargain section of tesco recently at 50% off.

We made up food in batches and froze it into ice cube trays. This meant we could build up bags of different cubes and decide which ones to serve up and when as baby feeding times do not always coincide with family times. This allowed us to have it always a 5 minute reheat away.

Howsyourdad +1 .

Never puréed anything and never bought baby food. Have to use a bit of common sense re spices and size of food (choking) etc. Never understood why one would pay for baby food jars when you have a kitchen full of suitable food already..

For the sake of your sanity just give them what you eat and don't give in (meal times are a notorious time for weaning them into the idea of power struggles according to child psychologists) my wife was all too quick to cave in and feed them pots of sickly process mush if I took my eye off the ball and I now have two fussy little sods and I can't stand it

Baby led weaning is the goal, yes.

Not sure what you mean. The key word here is "led" ie. they need to do it themselves from the beginning, you don't want to be starting out force feeding him and then try switching later.

To be clear,

an Annabel Karmel meal

and

We couldn't work out when to stop feeding him

are the absolute polar opposite of baby led weaning.

I'm a massive sceptic of most hippy bollocks but would 100% recommend baby led weaning. Having been through through the process, spoon feeding a child expensive grey mush seems about as sensible as employing a wet nurse.

We started out at about four and a half months with our little chap because he was taking an interest in our food etc. He started off with baby rice and loved it despite it looking and tasting a bot grim.

The next step was boiled fruit which also went down pretty well (he still loves fruit) before moving on to proper little meals from the Anabel Karmel book. Some of these have been a hit, other things not so much. My other half cooks batches up and freezes them.

We're also letting him have some of our dinners were possible to make life easier.

He also has finger foods which he loves...even if sometimes it is just playing with it.

Here it is, your Friday afternoon middle class one-upmanship thread

Hey dirtyrider, probably misinterpreting your post - but it seems very derogatory to working class what your suggesting. You saying its a middle class thing to be interested in feeding you child healthily?

Timmys, we were given the pouch of food by a very good friend as she'd also given us the cook book by the same. Our baby has been showing increasing interest in our food so we thought we'd try the pouch as it was quick and easy (we weren't going to eat till much later) to see if he really was ready to eat. The baby led weaning now starts as he clearly loves it!

mj27 - Member

We made up food in batches and froze it into ice cube trays. This meant we could build up bags of different cubes and decide which ones to serve up and when as baby feeding times do not always coincide with family times. This allowed us to have it always a 5 minute reheat away.

This, it's much easier - ours is a bit too big for ice cube sized portions now so I chuck a few table spoons worth in a freezer bags.

I'm not anti shop bought baby food, but I enjoy cooking and enjoy the fact I made it, she also prefers my food to the jars which makes me positively beam whenever I care to think about it. We still buy jars now and again - and some of the snacks and deserts she likes, but ours is intolerant to dairy so choice is limited.

We did baby led weaning. It was messy but worth it. He's just gone three now and will eat anything that's put in front of him.

we sort of did baby led weaning finger foods etc and also used the pouches as emergency backup it seems to work was fun for the child who now eats a wide range reasonably enthusiastically . If you have a floor or floor covering you value get a sheet of polythene or a washable table cloth to go under the chair and table.

Baby led weaning we made a lot of stuff in the book above but she also just had a portion of what we ate. This is with our first who is now 4 and in the 95% centile for height. Not exactly malnourished! She is a very unfussy eater, unlike her non-baby led weaned cousins who are very, very picky.

Doing the same again with our 8 month old. Amazed again at how quickly they can pick it up. He is certainly shovelling it in given the amount that comes out of the other end.