Are you about to start weaning? Are you battling through the quagmire of YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook groups to decide what’s right for you?
If you are, I feel your pain. We started weaning in July last year and I tried my best to get it just right.
So I’ve written a little blog about how it went for us, the research we did and my favorites, my regrets, and what I would do differently if I were to do it all over again.
To start, I just want to say that the best thing I found out is that every baby and family do things completely differently which is brilliant. Trusting your gut is a powerful thing and during the process, I had lots of moments where I wanted to throw ‘the book’ out of the window. I had loads of help from friends, family, and health visitors who will all tell you the complete opposite of each other.
So here it is, a little bit of weaning and a spoon of carrot!
Starting Out
We were pretty sure Charlotte was ready to start trying solids from around 5 and a half months.
Up until this point, we had always had Charlotte with us when we were cooking (the Ergo 360 is a wonderful carrier for cooking/eating your dinner) and we had a little Moses basket set up in the kitchen so she was always there at mealtimes. We eat at a table in the kitchen, which just works for us.
By this age, Charlotte had started to show a real interest in food, reaching out for our snacks, etc.
My Mum and Dad are pretty old school when it comes to weaning and suggested getting Charlotte on some baby rice early on. The Health Visitor said that this can lead to a heavy association with just being reliant on white food. I quickly realized everyone had an opinion on weaning.
Luckily, some of my friends were also starting to wean their slightly older babies on a variety of purees and using the BLW (baby-led weaning) method, where babies are given appropriately cut or whole pieces of food and feed themselves. A couple of our friends were following the Annabel Karmel approach too, which starts with purees with the gradual introduction of finger foods (like long pieces of fruit or toast). I was listening to a lot to the Made by Mammas podcast too (which I love for all topics, not just weaning) and they were talking about it one week. I felt ready to give it a go.
Charlotte was also now sitting up quite happily on her own, but I had heard that to use the BLW method, they needed to be confident sitting up to assist in swallowing and chewing and it is advised not to start this method before 6 months. I was also absolutely petrified of Charlotte choking on food, even before I did some reading, so that was a factor for us deciding how to proceed.
The Annabel Karmel Method
We bought a high chair and decided to go for the Annabel Karmel book. I really liked the idea of the BLW approach but it’s quite firm in saying it is suitable from 6 months, so we would try purees to start and see how it went.
The book was great. It had a pull-out checklist that gave you suggestions of foods and you kind of worked your way through it one by one. I made purees and froze them in little cubes and when we felt ready, we offered Charlotte sticks of fruit and toast.
I was so scared that Charlotte would choke from the very start, however, I found it really useful to watch some YouTube videos about gagging and choking and the differences between each, also, what to do if the worst did happen. That gave me a lot more confidence. I also offered snacks that were ‘baby-friendly’ like Ella’s Kitchens sticks, as somewhere in my mind I thought that if they did get a bit stuck, they would
dissolve quickly.
Moving to BLW
After a few weeks and after Charlotte was 6 months old, it rapidly became clear that she had had enough of purees.
If I’m honest, I found feeding her with a spoon and spending hours making the puree a little tedious and Charlotte was constantly grabbing the food off the spoon before it reached her mouth. So after a bit more YouTube and a bit more reading, we decided it was time for Charlotte to feed herself. And she loved it. I’ve never seen a tiny person attack a plate with such excitement, which was great. Of course, with this kind of method, the idea is that the baby eats ‘what you eat’ (she hasn’t got anywhere near my bar of Galaxy in the fridge yet). But essentially it meant that we changed the way we were eating as a family.
The best resource I found for this was the What Mummy Makes cookbook, as it had so many recipes that are low sugar, low salt, and can be adapted for allergies, suitable for the whole family. I stopped adding salt to my cooking and would then do family meals, but cut things up so Charlotte could tuck in too.
Weaning and family life now
Charlotte is now fast approaching her first birthday so we’ve had almost 6 months of transitioning her to love all the good stuff. She loves toast with peanut butter, yogurt, and anything green, which is pretty handy. It’s not all been plain sailing, with teething making her hate food for a few days which was so sad to see her shove her plate away, and it’s so disheartening to see her push the food on the floor that you’ve spent the afternoon lovingly rustling up. We also had a pretty scary allergy flare-up during her first plate of scrambled eggs. Within minutes of eating, Charlotte developed large red blotches all over her face and body but didn’t see half as bothered as I was. Our local doctors quickly gave us some Piriton liquid and as she wasn’t having a more severe reaction, we were told to just keep an eye on it. I have recently tried her again on the white of a boiled egg without a reaction, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’ve absolutely loved getting to this stage and family mealtimes are now noisy, messy, and kind of how I hoped they would always be. The kitchen always looks like the fridge has exploded after we’re done and I have never spent more time mopping, sweeping, and disinfecting.
But I hope she’ll grow up to love food and have a really healthy relationship with it. I love a packaged snack and I love cooking fresh food, I’m not over-precious with it either way.
Here’s to February… let’s see how she gets on with the birthday cake…
