Wednesday 9 September 2015

WEANING: Our plan of action


I can hardly believe that we are starting to prepare for the big weaning milestone. It feels like only yesterday I was trying to get my head around how to breastfeed, make a bottle and sterilising, yet my not so little baby is now nearly ready to start eating solids.
Personally I have found weaning quite intimidating, there's just such a range of advice out there and I obviously don't want to give Isabella anything her little tummy won't be able to digest. 

After a lot of reading, discussions with other mummies and advice from our Health Visitor we have decided to do a combination of baby led and parent led weaning. I want to know that Isabella is actually eating some food, hence the parent led weaning. But I also want her to discover the textures of food herself, hence the baby led weaning. We're planning on just doing parent led for the first couple of weeks, so that we can find out the flavours Isabella likes and she can get used to swallowing/eating the purees. I've read that you have to give a certain food 10 times to find out whether your child really likes/dislikes it. 

I'm a pretty organised person so it's not in my nature to just order a load of fruit/vegetables to cook up - I wanted needed a plan! I bought a weekly planner and sat down with a weaning folder I made using cut outs from all of our baby magazines/weaning leaflets etc. I've been given varying advice on how much to feed Isabella at the start of weaning, some have said start with a couple of mouthfuls once a day others have said starting with a couple of mouthfuls three times a day. As ever the advice is confusing, so I've decided to do a staggered approach. For the first couple of days I'll just give Isabella a couple of mouthfuls at around lunchtime. If that goes ok we'll move onto two 'meals' a day (probably breakfast and lunch but I'm not sure yet) and eventually move to three 'meals' a day about two weeks into weaning. 

How did you approach weaning?

Feel free to leave me a comment :)

Helen x
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13 comments

  1. We tried to go straight to baby led weaning with mushy and soft food but our tot just vomited every time. We ended up doing purees for a month and then slowly moving into BLW. We've had our ups and downs with both. Good luck!

    #sharewithme

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    1. That's really helpful to know - thank you! I'm nervous about BLW because of the choking risk but think it's important for Isabella to discover food herself :)

      Helen x

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  2. Good luck with your weaning journey! I spoon fed my first (and also offered finger foods) but with my second I'm doing baby-led weaning. I've summarised my experience of both in a post, if you are interested then please check it out http://www.feedingfinn.com/traditional-weaning-or-baby-led :) #kidscorner

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  3. We tried baby led weaning but Emma started loosing weight so I did a combination of both. It worked really well. I remember wanting to have plan as well, but I ended up just going for it. I soon realised it didn't matter if we missed a meal in the beginning because she was napping or we were out and about. They get there eventually! #KidsCorner

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    1. I can see that my plan will probably go out of the window within a day or two! It is helping me get my head around it at the moment though :)

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  4. With our first we did parent led but our second we did both like yourself and found it worked really well

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  5. We read all the books and then just blundered into it anyway. Matilda's not quite five months so we have to do parent led at the moment (we were a bit disappointed about this as we had wanted to go full baby led) but she's loving it - the first couple of days she had two or three spoonfuls; then there was a week of having entire sachets/jars/tubs of food in one sitting; now that she's realised it's not a one off treat, she's eating sensible portions and so far hasn't refused anything. We've started giving her mixed flavours now but she doesn't seem to notice any difference. She does demolish segments of clementines already (she chomps and chomps and chomps and then spits out the skins) but we tried some avocado today and it's still a bit too lumpy for her.

    Enjoy, though! It's great seeing the faces they pull as they decide whether or not they like each new flavour!

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    1. That's brilliant to hear that Matilda is loving it! I can't wait to start, though I am a bit nervous still. I agree....can't wait for the funny faces!! :)

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  6. I would just say don't be to strict on how it should go, see how sh reacts to the food she might love it or it may take a little longer see how she goes my older 2 were lilt clock work but Lottie really wasn't interested and I didn't get her onto 3 meals until she was about 8/9 months I worried about it at the time but she just wasn't ready at the time and got really cranky, play it by ear Thanks for linking up to #KidsCorner

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    1. Thank you for the advice :) I wanted to get a plan in place before, mainly to get my head around it all and then we'll have to go with the flow!

      Helen x

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  7. My mum first fed my daughter Egg Custard from a jar but she'll only eat jarred food if she is at my mum's house. At home we first introduced vegetables and fruit purees. Then we offered her the pouch of porridge from a magazine and she hugged it unwilling to let go so her breakfast commenced. This morning my hubby offered her half a spoon so he was soon back in the kitchen preparing more. I'm struggling with the lunch though and need to work out what to give her for that. #ShareWithMe

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  8. I did weaning for both my kids differently because I let them kinda showing me the ropes of what they wanted. B would only do purees so I made everything under the sun and froze it and prepared it all homemade and he loved it and took a while to get to solids. I was told it's a boy thing hahaha MY daughter hated purees spit them out and went for whole sandwiches and doing baby led weaning solids right away and loved it. Whatever works for the both of you follow your gut and it will be smooth sailing. Thank you so much for linking up to Share With Me #sharewithme

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  9. I did purees with G but babyled with LJ as purees made her so sick due to reflux. Seems a lifetime ago now!! Good luck and thanks for sharing in #KidsCorner x

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