WEANING: EARLY ADVENTURES WITH FOOD

I was nervous about weaning, convinced baby would choke on every mouthful and hate everything I cooked. Happily, apart from one demoralising blip, so far he loves food. A great result for us both! Him as he loves his meals and me as I’m finally learning to cook and menu plan!

As with everything, I’m no expert, but I’m living the weaning dream it so I’m sharing what’s worked for us.

Our approach

There is such debate about whether you do baby led weaning or the other type, which no one seems to name but I will call spoon feeding. We went down the middle road. I want him to enjoy himself and play with food and fling it around the kitchen, but I also want him to get used to lots of tastes and to eat properly.

We started just after christmas, baby was about 5 1/2 months and met the criteria the NHS sets for starting (sitting upright, coordinated and can swallow). He was also making great efforts to eat our food and was hungry between milk feeds! Prior to starting, I went on a free introducing solid foods NHS workshop. Whilst it didn’t teach anything new, it was helpful and taught good habits.

I started by giving him little tastes at lunch time, about an hour after his 11am (ish) bottle. This meant he was still filling up on milk, which continues to be his main food, but topped up with some food before a nap an hour or so later. After a couple of weeks we then introduced breakfast. This time an hour after the 7am (ish) wake up bottle. When we were about 6 weeks into two meals, I brought in tea time too. I could see that he was less tired as the day came to a close and so it made perfect sense to add. Currently our timings are: milk at 7/11/3/6.30 and food at 8/12/5. He’s hungry of both milk and food at these times and tea is early enough that he takes most of his bedtime feed before falling asleep.

Slowly introducing one meal after another worked for him, as it tweaked his routine only slightly each time. It also worked for me, as by the time I introduced another meal I was on top of the amount of food prep and cleaning time needed. I am sure 3 hours of my day now go into food, and a couple of evenings for batch making or steaming.

Food

It’s fair to say baby eats better than we do, we have never had so much choice of fruit and veg in the fridge and freezer!! Three months in the little man often happily has a five course meal three times a day…

When we started weaning I gave him the same individual taste for 4-5 days in a row. I got him happy with one food, and made sure it didn’t upset his tummy, and then we moved onto the next. We started with sweet potato, then broccoli, then porridge, then carrots, then peas, then pears, then cauliflower, then courgette, then apple, then plums, then spinach and then butternut squash. Somewhere in there we tried banana and avocado and mango too. Some days he had more than one taste but I never mixed them together. I also tried porridge at lunchtime first then it wasn’t a surprise when one day we had it for breakfast! He’s a porridge monster so he was happy to see it in a bigger portion!

We moved onto what I will call a ‘meal’ about one month in. We haven’t had anything complicated, so far cauliflower, broccoli and sweet potato cheese, salmon and sweetcorn chowder, beef bolognese with baby pasta, sausage and butternut squash risotto, Thai green chicken curry and sausage, tomato and mushroom casserole.

The initial vegetables and fruit I pureed with a stick blender, but after a week or so I started mashing the food instead. I do still use the blender at times, for example if we have particularly big chunks of vegetable, but I ‘don’t rush to mush’ as the NHS say.

As I said, we are doing spoon fed but with some finger foods to accompany the mush. For this we started with pear and then a mixture of steamed vegetables like carrot, cauliflower, broccoli and yellow pepper. He’s also a fan of sucking a slice of flatbread or cheese and the stalwart favourites are cucumber and watermelon.

I mentioned he often has 5 courses… A ‘meal’ with some veg, his finger foods, then some pudding, sometimes fruit puree if he’s still hungry and then watermelon to finish. Pudding though is just Greek yoghurt with fruit, typically raspberries or pears. He loves yoghurt and I can sneak plenty of fruit in alongside it! Raspberries also work well in his porridge. Breakfast is a bowl of porridge, normally with raspberries followed by watermelon.

I am not sure how much he should eat but he tends to have a 75ml pot for his meal now with some vegetables added, followed by his pudding.

The jury is out on pouches so far. To date I have only really used apple and pear or mango purees and that was quite by accident! We were out for lunch and he wanted more than I had catered for and so we made a start on the apple puree I had in the bag for emergencies. He loved it. As a result, and because I don’t want to spend all my days steaming and pureeing fruit, I often give him part of a pouch near the end of a meal. On holiday he did have some other tastes of pouches, but he wasn’t a big fan – I think because there’s very little texture compared to the food I normally give him. That said, they are useful to have to hand on the go and so I do offer them from time to time just to be sure that he is used to them.

The arrival of his first two bottom teeth was painless, thankfully, and a game changer for him come mealtime. He devours fingers of cucumber and watermelon and his chewing of all other food massively improved.

I have two books. A basic Annabel Karmel weaning book and another more interesting one called Young Gums. They are good for inspiration but what I am learning is that anything goes if the base ingredients are right. If you start with fresh and healthy meat and vegetables and use reduced salt stock then you have the base meal. The little meals I mentioned above were vaguely what was in a book, but using the fresh produce that was actually in the fridge!

So far we haven’t had any sweet treats, happily we’ve avoided cake and such like. I eat all my snacks and biscuits where he can’t see me! The nearest thing to a treat was on Shrove Tuesday, which we actually celebrated on Ash Wednesday because of nappy rash! I made him a plain pancake, but I rather think he thought it was a toy, fascinated by its size and texture! I have a collection of rice cakes and biscuit type snacks too, but so far he’s not wanted anything between meal times…

Kit

There are 1,001 things you could buy for weaning, I was bamboozled by the choice in the supermarkets and online. Because weaning starts slowly, I chose to buy a few things and have added as we’ve gone along, working out what we needed.

Thankfully we were given a Baby Bjorn high chair. It’s the perfect chair. There are no straps or material, it is entirely wipe clean and the table cover pops off so gets a proper clean. It’s compact, both to put away but also in use. What I mean is that it perfectly suits a baby that is fairly small in stature. When we started weaning baby was quite little but yet he didn’t slide in the seat. As he’s grown we haven’t had an issue with it becoming too small, it’s a very good design.

Because we are mostly spoon feeding I tend to serve out of a Le Creuset ramekin or one of my many little pots. I got a silicon bowl from Tesco that has a sucker on the bottom, it’s perfect for porridge and I do let him have a play with it some days. We have a gorgeous BambooBamboo plate that he was given for Christmas that will come into its own soon enough!

I never knew there would be such choice of spoons. The Tommee Tippee weaning spoons aren’t that great in the early days as they have a ridge around the edge which means food tends to get stuck on them. I found some smaller ones which have no ridge.

I have all the pots, either passed on from friends or purchased. I have a lot of different shapes and sizes. None too small, as whilst there won’t be much in them in the early days they’ll need to carry more soon enough. Round ones, screw lids, cube ones, oval ones… All the pots as I said!

For freezer storage I use silicon trays. And my pots, because I always seem to make more food than my trays can hold! I’ve got two different size trays and a few of each. A large ice cube size for vegetables and 75gm trays for actual meals. The less solid the silicon the easier to get food out.

Bibs are obviously essential, I got a couple of silicon ones that have a trough. Either to collect the food, or in our case, to act as a bit of a water reservoir!! We also have a few coveralls that he sometimes wears under the bib either if we are eating something particularly messy or if he’s got an especially nice outfit on!

Toys with a little sucker on the bottom are essential. Either before or after the meal he will be waiting for me and needs entertaining! His favourite toy doesn’t have a sucker, it’s a set of cogs from Melissa & Doug that a friend gave us. I strap it onto the table with elastic and he has a great time spinning the cogs with wonder and/or throwing them across the kitchen and staring longingly after them!

Distractions

Everything is a distraction. Be it the birds in the garden, the rabbits in the garden, a sole dog walker in the field at the end of the garden, the cows in the field, the kitchen lights, the shadows his hands cast, his hand, the noise of post arriving on the mat, other people in the house, the pattern on my socks… And now the mini-digger and garden landscaping team! Everything is a distraction.

However, I don’t try and reduce the distractions. In fact if Mr P is feeding baby then I will unload the dishwasher or tidy the freezer at the same time. The more he gets used to distractions the easier he has been to feed. He now happily stares out the window chewing and opens his mouth when he’s ready for more! We’ve managed to feed him in the garden too which doubled the distractions!

Interestingly, other babies aren’t a distraction. When I meet friends with babies for lunch he eats very cleanly and rapidly… It’s normally the time that we finish off all of my home cooking and have to get started on a trusty Ella’s pouch too! I figure it must be some kind of peer pressure? Line up 5 babies, or sit in someones dining room with them dotted around it and all the babies gobble down their food like it might get eaten by someone else!

Water

Where food has been a relatively easy thing to convince him to try, water has been the opposite! He initially reacted to it like I would should someone try and pour neat vodka down my throat! We’ve persevered…

Little and often, one sip after the other!

Cup choice seems to be key. I guess for baby all he knows is either breast or teat… Fluid flowing into his mouth with no restriction must be surprising. The cups of favour are currently a reassuringly expensive Design Letters beaker and his Munchkin 360. I don’t like the Tommee Tippee ones as I can’t get the lids off. We have some Nuby flip and flow which he’s also quite keen on.

So that he does get a bit more water, I make sure there’s plenty in the food – porridge holds plenty and I tend to cool down meals with it too.

Mess

Weaning is messy. I have learnt to embrace the mess despite always hating things being stuck to my socks… I am pretty sure the kitchen floor area where he eats is now the cleanest place in the house. After each mess creation session I take to it with some Dettol wipes or Milton spray.

It does make me chuckle the purposeful and gleeful way with which he drops his food on the floor. He’ll hold his cucumber stick having given it a good chew, and then extend his arm wide out to the side and open his fist and drop it. He’ll then eyeball the food on the floor as if he expects it to be a boomerang. Of course it comes back to him, with some Mummy effort!

He’s recently started waving and so likes to wave his food at the blackbirds, if they don’t wave back (do they ever) then he throws it at them. A charming new skill! His throw covers some ground, the radius of my floor cleaning is increasing… Thankfully as he’s spoon fed for the most part, mess is mainly dribble down his chin and into his bib reservoir!

He seems to have grown out of creating a fountain of food out of his mouth… But bubble blowing is something he enjoys and he knows from our reaction with porridge in his mouth that he can create an impact with it…

Nappies

Yes, they change pretty quickly… At risk of sharing too much information, it is easier to clean up, but it is also easier to identify exactly what he has eaten! For my little man, the upright stance of the high chair encourages such activity during mealtimes… It’s truly delightful!

Out and about

I was nervous this would be chaos but actually with a bit of preparation it’s been fine. Worth noting that National Trust sites and John Lewis cafes all seem to have microwaves to heat up baby food.

I bought myself a third pacopod pod bag to carry the food around in and I pilfered from my mum a half size freezer cube to keep the food chilled inside. Wherever we go, whether it is mealtime or not, I always have an Ella’s pouch, a spoon and some disposable bibs. That way if we are out longer than planned, or he’s in a routine schmoutine kind of day, then we are covered. And we have reserves! I bought a travel booster seat which attaches to any chair. Sometimes the high chairs available either look like a toxic swamp or are far to large, so it’s paid to have something to give us options in these circumstances.

If I am just giving him vegetables when we are out then he has them cold. If he’s having meat or fish then it either needs to be fully heated up at home before we go out, or it needs to be heated up when we sit down for lunch. As a result we normally do veg when we are out.

My little pot collection comes into its own for trips out. A pot for the main meal. A pot for fingers of cucumber, bread and cheese as well as a triangle of watermelon. A pot for some raspberries. A pot for some yoghurt. And a bag to hold all the messy stuff in afterwards.

For overseas trips, pre-ordering all the food and milk to Boots Airside is a no-brainer. For a week in Abu Dhabi in February I took an empty cabin bag with me to the airport and I trundled it to Boots and filled it to the brim with food and milk! Another bit of learning from our holiday was just how useful a hotel buffet can be in the weaning process. Previously I have turned my nose up at them, but for first tastes and being able to try all manner of things it is just perfect. It’s how we discovered watermelon, flatbread and hummus which all remain firm favourites of the little man!

Backward steps

We have had a few demoralising weeks recently. At the start of March my darling boy had a horrid nappy rash. He was upset, I was upset and so food wasn’t of interest to either of us. We both came to dread the next nappy change, and he spent a lot of time nappy free as at least that didn’t hurt so much. Nappy rash is a burn and so I am not surprised that he went off his food as he must associate food and nappy changes. Whether it was a bug or a nasty teething poo I am not sure, but as a result he effectively dropped food for a few days and went back to his milk. We did go through the motions and try and have some food each day, but it upset him so much. Obviously there was a resulting impact on his perfect sleep…

Eventually we made progress. It felt like I was going backwards with a freezer full of unwanted meals he was enjoying just days earlier. We went back to simple steamed vegetables: sweet potato, carrots, courgette or carrots. In a way we started weaning again and after a few days he was back on his proper meals and I was adding my vegetable mush to those for him.

On random days he’ll revel in his breakfast and lunch and hate his tea, or some other mix of the three. Or find anything more interesting than food, and lets be honest the view from our kitchen ain’t a bad excuse! These days are just frustrating as try as I might I can’t work out why. I was getting lax with the timings of his routine, but I’m being stricter now and he seems to be hungry at each meal and for each bottle.

Highlights

There have been many highlights to our weaning adventures so far. It’s easy to forget just how surprising, exciting and challenging it must be for a baby to start eating food. I can’t really liken it to anything that I remember doing.

As a result it is so lovely to see baby enjoying his mealtimes, feet kicking and arms waving with excitement. And I enjoy it all the more so because, whilst simple, the food is cooked by me and he likes it!

I love the smiles, full of food. I love when he leans towards the spoon for more or when he tries to put his hands in the bowl. I love the chewing, sucking and chomping noises when he gets his hands round a piece of his beloved cucumber or watermelon. I love the exuberance that comes through and him stretching to stand in his seat! In fact, I even love the messiness of it all – covered in food juice and dribble with a grin on his little face is gorgeous! And he’s growing up!

I still chuckle at how he approaches each new taste or meal. Taste one and he screws up his face, spits a bit out and closes his eyes and mouth to avoid any more. Taste two and he chews with a dead pan facial expression. Taste three he shows real enjoyment and opens his mouth for taste four!

So that’s our weaning adventure with food so far! It’s been exhausting and it’s been fun! And it’s only the start. Next he will be learning to feed himself whilst decorating the kitchen walls and eating more adventurous and textured food… With summer just round the corner, perhaps we’ll eat all meals outside?!