Adventures in weaning continued

Baby Girl has now been having her first tastes of food for one month. To be honest, it feels like much longer. Every time I clean up the mess and chaos that baby weaning brings I feel like I’ve been doing it forever. Mess aside, it’s all going well. I’m reminded yet again how different my second baby is to my first (I know – I’m like a broken record, apologies). When Frog was this age she was only just starting to lick the odd floret of broccoli, but Baby Girl is munching and gulping and reaching for more with every meal.

A month on and I’m convinced we made the right decision introducing solids when we did. Although I’d planned to wait until she was six months, the fact she is so happy eating and has taken to it so quickly proves Baby Girl was ready. Every baby really is different – a mantra I think I’ve only properly appreciated since my second bub.

Now she’s six months I’m starting to introduce a bit more variety into Baby Girl’s diet. Up to this point she’s only had fruit, veg and baby porridge (for breakfast). But we’ve recently started offering her bits of buttered bread and toast, a tiny bit of cheese, hummus, baby yoghurts and lentils. Tomorrow I’m baking up a batch of wholemeal carrot muffins and I’m quite excited about trying out new healthy recipes from the Organix recipe archive. I reckon the number one rule with weaning is just to relax and have fun – something we’re embracing with gusto.

I’d hoped that introducing food might win us a bit of extra sleep at night but no such luck. Anyone who tells you babies only wake at night because they’re hungry is LYING I tell you. Still, Baby Girl is enjoying her food and I’m continuing to breastfeed her on demand. I’ve noticed she doesn’t seem as interested in milk around breakfast time – she seems to be more eager for her breakfast than anything else at the moment.

I’m still offering Baby Girl food on a spoon as well as giving her things she can eat on her own. Every meal time I include a couple of things she can feed herself – and some meals I only give her things she can eat on her own. Baby Girl has also become really interested in grabbing the spoon and feeding herself these days, which is fine as far as I’m concerned. The Baby-led Weaning purist in me reckons as long as she’s having fun and is experimenting with different tastes and textures then that’s the most important thing. I know that as long as she has milk from me she won’t go hungry – but, to be honest, she packs away so much food every day I can’t imagine she ever really feels hungry!

The biggest difference between weaning this time around to when I was weaning Frog is that I’m more relaxed. And that seems kind of weird to say, because I liked to think I was pretty relaxed with her. But, looking back, I was so determined to follow the “correct” BLW route to the letter that I don’t think I could have been as relaxed as I thought I was. This time I’m offering Baby Girl a wider variety of different textures and if it means some of that is offered on a spoon then so be it. If she’s happy then I’m happy.

Organix has a great weaning guide – The Little Book of Weaning – which is worth a read if you’re unsure how you want to tackle weaning. My main advice is to be relaxed, have fun, embrace the mess and read around the subject but don’t get too caught up on doing it “right”.

We’ve also made a little video (on my YouTube channel) about our adventures in weaning so far. It includes some cracking advice from my four year old (yes, really). I’ve been filming Baby Girl on and off at meal times over the last month, so it’s interesting to see how she’s progressing with feeding herself…

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Thanks to Organix for commissioning this post. To find out more about weaning, download their Little Book of Weaning here.