The weaning diaries: introducing finger foods with Organix

It’s been just over a month now since Baby Girl started making a huge mess experimenting with solid food. As we’re following a hybrid of Baby-led Weaning and the odd bit of spoon feeding, she’s been feeding herself since day one. At the very beginning it was mainly rusks and pieces of cut up fruit and veg, but she’s now graduated to bits of bread, toast, rice cakes… actually, pretty much everything we eat, as long as it’s not loaded up with sugar and salt.

Here’s a little video we made last time we were chatting about weaning, where you can see how she’s progressed over the last few weeks, as she learns to pick up food and gets to grips with feeding herself (fast-forward to the end for a handy tip for how to cut bananas up so they don’t go all slippery for babies)…

At the moment, she’s a bit too small to appreciate my incredible *cough* artistic efforts in making her food look fun and palatable. At six and a half months she will attempt to eat anything, whether it’s food or not. But as she gets bigger I’m tempted to try out a few of the fun finger food plates from the Organix Little Book of Weaning (you can sign up to download a free copy yourself too).

This is one of my favourites…

There’s lots more advice on finger foods and recipes on the Organix website too.

At the moment, I’m finding every mealtime is most successful if I make sure there’s a real mixture of textures and tastes for Baby Girl to play around with. I’m well aware this attitude to weaning is probably the messiest around, because allowing her to take the spoon from me and try to feed herself porridge, while shoving bits of banana into her mouth and making a hat out of a piece of toast is… chaotic. Still, if she’s happy then I’m happy, yadda yadda yadda. I just need to silence my inner Monica and let her discover through play. I’d prefer a happy, messy baby than a crying one, after all.

As with everything weaning related (and baby related, come to think of it) my inner mantra has become “RELAX”. There are some days when Baby Girl is totally uninterested in anything I put in front of her and she just wants boob. But then, on other days, she will shove food into her mouth like it’s going out of fashion. Part of the fun of the finger food stage (or BLW) is that the baby isn’t just eating – she’s honing her fine motor skills, developing co-ordination, learning about textures. It means every meal time is like a sensory play session, which can sometimes lead to over-tiredness and meltdown moments. I’m still trying to work out the best times of day for eating, but so far the evening meal seems to be more of a success if it’s around 4.30pm. Any time after 5pm and I just get a grizzly, tired baby who would rather throw her food at me than eat it.

Do you have any great finger food ideas for young babies just starting out with solid foods? I’d love to hear your suggestions.

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Thanks to Organix for commissioning this post. Don’t forget to check out the Organix website for more tips on weaning and inspiration for recipes.