When I started the weaning journey with Ethan the guidelines were just changing. The recommended ages for starting weaning moved from four months (17 weeks) to six months of age. Baby led weaning was just starting to go mainstream and I only knew of one mum going down this route. Ethan was already eating baby rice, we started him on this just before sixteen weeks as he was being terribly sick on just milk. We spoke to the doctor and we all felt that putting a little more weight in his stomach would help the sickness. It did. When it came to introducing food I had no idea where to start. The idea of weaning scared the life out of me. It was going to be my responsibility to make sure my child was getting everything they needed from the food I was giving them. When it comes to fussy eating I’m one of the worst, I can be worse than Ethan at times. I only started to eat vegetables when I fell pregnant with Ethan. I was looking forward to discovering new foods when weaning but I was also very nervous. Thankfully I was given a fantastic book for the first tastes stage of the weaning process. The Contented Little Baby Book of Weaning.
It basically contains a very detailed two month plan working three days at a time. Letting your baby try different fruits and vegetables, but giving you the time to work out if they are allergic to anything.
A step by step guide is exactly what I needed. It also involved lots of cooking and freezing but it meant that everything would be ready to go. It’s a very slow process but by the time you complete this stage your baby is six months old and ready to sample even more delights. At six months I moved over to the Annabel Karmel cookbook.
With Little E I wanted to wait until she was six months old. She had other ideas!
Like her brother she too has lots of sickness. It isn’t as violent as Ethan’s was but she gets it all the same. We debated about introducing rice and I did my research, discovering that it was best to wait until 17 weeks. I have spoken to the health visitors and they say don’t start weaning until six months old. Little E’s personal health visitor has told me what she is ‘meant’ to say but also agrees that rice would help her.
Little E has also picked up another feed during the evening, and after finally going for three hours in-between feeds she is decreasing this time again. According to the professionals these are signs that your baby is ready for more food.
So I’m going with my gut and yesterday we started to try rice. Over the next week or so I will start our first tastes journey. The baby led weaning cookbook has also been recommended to me. I’m hoping Little E’s weaning journey will help Ethan with food so I will also add this to my cookbook collection.
Good luck with your weaning journey with Little E and hope it helps Ethan with food too 🙂
Thank you :0)