If you’ve found your way here, you’ve started to think about which weaning method works best for you, when to start and what to start with.
The current advise from the NHS is to wean from 6 months old. At 6 months old, your baby has had more time to develop so will be able to cope with solid food, including moving the food around their mouth, swallowing food and digesting it. They should be able to sit up by themselves at this age too, which is important to reduce the risk of choking. Also your 6 month old baby will start to need more than their current diet of breastmilk and/or formula.
There are two types of weaning; baby led weaning (blw) and traditional weaning. You’ve probably heard both terms, but what's the difference? And which one is right for you? Traditional weaning is feeding purées and increasing the texture until they can have finger foods, whereas baby led weaning is offering finger foods (prepared to your baby’s age) right from the get go.
We followed the traditional method for two reasons; 1) I was rather anxious to give my baby a cooked carrot stick considering that had never eaten anything before and 2) for convenience. The biggest convenience is that they can eat purées on the go, whether they’re homemade or shop bought, whereas finger foods are great when you're at home and have the time to prepare food, wait for them to explore and eat some and then tidy up after. My eldest very quickly began to enjoy food and before I knew it she was eating 3 times a day. If I was out and she was hungry, she needed to have food - I could only delay for so long with milk! So I always kept a jar of shop bought food in her baby changing bag, just in case. If I knew I was going to be out for mealtime, I would try and take finger foods with me too, but this wasn’t always practical in the early weaning days. Although our weaning journey was on the traditional route, I know plenty of parents who successfully did blw and loved the experience. My recommendation to you is to pick the method that you feel is right.
When you start weaning, remember to offer cooled boiled water to your baby to drink with each meal. You should continue to feed your baby their usual milk at first and they will gradually drop the amount they need as they eat more. Although you can give them full fat milk in their meals, they should continue to be breastfed or have formula and not have cows milk as a drink until 1 years old.
I'll start off talking about weaning onto purees and later in this post will come on to starting on the blw journey.
Purees / the traditional method:
So you're considering the traditional route, or maybe dabble with some purees and some finger foods (I did this more with my second!). It’s good to start with vegetables before fruit so your little one doesn’t get a taste for sweeter foods straight away, this means they’ll be more open to trying a wider variety of foods. Quite simply peel, chop and boil/steam your veggies until they are soft (do not add any salt to the cooking, babies should not consume more than 1g of salt a day and do not need it to flavour their food). If you boiled the vegetables, drain them, but keep the water as they will have absorbed some of the nutrients and can be added to your blender. Add the vegetables to the blender and slowly add the water* until you get a nice smooth consistency. *If you steamed the vegetables, you can add some of your baby’s usual milk to get the right consistency.
At first, your baby may only have a (baby) spoonful or two each feed, they only have tiny stomachs and eating is new to them, so don’t worry, it is plenty at this stage. Your baby will not eat more than they can stomach, so offer small amounts and stop when they aren’t interested - they will indicate this to by by turning their head away, shaking their head from side to side or pushing the spoon away. A lot of people worry if their baby doesn’t swallow the food at all. Again, don’t worry, its normal for babies to push the food back out of their mouth. This is actually important for them to learn to do. They may need a few days to work out how to swallow the food. Keep trying each day and they will learn this new skill.
Introduce one new taste at a time, this will help to identify an allergy or intolerance if they react to the food. They may not like it at first and the NHS says that it can take up to 10 times of trying a food before they like it. Perseverance here is key! Once they like flavours you can try mixing them together for some variety. See below an example 2 weeks, trying foods at two different times a day:
Day 1: Carrot
Day 2: Carrot
Day 3: Broccoli
Day 4: Broccoli
Day 5: Avocado
Day 6: Avocado
Your baby may now be ready to eat 2 small meals a day, it may still only be a few baby spoons though
Day 7: Parsnip then carrot
Day 8: Butternut squash & carrot then broccoli & spinach
Day 9: Broccoli, spinach & potato then carrot & butternut squash
Day 10: Cauliflower & sweet potato then parsnip, turnip & pea
Day 11: Banana then broccoli, pea & spinach
Day 12: Pear in natural Greek yogurt then leek & potato
Day 13: Plum & apple then carrot, leek and potato
Day 14: Apricot porridge then squash, spinach & tomato
Pick a time of day that you have time to try weaning (it is not a process to be rushed). We picked approx. 11am and then were a bit flexible about the afternoon time. 11am was always a good time for us because I had time to get up and get ready, we did an activity, had her first nap and a milk feed before trying food. Yes, this did mean that she was eating parsnips, spinach and peas in the morning, but it is only adults that have constructed social norms to dictate what is an appropriate food to eat before midday. You may have noticed that your little one doesn’t follow a lot of adult social norms and they know no different. I couldn’t face preparing some veggies in the morning, but would batch cook the night before whilst cooking our dinner so I was fully prepared for the morning.
Once your little one is eating more foods and you have introduced meats/quorn/fish etc, you will be able to make your usual weekly meals and modify the cooking and serving slightly to make them suitable for your baby. By this time, your baby will likely be eating 3 meals too, try to eat as many meals together ad you can. This is a great way to show your baby how to eat, especially if you're eating the same meals.
When cooking for your baby, the main things that you will need to watch out for are:
Cooking without salt (including soy sauce!)
Cooking with low salt stock
Cooking without sugar
Cooking without honey (cannot have until 1 year)
Cooking without much heat (spice wise)
How to serve it
If I was making a spaghetti bolognese, I would cut the carrot slices into quarters, finely chop the onions and use fusilli pasta instead of spaghetti. I would also take her portion out of the pan before adding salt and honey. This helped me to cut down on cooking various meals and my husband and I just had smaller chunks in our sauce. You can also blitz the pasta and sauce in a blender if you wanted a different consistency. I did this with all of our food for quite a while. However, our eldest is now nearly 3 years old and I still chop our carrot slices in half to reduce the risk of them being a choking hazard.
Baby led weaning:
Baby led weaning is a great way to let your baby explore foods, textures and tastes. By offering them soft, manageable sized foods, they will learn about food in their true form which should make it easier to make a positive correlation between the taste and the food itself. It will also develop their pincer grip when eating smaller bits of food such as peas and sweetcorn.
I was quite anxious at trying blw and did start on purées, but I know plenty of people that jumped straight in with blw and loved it. It is important to note that the NHS guidelines are to not do any BLW until 6 months old as your little one’s stomachs cannot digest the food properly and their gag reflex may not be fully developed. By 6 months, your baby should also be able to move food around their mouth and swallow it. They should be able sit up by themselves too, which is important to reduce the risk of choking.
My daughter had her first finger food 3 weeks into our weaning journey and it was an Ella’s Kitchen melty puff! I appreciate this is not the most nutritious food to start her finger food journey on, but it put my mind at ease as I watched her thoroughly enjoy feeding herself and making a right mess in the process. Turns out melty puffs are fun to crush in your hands too… I chose this first because I was paranoid that she wouldn’t know what to do and she would choke. My logic was that the melty puffs would dissolve even if it got stuck… either way, it got me over my fears and we embarked on our finger food journey.
Many parents worry about choking hazards when their little ones start eating solid foods, but by preparing the foods correctly, you can minimise the risks. When you start, try cutting; toast into soldiers without the crusts, blueberries into quarters, cucumber into batons without the skin, cooked broccoli in half length ways and cooked pears into batons without the skin.
In no time at all, our daughter was eating buttered toast with crusts, boiled eggs, cooked vegetable crudités, pasta, homemade fishcakes, porridge fingers and banana, to name a few. I soon realised that actually I could make meals for me and my husband and modify the cooking and serving slightly to make them suitable for a baby. The main things that are important to watch out for are:
Cooking without salt (including soy sauce!)
Cooking with low salt stock (Piccolo make them, you can buy these in Boots)
Cooking without sugar
Cooking without honey (cannot have until 1 year)
Cooking without much heat (spice wise)
How to serve it
By preparing your family meals differently, blw can be easy to manage without taking over your days. Think about; What staples do you have each week? Can you cut the veg differently? Can you bulk cook it in advance so you have some extra meals prepared for your baby (and you!)? For example, if you're making a sauce, cut the chicken/quorn pieces into really small chunks and cut your carrot discs into quarters, yes your food will have smaller chunks for a while, but it really helps to cut down on cooking extra meals each day.
There are also some other foods that you may want your baby to try that you don’t usually eat that you may prepare specifically for baby such as pin wheels or savoury muffins. These are great to have in the fridge or freezer for a quicker meal or snack. Although I found myself picking at them too!
I found that after a month or so, I was feeding her the same things over and over again so I set myself a 100 tastes challenge whether it was a; food, spice or herb. It was fun for me to think of new foods to feed her and get some more variety into her diet, but also interesting to track what she had tried. I was shocked to see my grid fill up in just 3 months and there were still so many tastes she hadn’t tried yet. It had given me the boost to keep making new foods and that was the key.
Cooking without salt (including soy sauce!)
Cooking with low salt stock (Piccolo make them, you can buy these in Boots)
Cooking without sugar
Cooking without honey (cannot have until 1 year)
Cooking without much heat (spice wise)
How to serve it