Our Weaning Journey

Hi there! 

Welcome to the world of weaning! 

When we were looking and counting down the time until we could start trying Sophie with food, we looked into weaning and tried to figure out where to start. What we learned was that there are a lot of different options on how to wean your little one. This can lead to it becoming stressful. I did anyway. 

The amount of pressure I started to feel about making Sophie all her own meals, from scratch, was unreal. It started to make me more anxious about the whole experience. Turns out, I had nothing to worry about. Neither do you.  

We chose to do a bit of a mix of BLW (Baby Led Weaning) with some puree meals. However you choose to wean your little one, is down to what works best for you and baby.  

It is NOT recommended to start weaning until your baby is 6 months and baby is ready. You can find all this information on the NHS website. 

Around the time when we were about to start weaning Sophie, Leonard and I decided that we would switch to a vegetarian diet.So we were also trying to find our feet with that too.

Just Start 

We did start just a little early, a few weeks in fact. The first thing we gave Sophie was cucumber. This took a few attempts before she figured it out and started to chew on it. I think she enjoyed these because she was also teething at the time. Nice and cold on her gums. 

When we fully started to wean at 6 months, we were on holiday, still in the UK, but still away from home. We started with the Kendamil Porridge and mixed it with some of her formula, which wasn’t actually Kendamil. 😊 Like anything new, food also takes a few attempts. I think it was also a bit too runny for Sophie at first, so the next day, we made it a little thicker and she seemed to enjoy it more.  

I did get the free Ellas Kitchen food pack that was advertised at the time. Which included a couple of money off coupons and a A3 size sheet that enabled you to tick off some fruits and veg once they had been tried. We stuck this on our fridge and marked a couple of things off it and then carried on and ignored it. It was on the fridge for months before we got it of it as we still hadn’t really used it. Oops.  

We started by moving Sophie’s highchair into the living room, with a plastic table cloth type sheet underneath her. This quickly moved to just feeding her in her highchair in the kitchen as it was much easier to clean up. 

First Meal 

We started by giving Sophie breakfast, because we thought that it was going to be the best and easiest place for us. I saw a lot of people saying its best to start with dinner then moving to lunch then breakfast. But we thought that it was best the other way around, then if Sophie was allergic to anything then at least we had the day to deal with it. I would presume that these things are easier to deal with during the day rather than at night.  

Breakfasts started with plain Kendamil porridge with formula, followed by Weetabix, different flavours of Kendamil porridges. Then we switched from using formula to using cows milk. I added a little cinnamon into her breakfast one morning just for a little bit of a change. The next day, I added a little more cinnamon to her breakfast, Sophie came out with a slight red rash around her mouth where her porridge had contacted her skin. This was new and we had no other symptoms and it went away within the hour. I tried Sophie again with this and the same thing happened. After seeing the GP about this, it was a contact irritation, which she has now grown out of, but it is something that we will continue to watch out for. Other than the cinnamon, breakfast had been fairly easy. 

Second Meal 

We then moved onto lunch. This happened fairly quickly as Sophie seemed ready for it as she had dropped a bottle, upped the amount that she had across the remaining bottles and dropped another bottle.  

Lunch was more of trying different foods. We tried Sophie with plain toast, then toast with butter, jam, and finally peanut butter. We also moved onto items like egg and different fruit and veg.  

This became a time that we could try single items of food before we moved onto 3 meals a day.  

3 Meals A Day 

Not long after moving onto lunch, we went from 2 meals a day to 3. This is the part that would stress me out the most.  

We have breakfast and lunch items down, but what do we give Sophie for her dinner? 

We then started to save some of what we had on a night, so that Sophie could then have this for her dinner the next day. This got her to try a variety of foods all with different flavours and textures.  

I also found that this took a lot of the stress out of trying to have separate meals for her. Which led to me being able to have more time to spend with Sophie, which also meant that we could get out of the house more.  

Using Purees 

When we were out and about, which was mostly at the weekend, we would do more of a mixture of purees and BLW, as this was easier for us.  

A year after starting Sophies weaning journey, we still tend to give her the 12+ month meal bowls. This is more likely to happen if it's been a day of travelling or a day when she’s ill. When she’s ill, she is less likely to eat anything, so having one of these meals in for her is a win-win. She still enjoys them and will happily eat the full bowl and we’re just happy that she has had something to eat. 

Don’t Stress 

The best thing that I did to try and remove the stress out of weaning Sophie, was to try and forget what I had read that was out there.  

We just followed Sophie’s lead on weaning and did what we thought was right at the time. 

Overall 

Waning is a messy part of feeding little ones. They’ll play with the food and most of it will end up on the floor. It’s new to them. They do eventually figure it out. At just over 20 months, we still get food on the floor, but not nearly as much as when we started, it's now just mainly if she doesn’t want or like it or is finished.  

The day will come where we don’t need to clean food up off the floor or from little hands and around her face. That’s just not yet.  

Weaning can happen however you want it to happen and that is whatever way works best for you and your little one. 

Please don’t be fooled by those posts that look like they’ve made their child a beautiful plate of food. Most of it was probably thrown onto the floor. Or even for an older child.  

Remember each baby/child is different. 

Sophie eats just fine from a mixture of BLW and purees. You’ll never be able to tell who was weaned by using purees or BLW. 

Have you started your weaning journey or just getting ready? How are you or did you wean your little one?