Parenting Advice >Parenting Advice > Weaning

Weaning

The same principles apply to your baby as with an older child. When weaning at between 4 and 6 months you have the opportunity to start your baby's eating habits off well and make mealtimes fun! After her lunchtime bottle or breast feed, sit baby on your lap and offer small amounts of food on a small soft plastic spoon. If she makes a face and looks disgusted then maybe she dislikes the taste, but maybe she's just unsure about the texture because it's all so new to her. Smile at her and talk gently to her, telling her what she's eating so that she learns to recognise different foods. If she is unhappy try again later. If possible try to give homemade or organic foods as much as possible, since you know what's in them. I know it can be time consuming, but it is well worth cooking food in bulk, then liquidising and freezing it in sterilised ice cube trays. Put the frozen cubes into freezer bags, labelled and dated. Only keep for one month and then discard.

It is probably advisable to give our babies at least 50% natural homemade foods only relying on jars (organic ones) when needed. The reason for this is that you want your child to be able to accept jars when you're in a hurry, when you're out, but the rest of the time it’s always better to make the food yourself. I know how hard it is, especially if you are working to fit in cooking, mashing, pureeing and ice-cube-tray filling time, however you will reap the rewards of a good eater when your baby grows to a toddler. One of the reasons is as baby grows you can slowly start to introduce lumps eventually presenting your toddler with “proper” food. The other is that you can separate the foods rather than them being all mushed together, to teach baby to eat and enjoy different types of fruit and vegetables, carbohydrates such as rice and pasta and meats or alternative protein foods for vegetarians. However, apart from the initial baby rice I am not personally keen on packets as they can contain a lot of sugar, and some jars / tins have a lot of “filler” type of ingredients like cornflour. Your baby may become too keen on the sugar in the packets and the carb heavy jars and will want only those types of foods, making it hard to get her to take fresh foods. There are organic foods on the market with only the ingredients that you would use in them, which I strongly recommend. Remember the ingredient list is in order of quantity, the top item being the greatest amount and the last item being the least amount.

If you would like some help with weaning or breaking childrens habits, just use the Services page!

Back