Overwhelmed by the thought of weaning, purées or baby led?
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Be reassured babies have a very good gag reflex, if youre feeling unhappy, you can see about a baby first aid course, it's well worth doing. I went to the health visitor class/course thing and they recommended this site, I'll send a link to the direct page but the while website is full of good stuff ( https://www.firststepsnutrition.org/eating-well-infants-new-mums) you can download a whole booklet on what to give and how to give/prepare it, it'll ask for a donation but you don't have to give one I tried to follow a mixture of babyled weaning and puree, the first month he hated it, I tried to do the green veg like they advised and he didn't eat anything. When he did start eating he preferred finger foods over puree so I just let him decide and we've done more baby led weaning, he eats exactly the same as me now. The solid starts app is great for how to prepare the baby led weaning stuff.
Try not to worry to much and remember at the start it's all about them learning textures, they don't eat much and thats ok.
we did BLW! my daughter never choked once. they will gag a lot when they’re first learning, it can look/sound alarming but it’s not a bad thing! if you do want to do BLW i highly recommend the solid starts app
We started at 6 months and her first taste was a green veg puree, however we quickly went into BLW with the odd puree here and there! She's now 9 months and doing really well, and has never choked. She's gagged, but that's a good thing as they're supposed to gag x
I started with purees. Then went lumpy purees and now we have chunky food and finger foods at nearly 11 months. She doesn't like certain textures but likes the taste so those foods I still puree and we are working on textures. I am a bit funny over textures so it doesn't surprise me at all. Mine has coughed up with some difficulty solid foods. But she loves to shove far too much into her mouth which doesn't help. She will have toast in each hand and try to put both in type of thing
My doctor suggested using an app called solid starts to help and my husband got us a life vac to use for chocking just in case
Gagging is a part of their learning process with new foods, so don't get too overwhelmed about that. Just brush up on baby cpr and have some Tylenol on standby for introducing allergens. But just like the others say, start with purees or baby cereal. Towards the beginning, you really only need them to get used to the idea of eating, so the maximum amount you want to do is a tablespoon once a day. Rotate flavors so they get exposed to new tastes. My ped recommended veggie, veggie, fruit. But also make sure you aren't doing too much baby cereal because you can back up their system as it's learning to process more than milk. If you think baby is having trouble going poo, remember the P fruits: Pears, Plums, Peaches, and Prunes. They're all diuretics but not so much that baby gets blow outs every half hour. Hope this helped!
MY baby is 7 months he's still mostly on purees I started purees at 4 months. He has now had other things like pancake,soup, mashed potatoes, chicken. I'm still scared but it gets a little easier after you see he doesn't choke on his first food.
We did a bit of both - I mostly followed Charlotte Stirling-Reed's book How to Wean Your Baby, and I used solid starts, and I actually really enjoyed the process. As everyone else says they will gag as they've never had solid food before, but my little one loved playing with all the different textures of food.
I would stick to a combination of purées and finger food. 6-7 months I did just purées/ porridge/ very mashed up fruit like banana etc. but I would let her play with a few melty puffs so she was getting the hang of feeding without me panicking too much about choking. I used this month to introduce the allergens too. So I’d mix a tiny bit of peanut butter into her porridge then increase the amount over a few days. I let her have a tiny bit of egg then 7 months+ I started to introduce things like banana pancakes mashed up, really soft broccoli florets as this can be quickly mashed if you feel uncomfortable with how he’s eating the floret (safe to give him the whole thing to chew on though) At 7.5 months I introduced “finger foods” as in strips of toast, strips of omelette, strips of pancakes, banana fingers etc. At 8.5-9 months I had to stop serving finger shaped strips as she was biting too much off and cut everything into tiny bite size pieces and we’re still here at 10 months! X
Hey! My baby is almost 7 months now, and we’ve been weaning for about a month. If you’re feeling anxious about choking, starting with purées is a great way to ease into it. It helps your baby get used to new textures. For example, you can offer puréed broccoli alongside a steamed piece of broccoli for them to explore. Just make sure it’s soft enough for them to squish. You’ll be able to tell if your baby is enjoying it, so try not to stress too much. Some babies take a little longer to get into solids, and that’s completely normal. Trust your instincts—mums always know their babies best!