It is now recommended that you wait until your baby is six months of age before starting to wean and introduce any solid food into their diet. Our baby seemed to be needing something extra from the age of about 18 weeks. (17 weeks is the minimum recommended age to introduce any solids)
Weaning at Six Months
It was a difficult decision to make, as all literature and also the health care visitor have to now say that you should wait until the baby is six months old before weaning. Our baby started waking more often in the night, and also went from having breast milk every four hours back to every two hours through the day. We decided this was a clear sign that our baby needed to have something extra in her diet. Still the health visitor recommended giving the baby formula milk on top of her breast milk and holding her out until six months!
We have always breast fed our baby, and decided that a more natural approach to solving her hunger was to start giving her a little solid food. The decision to start weaning was the best that we made! Within a week she was a lot more settled and happier than she’d ever been. It also seemed like a natural progression too, from breast milk to food – the idea of introducing formula just to satisfy some medical opinion seemed wrong.
Useful weaning food
To start with we gave our baby a little baby rice mixed with breast milk. She only had a couple of spoonfuls to start with, but soon decided she liked it and wanted more! It was hard to know how much to give her in the beginning. Were we giving her too much, or not enough? But we soon decided that she would tell us when she was full or if she was still hungry, and sure enough she did. When she is full, she just closes her mouth and turns her head, showing no interest whatsoever, and when she is still hungry she is like a sparrow in the nest with her mouth opened wide and wanting more!
Her weaning started with just a small meal at lunchtime. We continued this for about three weeks before introducing a second meal, which was breakfast. Within two weeks of introducing breakfast she went on to also having dinner. So by the age of six months she was having three meals a day. She is now nearly seven months old and also has a pudding after her meal! She seemed to grow stronger and more alert in leaps and bounds too, learning new skills and laughing at everything.
Vegetables
We started her on vegetables very early on in her weaning. Mixing them with baby rice to start with and then introducing them on their own. Butternut squash, sweet potato, carrot, parsnip, apples, pears and bananas were her first favourites. Every couple of days we would introduce something new. Roasted red peppers soon became a real favourite! We would only introduce new foods to her at lunchtime in case it didn’t agree, that way we wouldn’t be kept awake all night with a belly ache. After about six weeks we decided to have each vegetable served individually on her plate instead of mixed together, so that she could experience the different flavours on their own, and also mixed in a variety of combinations.
Other foods
From the age of six months we started giving her bread, dairy, meat and eggs. So far our daughter loves just about everything we have introduced to her. She chews on a crust with vegemite, or bread sticks, and loves pureed pasta dishes and a beef and orange casserole that we tried. She is a little unsure of fish, and has only started eating mashed potato with cheese sauce on top!
We obviously kept up with the breast-feeding whilst introducing the solids to our baby. She has basically decided herself when she needs breast milk through the day. She soon dropped her lunchtime milk feed, but has only recently dropped her mid morning and afternoon milk feed at seven months old. It is recommended that babies should at this age still be having at least 500mls of breast or formula milk along with their solid food. Because we are breast feeding, it has been a concern as to how much milk she is taking, but because she is still having a good milk feed first thing in the morning, last thing at night and also still through the night, we figure she is still getting enough. We worked out that when expressing, we get approx 100mls from each breast, so based on this she is still getting at least 600mls approx a day.
Useful equipment:
The only equipment that we purchased for weaning was a hand held blender. We have managed to get by without a mouli, although it would have come in handy when trying to get the stringy fibres from spinach etc. We steamed all of our own vegetables, pureed them and then froze them in ice cube trays. The cubes could then be easily emptied into plastic bags and kept for up to eight weeks if they lasted that long! We have only recently bought some of the canned baby custards to add a little variety into our baby’s pudding selection!
From the beginning we offered cooled, boiled water from a training cup for our baby to drink with her meals. At first she didn’t really drink much, but she now really enjoys water, and on occasions diluted juice.
Constipation!
We did notice when we first introduced solids our baby became quite constipated. We panicked at first thinking “oh no we’ve introduced her to solids too early!”, but the health visitor pointed out that this happens to all babies when they are first introduced to solids, and not to worry.
A couple of things that seemed to help with the constipation were spinach, and stewed prunes mixed with dried apricots and an apple and pureed. We also added a little brown sugar to her water, which seemed to interest her more, as the more water they can drink the better it is for their digestive system. She didn’t need sugar in her water for long.
We are happy with the progress of weaning our baby, and are glad we introduced the solids to her when we did, as she clearly needed it. So far she has enjoyed almost all of the foods that we have introduced to her, and the ones she hasn’t we have tried her on again a few weeks later. She has had excellent weight gain and seems to be progressing in leaps and bounds (almost literally!)
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