Weaning: Ready, Set, Go!

This post was written by Specialist Paediatric Dietician Raphaella who can be found over at www.latchtoladle.com, your one stop shop for weaning and feeding advice.

Looking at when to start weaning?

The National advice is to start weaning at 6 months and not before 17 weeks. You may be advised by your GP or Health Visitor to start before 6 months if your little one has reflux or a higher risk of an allergic reaction.

Signs to look our for that baby is ready to be weaned

-Is your baby able to hold their neck and head up unsupported for at least ten minutes?

-Does your baby show good hand-eye-mouth coordination? Are they bringing toys up to their mouth and chewing on them?

-Has your baby lost their tongue thrust? (Not all babies have a prominent tongue thrust. If they do, we need to wait for that to stop before progressing with weaning)

If you can answer yes to the three above points then you are good to go!

General advice when progressing with weaning

• 1st and second week: Introduce bitter vegetables once a day – combination of puree and finger foods (lunchtime tends to be best)
• 3rd and 4th week: Progress to two meals per day (breakfast and lunch) and start to introduce combinations of flavours with 2-3 ingredients per meal e.g. tuna pasta with sweetcorn, carrot porridge, potato and swede mash
• Weeks 5 onwards: Build up to three meals per day with lots of combinations of flavours. Use herbs to flavour food and introduce allergens right from the get go! Check out www.latchtoladle.com for lots more advice on introducing in allergens and meal ideas

Already started weaning?

Once you’ve started weaning, you’ll realise just how much fun it can be! Although equally frustrating at times! A good technique from early on is to offer meals in different environments to add to the mealtime experience for little ones. This may be picnics, eating outside and food on the go too!

So, what foods are good to take out and about?

• Bread sticks
• Soft fruit
• Puffs and dry cereal
• Soft vegetable sticks
• Cooked pasta shells
• Avocado slices
• Pinwheels (always a Mum fave!)
• Hard boiled egg slices
• Cheese cubes
• Chickpeas
• Rice cakes with nut butter

How can you make weaning run more smoothly?

When it comes to weaning, like lots of things when babies are developing, there are good and bad days. Weaning is a learning process. Some days your little one will gobble up their scrambled egg on toast and other days they’ll throw it all on the floor.

Where possible, try and eat together as a family.”

Little ones learn so much from you from how you eat, to using cutlery, to pacing at mealtimes too. Try and avoid distractions at mealtimes like tablets and TVs and limit mealtimes where possible to 10-15 minutes maximum – they’ll soon get bored after that!

The main thing is to try and be positive and praise good eating behaviours and ignore the negative ones where you can…!

Take lots of photos along your weaning journey as it really does fly by!

Here at Bump to Baby we often get asked, what foods should I be feeding my baby? So here, Specialist Pediatric Dietician Raphaella from Latch to Ladle offers advice on the variety of foods to offer to your weaning baby here.