Our Weaning Journey – A Guide

For most parents weaning can be quite difficult and overwhelming. Either because they don’t know how to start or when to start. As a guidance weaning should not start earlier than 17 weeks and not later than 26 weeks. Normally breastfed babies start getting solids around the 6 months mark. Some parents might even decide with the baby-led weaning method which can get quite messy. It’s up to everyone though.

Matthew is a bottle fed baby.
The first time he ever tried solids was Christmas Day 2012. He was only 4 months then. I went with the safest option which was baby rice. We tried giving him a bit around 2pm. So just in the middle of the day. I think that’s the best time, in case his tummy can’t take it. And a few hours later, yes you guessed it, his tummy didn’t agree with it.

This picture means a lot because it was my mum feeding him his first spoon ♥

So then I decided to wait another while before introducing solids again. This was mid January so he would have been nearly 5 months.

Lunch time: The way I did it was, give him a bit of milk first, then food and then the rest of his bottle. Solid options he got were carrot, pear and apple puree. I always made them in a batch and froze them so I could take them out the night before as I needed them. These were the pots I used from Clevemama. I found them brilliant. Later on he got mashed banana.

At this stage he would have been on 4 bottles.

Breakfast: After introducing solids at lunch time we then went onto breakfast. I can only remember very vague what he had. I think it started off with Ready Brek and Rusks mixed with formula. Eventually he got weaned off it and we used full fat milk. Sometimes I even mixed a bit of fruit pot into it or he had that on its own. This was when he was 7 months old.

Normally  he would have had 8oz bottles, once the food came in, I slowly decreased the amount and I think with every meal he just got 4oz of milk. He was on Aptamil which is a quite filling formula apparently anyway.

Dinner: I am not quite the person who looks like to cook so Matthew never really got home cooked pureed meals off me when the dinner weaning came in. I pretty much always got the Hipp jars. Everyone has different opinions on them. Matthew loved them. He started going to creche/nursery when he was 5 months old so he would have got delicious homemade meals there. That way I wasn’t worried at all when he had jars for his dinner.

Dropping Bottles:… The first bottle I moved him off was breakfast as he always had a rich breakfast and there was no need for milk anymore. He got water in his cup instead.
Second bottle was the dinner one, third one lunch time one and eventually when he was just about to turn 2 we weaned him off the bedtime bottle. I tried him with cows milk but he just wasn’t a fan of it so I removed it completely. As a replacement he gets a small snack like Liga or Breadstick around 7pm before he goes to bed at 8pm.

His first finger food must have been around 11/12 months mark. He is a great eater when it comes to vegetables. Not a big a fan of plain chicken or potato. Not served from me for sure but he does eat it in creche the little monkey.

Your checklist:

• High Chair (only if baby can sit up, normally from 6 months)
• Bowls
• Weaning Spoons
• Bibs
• First Sippy Cup
• Freezing Pots or Ice Cube Trays
• Hand Blender or Food Processor

This is only a small guideline. It is totally up to you how you start off and proceed with it.
I’d like to know your weaning experience. Leave me a link below if you have blogged about it in the past.