Weaning – a month on – 3 meals a day, proteins and poos!

So you’ll know from our first update that we were taking things relatively slowly, I was happy to just try one meal a day for a while – we were also loosely following the #5stepweaningplan and working up to the final 2 steps of meat/alternative and then 3 meals a day.

But a week ago today, I took baby W to get weighed for the first time in about 6 weeks. At 6 and a half months, he weighed 16lb 3oz – all good but he had slipped every so slightly under the 25th percentile for the first time.

Nothing to worry about, but the health visitor suggested ramping up to 3 meals a day, and giving him some protein (meat/fish/egg) to make sure he didn’t slip down the growth chart any further. She was really happy with our initial approach to baby-led weaning but just wanted him to start actually consuming a bit more of the food instead of just nibbling on it 🙂

So, for a week now we’ve been having 3 meals a day – still very much finger-food led, but I have been spoon-feeding him a bit, when spoon-feeding him I try to guide the spoon towards his mouth and let him guide it in so that he still feels like he’s in control 🙂

So here’s some of the foods he’s had:

Finger foods

• Carrots
• Broccoli
• Banana
• Cucumber (he loves this – so easy to eat!)
• Rice cakes – his favourite food so far, I started with plain ones and also tried Organix apple ones – he loves both!
• Potato waffles
• Hard-boiled egg
• Plain omelette (SO much less messy than the hard-boiled egg!)
• Pasta – plain, and with some tomato sauce on it
• Avocado – he finds this too slippery to eat so I might just mash it up next time and pop it on a spoon… or on a rice cake?

On a spoon

• Flakes of cod mixed with sweet potato mash, and normal mash
• Yoghurt – I bought Rachel’s diary yoghurt as a) no added sugar b) they’re made in my hometown (Aberystwyth)
• Baby porridge – the only thing he hasn’t really liked so far! We tried it with some puree that Cow&Gate sent us and he definitely preferred it with the puree!
• A jar of lamb/sweet potato puree – due to our baby-led approach, I wasn’t going to bother with purees but seeing as we were sent some, I thought we might as well try it – we tried the meaty one to up his protein intake – and he quite liked it!
• Weetabix – this is our usual breakfast

Our learnings so far

• Now we’re pretty much past the gagging phase, we’re enjoying it! He puts most of the food in his mouth and I can tell by his weekly poo that he’s definitely swallowing more and more – it’s starting to get more solid – gross!!!!
• I think both find finger food more fun – it’s so cute watching him grab something and hold it in his fist while he munches on it – I gave him yoghurt the other day but he still had omelette in his fist which he would NOT let go!
• His favourite thing so far has been Rachel’s banana yoghurt – he was kicking his legs in excitement for this one!
• Our daily routine is out the window as having 3 meals a day probably takes about 2 hours of day in total (prep/eating/cleaning up)
• It’s nice to give him undivided attention for that time – obviously he needs to be supervised while he’s eating so it means proper quality time where I can’t do any chores and I make a point of not checking my phone!

Next steps

• I need to get better at eating with him – although when I do, I’ve finished mine in 2 mins while he obviously takes ages so I’m not sure if it really matters! (well practised from when he was younger and I had to snaffle my food down!)
• Meat! I want to give him meat but it seems so grown-up! Not quite sure if he’s ready for it – might practice with some more textures first??
• Water – I’ve kinda given up giving him the doidy cup with every meal, but every now and then I give him some water using it and ‘directing’ it into his mouth
• I’ll take him to get weighed next Thursday – hopefully he’s back on the curve 🙂

If you have any questions about baby-led weaning, I recently reviewed the ‘baby-led weaning: step by step’ book and will be interviewing the author next week – so leave a question here by Dec 1st if we can help at all!

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