Follow your babys needs (Baby Food Hints/Tips)

Member Name: michaelvelvick

Product:	Baby Food Hints/Tips
Date:	26/08/08 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: weaning can be fun

Disadvantages: It can be hard to know when the right time to start your baby on food is

As a chef I was really looking forward to weaning our baby, I imagined lots of wonderful dishes I could cook up for you son however it did not turn out quite as I expected.
The health visitor told us that the baby needed to be weaned at 6 months which shocked me because my mother told me it was 3 or 4 months and I had been devising lots of yummy recopies in my head ready to start weaning by 4 months.
6 months came and went, when I asked my partner why we were not weaning yet she said the baby does not need to wean, he will tell us when he is ready.
Our baby did not start to wean till he was near to 8 months old, up till then he was exclusively breastfed. I got out the pots and pans one day ready to start making up batches of food only to be told that we only needed a small amount of puree as he was now older than many babies are when they wean so would progress to lumpy and solid food more quickly.
I began with plain carrots, peas, parsnip and that sort of thing, also home made yogurt, I think the yogurt was his favourite and still is.
I have never really been able to make up all the concoctions I had in my head because before I knew it he was grabbing from our plates and we then began giving him exactly the same as we were eating most of the time. My partner says this is called baby led weaning.
We have found the easiest way to wean is to take a bit from our own meals ( much to my disappointment - I wanted to make babyfood ! ) , in the first stages of weaning you just need to blend some veg in the water it was cooked in , then you go on to mash with a fork instead of blending as this will be more lumpy and help the baby to learn to eat new textures, then finger foods such as well cooked carrot, biscuits etc then the baby will go on to eat pretty much everything the rest of the family eats - One day I had been eating a curry in front of the tv and had gone to fetch a drink, when I came back, my son had pulled himself up on the table and was scooping curry into his mouth, at that point I realised my partner was right, a baby will tell you when he is ready for new food !
Our baby has never eaten baby jars, we have nothing against them but there is so much cooking in our home that there has never really been the need for jars. I also like to know what my family is eating and it puts me at ease knowing that there is nothing artificial going into our childrens diets.
I have learnt that the one thing you need to remember about weaning and baby food is that every baby is different an you can not always go by what other people say, you have to follow what you baby wants and needs.

Summary: A baby knows when it is time to start solids