Weaning

How will you know when your baby is ready to be weaned? Babies who are ready to be weaned generally have reached at least 17 weeks of age, and are generally double their birth weight. If your baby was premature you will need to calculate when they WOULD have been 17 weeks old had they gone to full term and use this date as your starting point

New recommendations suggest that you should exclusively breast feed your baby until he or she is 26 weeks old, but some parents feel that their baby is ready for weaning before this age. If you think that your baby is ready for being weaned contact your health visitor for advice. It is not a good idea to wean your baby too early as their digestive systems are still immature and developing.

Signs that your baby may be ready include
Waking in the night for a feed when they have previously slept through
Going for shorter periods of time between feeds
Stuffing their hands in their mouths and chewing on them

How do I begin weaning?
First choose a sensible time, when you are not having to dash out and when you are feeling nice and relaxed. Sterilize a very small pot (the lid off your baby’s bottle is ideal for this) make up some baby rice with a little breast or formula milk. It should be quite runny so it slips easily down your babies throat! Offer your baby half his or her breast or bottle feed, and then a spoonful of baby rice. Finish off with the rest of the milk feed.

For the rest of the day offer milk feeds as usual. Over a period of a few days you can increase the amount of baby rice offered (take it slowly, one teaspoon one meal, maybe two the next, don’t give them huge amounts at first!)
Once they have worked out how to take the baby rice from the spoon and are comfortable with that, you can start offering different purees such as pureed apple, carrot, parsnip, sweet potato etc. Try each different food a few times (unless obviously you get some kind of a reaction to it in which case stop and get medical help!)

Making your own purees is fairly straightforward. Simply simmer the fruit or vegetable in a little water until soft enough to puree. If you like your own foods to be fairly al dente (crunchy) you might have to cook them for a tiny amount longer than you would normally do or you are going to struggle to get the food to puree. However do not OVERCOOK food, it still needs to retain vitamins. YOu can save puree in ice cube trays (or if you have more than one child in slightly larger pots) so that you can provide simple ready made food without having to buy jars etc. You can buy recipe books to show you some great ideas on baby foods to make at home, but often your baby at this stage prefers simple single tastes, blended to a smooth puree. If you think that your puree is a little bit thick you can always add a little cooled boiled water or some breast or formula milk to make it more runny.

Moving on from purees
Once your baby reaches around 7 months of age you will need to think about offering a wider range of foods, and will need to begin offering finger foods and foods that are more lumpy to encourage the chewing mechanism.

When offering finger foods always stay close by your child as they may at first choke.
Make your babies foods more lumpy by giving them less time in the blender than usual.

Finger foods are anything suitable that can be held in your babies fingers. There are plenty of proprietary foods on the market today. You could also offer them anything that is fairly easy to chew that they are unlikely to choke on.

By the time your baby is a year old he or she should be drinking from a beaker (bottles should not be used after one year old if at all possible) A one year old child should also be eating pretty much what the rest of the family are eating, finely chopped. Avoid using salt and sugar in your family food

Drinks
From 6 months old you should be fairly safe giving your child tap water without having to boil it first (unless you have problems with your water supply or are abroad in which case it makes sense to boil it)
Continue giving breast or formula milk so that they are getting at least a pint of milk a day. From 6 months old you are ok to give them cows milk in cooking but not as a drink.

Use whole milk until they are two years old when it is ok to give them semi-skimmed. Do not give them skimmed milk until they are 5 years old.

Try to limit the amount of sugary drinks you offer, water is kinder to teeth as it is not as acidic. Even no-added-sugar drinks are still fairly bad for a young childs teeth (and often contain more additives than necessary) so try to limit the use of these if at all possible.

Disclaimer: Any advice you take you do so because you believe in your own mind that it is right for you and you do so completely at your own risk. Always get immediate medical help if you have any health concerns.

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