Advice and suggestions for starting your little ones on solid food. These are the weaning tips that I wish I’d known!
As a foodie with two tiny babies, weaning was a stage that I was super excited about. It was a chance to show my little ones the whole world of tastes out there.
I had beautiful visions of them peacefully enjoying a family meal with us, chowing down on carrot puree. Of course, as with most parenting things, the reality was a bit different. It mainly involved a LOT of chopping and a LOT of picking up food from the floor.
All that said, I still loved the whole process. It’s a chance to start your children on a food journey that will hopefully lead them into being healthy children and eventually, adults.
As you may remember, I’ve been working with Organix and this month they asked me for my tips for weaning. Those things I learned along the way that I wish I’d know when I started. Here they are..
My Weaning Tips
- Don’t beat yourself up about not making every last puree or finger food yourself. I started off weaning, frantic that I must make every last morsel to pass their lips with my own fair hand. Yes, it’s great to give them a home cooked, balance diet with a variety of tastes. However, exhausting yourself in the process doesn’t help anyone. Using some excellent quality, pre-made products occasionally can take the pressure off the whole process.
- Try finger foods and purees. Don’t get hung up on whether you’re doing Baby Led Weaning or spoon feeding. I found it worked really well to spoon feed (so I knew they had full, happy tummies) but also give them food for them to pick up and explore at each meal. Remember, it’s about what’s best for you and your baby, not just what a parenting book says. How about offering finger foods as dippers for purees?
- Try some interesting flavours. Don’t always avoid strong or unusual tastes, my babies, surprisingly, seemed to really enjoy them (or be interested at least!). Things like add cinnamon to their apple puree or mild curry powder to their parsnip puree. These are great ways of exploring tastes and flavours.
- Any long foods, like breadsticks or Organix Carrot Stix are brilliant for encouraging self feeding, because of the shape, little ones don’t need quite as much aim to get them straight into their mouth. A great way to practise.
- All that said? Don’t get too hung up on self feeding. They will do it when they are ready and no amount of handing them a spoon and worrying that they aren’t do it will make it happen. Just let them have a go often and eventually they’ll get the hang of it.
- Suction bowls are one of my best buys for weaning. We used the Unbeliveabowls (available from Amazon) and I can’t recommend them highly enough. Before those, bowls were being thrown or dropped all the time. They gave the babies confidence to learn to spoon from them and definitely helped my sanity.
I hope those tips are useful if you’re embarking upon weaning soon or are in the midst of it. It does get easier (and less messy) and it’s so worth it to try and get them to try a variety of foods early on. My now 4 year olds (FOUR? Where does the time go?!) will try most things and I’m convinced it’s because of the effort we made in those early days to include as many tastes as possible.
Organix have heaps of advice and support for weaning (not to mention brilliant food products to support you of course) you can find more information on the weaning section of their website.
PS. The highchairs we used, which I cannot recommend highly enough are BabyBjorn Highchairs
Disclosure: This is a post sponsored by Organix although all opinions are my own and the diet of our little ones it’s a cause I feel strongly about. This post also contains affiliate links.
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