Those First Weaning Steps

Written by Keelie Grindley for her blog, Spring Flower Mama.

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We started weaning Jaxon on to solids from the day he turned six months old.

With Jaxon having some reflux issues, people had asked me on numerous occasions if I was going to wean him early, however this is something I wouldn’t want to do. I have suffered with some horrendous stomach issues since I was a teenager, and the research I have done over the years is suggestive that it could very well be due to being weaned at four months old.

When bringing this up with the dietician, she explained that the reasoning behind the guidelines being not to wean until six months old is that research has shown that babies will very well be ready for weaning between four and six months old. Only there is an actual physical change in their digestive system, which makes their little stomachs capable of digesting food. Before this happens, food cannot easily or safely be digested. Research has shown that this physical change takes place after four months but before six months, however there is no way of telling when this has happened in any baby. For this reason, the line was drawn at 6 months old for safe weaning. She also went on to talk about how weaning early can cause baby problems, and usually these would be later on in life.

So, now the technical talk is over, how did I wean Jaxon?

Well, after a bit of research, I decided to start out with home made, organic vegetable purees and I followed the Ella’s Kitchen Weaning Guide – 14 Days of Veg. Apparently offering your baby different veggies for the first two weeks of weaning will give them a taste for the good stuff! I was given the book by a friend and it gave fourteen separate puree recipes to follow. I followed the guide and the order of veggies and Jaxon loved them all! They were really easy to make too. I just steamed or boiled the veg, (steaming is better as it preserves the nutrients better), popped it into the NutriBullet, added some water and blitzed the shizz out of it!

I bought some BPA free silicone ice cube trays from Amazon (Natures Little Cubes – Lovely bright colours available and really easy to pop the cubes out – £10.99, remember to always get BPA FREE!) and batch made the purees so I always had a good batch stored in the freezer. For the first fourteen days Jaxon ate a singular vegetable purée each day, but the next steps afterwards are when you can start mixing them up, so freezing the purees ahead and popping them into individual freezer bags made things a lot easier. Then I could just pop one of each out into his bowl and defrost.

So to start with, Jaxon only ate a few mouthfuls of each, except for potato, which is pretty typical seeing as his mum can’t get enough of carbs. Thankfully, he got a good taste for carrots, parsnips and spinach though, to name a few of his favourites!

I really recommend signing up to the Ella’s Kitchen Weaning Journey online, you get a free Weaning Wall Chart in the post, along with “The Tiny Tastebud Journey” – These are super fun and helpful. The tastebud journey tells you where to start and how to change the foods and textures etc as the months go by. We have ours on the wall in the kitchen and now Jaxon is a bit older, we have fun together sticking his favourite veg and fruit stickers onto the chart.

So there you have it. The beginning of Jaxons weaning journey, in a nutshell! We are a lot further ahead now, so I will be posting regular weaning and food blogs from now on!

If I could give any advice to anyone just starting out with weaning, I would definitely encourage you to just chill with it and don’t stress if your little one doesn’t take to the food straight away. We had to try certain foods with Jaxon over and over again, and now he loves them! And remember, food before one is for fun (it is important from 6 months according to the WHO as it develops their fine motor skills and digestive system, but milk should be their main source of nutrition, so food is a fun element of their diet). Expect mess and have fun with it! Its such an exciting time to see our little ones trying new foods and tasting new flavours!