When I say weaning decisions I mean weaning onto solid foods! I bought a couple of books and followed many conversations about weaning solids with breastfed babies. Is it any different? No, not really. What does seem to be different in opinions is WHEN to start solids. Our pediatrician said at Aviana’s 4 month wellness visit that she could start solids from then. She should first try with oatmeal cereal, then puréed orange veggies, then green veggies. But then there is also guidance from various professional bodies that say to wait til 6 months. Plus they should have all the physical signs they are ready to start solids. Kellymom.com says this:

So we made an informed decision and decided to wait until after 5 months and see her development. We thought she definitely wasn’t ready before that. When I got back from my work trip she was just over 5 months and met all the key milestones, so we tried oatmeal baby cereal. And she really enjoyed it. 3 days later we tried carrot, then we flew to the UK so we did a bit more cereal mostly for convenience and to keep her in a routine, then she tried broccoli, which she wasn’t keen on, unsurprisingly, but when we mixed in with cereal she liked it. And that’s as far as we have got. 

We have had to change our routine a bit to make sure we eat with her. She wakes up, gets breast milk at 6am, we sit down for breakfast together after that and she gets the solids and a sippy cup of water (working on that still!) then I feed her breast milk again and pump because I always have a bit left over from the night. She then has regular breast milk at 4 hourly interval feeds til dinner. We are trying to sit down and eat at the same time – around 6pm. She then has bath and last feed of the day (usually just a top off), then she is away with the fairies for the night at 7pm. It’s a good routine That’s working well for all of us.

I spent a few hours making up purée cubes of various types…carrots, apples, squash, sweet potato, broccoli, spinach (home grown!!!) and blueberries. They all got frozen so are ready to whack on the microwave. Probably a couple of weeks worth of food.

Let me tell you – it’s messy and time consuming steaming and puréeing all of that! Having said that, it’s cheap and convenient. We anticipate trying baby led weaning when she hits 6 months so that’s probably a bit too much purée there (although we can add the purée to other foods such as the fruit we can mix in with yoghurt.)

I’m happy to listen to anyone’s views about when to start weaning. But the way we came to a decision about it was well informed. Having said that, it is tough to make that decision because of all the competing advice out there. All I know is that for now Aviana is enjoying the experience. ‘Food before one, just for fun’ is the mantra we are going to follow, then really we can’t go wrong!!! This is just the beginning…..