Wednesday 15 May 2013

I did it! Now onto food ...

I took my own advice and have had a couple of days break (albeit with one baby in tow) but I tell you something, it certainly helps to rejuvinate!

So, where am I up to?  Oh, the weaning bit - this is seriously my favourite bit of new babies - honestly, the organisation gets me very excited!!  Things you need?  Ummm, a good book with some ideas for receipes (I'm a huge Annabel Karmel fan), a local shop and a soup 'joojzer' or whatever they're called - you know, one of those soup blender things you put in the saucepan and 'joojz' your soup, an ice cube tray, small freezer bags and some small freezer friendly pots!  Don't worry about all those moulis, special weaning blenders or such like - waste of money!  Oh, and a pen and notepad if you want to be really anal about it all ... (I went as far as a spreadsheet but don't expect others to - as you can tell, I was totally ready to get back to work and used this to channel my brain instead!) ...

Start small and simple with apples, pears and sweet potato - cook (don't want to plagerise Annabel, but I assume it's the same anywhere - steam the sweet potato or cook the apple/pears by peeling, chopping and putting a tiny bit of water over them, then joojz).  Spoon into your ice cube trays and put in freezer.  The next morning, once frozen, tip each fruit/veg into seperate bags and label up.  Then you have a heap of apple, pear and sweet pot to see you through the next week.  Takes about half an hour to do all this from peeling to getting into the freezer.  Piece of piss - I promise you!

We started weaning no 1 at 4 months and 1 week (he was seriously huge and starving all the time - felt wrong waiting any longer) and no 2 at 5 months bang on.  Both showed signs of being ready to wean - staring at us eating (like seriously staring - made us all feel a bit uneasy!), grabbing at spoons/food and finishing bottles but could have more.  Another sign is starting to wake at night for feeds again - first did this but second didn't. 

I reckon a good place to start is baby porridge - try 2 teaspoons of porridge (mixed with boiled water) first.  If a success, repeat for 2 more days (I'd do this at the 11am feed - give a third of the bottle to take the edge of the hunger, try porridge then rest of the bottle).  After 3 days move onto apple, then pear then sweet potato.  Oh, maybe I should have said at the start - I'm not much of a 'baby-led weaning' person - why toture your hungry child with holding but not actually eating food??!  How much nutrition are they seriously going to get from sucking on a stick of pepper???  Although I do like the notion of pureed food followed by some food-holding-practice - so maybe baby-lead your munchkin to food after you've staved off their hunger!

Right, more on this tomorrow ...

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