How to get started with weaning

When babies are born, they have a suck reflex for feeding, which is needed for easy access to milk from a breast or a bottle teat. When solid food is introduced, they need to learn how to keep their tongue in their mouth and how to move food around in such a way that makes it easy to swallow.

At first, you may find that food just gets pushed out of the mouth by the tongue pushing forward as if your baby is milk feeding. Try to be patient and allow for time to learn. Sitting and eating with your baby so that they can watch you is a great way for them to learn and there are lots of other benefits to sitting together too! Research worldwide shows¹ that the simple act of a family mealtime can improve fruit and vegetable intake, improve connection between family members, reduce depression, and even improve academic achievement during school years.

Try not to compare your baby with others; all babies eat different amounts. Providing your baby seems happy after meals and is growing well you don’t need to worry about how much they are eating. We talk more about volumes of food in our article HERE.

It is recommended that at the start of weaning you spend a week or two giving green vegetables. This is because research shows that babies who are given bitter tastes before sweet may eat vegetables better during toddlerhood. Knowing how difficult it can be to get a toddler to eat vegetables, we think this is a step worth taking!

Breast milk and formula₁ are both sweet and babies are born with well-developed sweet taste buds. If we start the weaning journey with sweet flavours, this can just reinforce your baby’s preference and result in a much sweeter tooth. Unfortunately, we don’t have much in the way of green vegetables in our range but you can puree your own at home or offer them as finger foods. Any green vegetables will work – courgettes, spinach, broccoli etc. White potatoes and aubergine also count as bitter vegetables so you can use these too.

To puree your own green vegetables, you can steam a portion until cooked through then blend using whichever blender you are using at home. Add a little breastmilk, formula or cooled boiled water to get to a thick yoghurt consistency. If your baby is 6 months, you can serve these as finger foods too. Cut the vegetables into chip shape chunks about the size of your index finger and allow your baby to pick it up in their fist and eat it. To find out more detail about the safety of finger foods and how to offer them you can read the article HERE.

Increasing to three meals a day looks different for each baby. You don’t need to rush; it is far better to take your time and really adjust. You can read more about building to three meals in our article HERE.