Baby-led

Tamsin is fast approaching 6 months and, given that she has taken to swiping at my food and tries at least once every mealtime to actually pick up and chew my plate (plus having all the other signs of readiness), we are starting to think it might be time to wean. I am absolutely not messing about with purees again – I spent months making lovely bright-coloured mushes for Maggie, freezing them in baby-sized cubes, defrosting them, poking at them with a spoon, sometimes smearing them about a bit…then throwing them away (the only puree-type thing she really enjoyed was a horrible green pond-slime like substance from a jar. Spinach and potato, I believe). Baby-led weaning is the way forward in this house.

Her highchair has arrived (it’s still in pieces – we so love flatpack) and tomorrow I am going to treat her to some new dishes and bibs as Maggie won’t want to share the former and the latter are frankly not fit for use. Then it will be all systems go!

I’ve already given her a few bits and pieces in the interests of being allowed to eat myself (I already eat chocolate in secret* but I do draw the line at consuming entire meals that way). Just what we were having anyway. She had a floret of cauliflower which she found very interesting until it made her sick. (This was perhaps not a very sensible starting point – whenever I eat cauli or broccoli it gives her a tummyache.) She did rather well with sticks of steamed courgette – sucked the soft seeds from the centre – and licked a soft carrot stick for ages. This morning, after extensive research and consultation with Karen, who I have appointed my BLW guru, she had a bit of my buttered crumpet, which was very tasty indeed. I don’t think she actually injested very much but it was thoroughly sucked and mushed and de-buttered.

I then decided that we should move away from food beginning with C (my mum thought I was following some sort of wacko new baby guru’s alphabetical weaning method) so when we had our dinner tonight she sucked some bits of pasta and a few slices of cooked apple – some of which disappeared so I assume she ate them! I can see the main problem is going to be providing enough food (or keeping my floor more sanitary): so much got dropped and had to be replaced – quickly, else she cried. Perhaps assembling the highchair will help with that.

*A couple of nights ago I went up to tuck M back into bed. I gave her a kiss and she said hmm….that smells of…chocolate! Caught in the act.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 9:41 pm and is filed under parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.