Bwyd Time!

Its been a funny week here in Cardiff as we faced the prospect of introducing First Tastes to my daughter Tegan, and seeing how she would react to having solids for the first time. Teg has just turned 5 months, and the tell tale signs were there apparently – her weight gain had dropped a little, she was waking at regular intervals in the night (up to three or four times), and yet I was a little startled with how soon this all felt. These months have really flown by – how can she be eating real food already?

So with some handy tips from friends I launched into the Stage 1 weaning this week, and found it extremely therapeutic to be steaming and mushing fruits and veg. I’m not a natural Nigella in the kitchen, but this I can do it seems! We’ve now got trays of fruit and veg in our limited fridge top freezer!

I’ve discussed and laughed with friends about this whole experience; as one mum confessed she served a baffled husband the sweet potato and parsnip puree as a side dish one evening – “its what we call ‘potsh’ in Welsh” she tried to justify – “maybe don’t puree our dish next time”, commented her husband!

The first two days of sweet potato and carrot were met here with Tegan’s mouth firmly clamped shut – she was very resistant! I didn’t push the matter despite wanting my puree’ing excitement to be met by a hungry, mouth open baby. Happily on day 3, we had a little breakthrough –  some homemade apple puree was met with some tentative sups from the spoon, a bit of giggling at my encouraging and stupid munching noises, and we were away.

Yesterday, Day 5 she took about 4 tiny spoonfuls, and today, day 6, she’s taken the sweet potato and carrot puree at lunch and tea – hurray! Its so exciting to see her discovering new tastes, and new abilities of moving food around her mouth. I can’t quite believe how exhilarating the whole experience is. But as you can see – I’m probably still a bit keener than poor little Teg…

I’m keen to keep building on the experiences and tastes, and indeed have found the Annabelle Karmel book to be the way I want to go, alongside baby led weaning, where she gets to play with the food at the same time. I’ve yet to read up a bit more about this side of things, and i’ll let you know as we continue on our journey of discovery.

Here’s a few helpful comments again from Facebook from a few mums who’ve been there and done that! Thanks to everyone who are keeping me on the straight and narrow!

• Sally Phillips Nothing like home cooking Beth, Owen will eat anything now. 🙂
• Gwenllian Hughes Forget the mush. Try baby-led weaning. It’s brilliant and no faffing with blenders or jars of purée. It worked brilliantly here! I’ve got a book about it if you’re interested? x
• Rachael Haggan Get in a massive supply of bibs x
• Emma Laird We are working from the annabel karmel complete baby and toddler meal planner all the recipes I’ve made so far are winners! Think I might start on a baby food diet!!!
• Rachael Pascoe Baby-led weaning is the way to go Bethan, Inés is 8 months now and refuses to be spoon fed, I just give her a plate of whatever me and Gaz are eating and just let her go crazy. It’s amazing to watch her pick up food and feed herself, she eats everything!!
• Elizabeth Parbutt Hi Beth, depends how hungry she is – i found pure baby-led was a bit torturous for Sam as he couldn’t handle the food that well right away nor eat as much of it as he would like – so he just screamed from hunger! What worked for us was a combo of spoon fed alongside finger food. And once she’s got going, don’t assume she’ll only want bland stuff – worth getting her started on a variety of flavours. Good luck, enjoy the mess!
• Fionna Allan i did a combo of both baby-led (easy if you have a routine) and ‘the other’ – basically made it up as i went along rather than feeling like i had to choose. elin is happy to eat anything and everything, so go with what you’re comfortable with and don’t feel like you have to choose one or the other … and you’ve seen elin eat 🙂