Baby Diaries: A Guide for New Mothers Part Seven – Weaning Your Baby

Weaning by no means signals an end to baby needing milk. I have an eleven year old who still has milk at breakfast and a mug full at night. Weaning simply means an end to breast or formula milk as the exclusive diet. Your baby will now be requiring different foods in addition to the milk he/she is having.

There is no set-in-stone age at which an infant must start eating semi-solid foods. Only the parents know their baby, and only they can decide when to start. The guide age to begin weaning baby is between four to six months. My daughters were weaned at about five months old, but my son was ready the day he hit the four-month mark. They were all breastfed, but I knew by the time he was three months old that my body would not be able to sustain him for much longer. He needed something else along with his milk because he was much too hungry.

Points to note when weaning begins

Weaning is a huge milestone in baby’s life (and in yours). It doesn’t work straight away and may take many attempts before baby agrees to let you put something that’s not milk into her/his mouth, so be prepared for this. Obviously, hungry babies may be easier to feed with semi-solids than babies who can’t be bothered too much about food. Here are some notes about weaning that you should pay attention to.

• Choose a moment when both baby and you are relaxed. This will take care and time. Keep in mind that the first few ‘lessons’ are not about any actual eating.
• Baby has to get used to a hard plastic spoon in his/her mouth, and to a strikingly different taste from what they’re used to, so give yourself and them a few rehearsals before any food gets past the oesophagus.
• Prop baby up with adequate support and be armed with tissues and a bib. Don’t try feeding when baby is very hungry because remember they do not know that this new ‘event’ is meant to be a form of food and feeding. This new experience is just something they’re forced to do when all they want is to be fed. Try feeding in-between feeds until baby makes the connection between the food and feeding from it.
• Remember to offer tiny amounts and give your baby enough time to suck the food from the end of the spoon. Keep in mind that it takes a totally different skill to swallow semi-solid foods than it takes to swallow milk sucked from a nipple or a teat.
• Don’t switch to pasteurised milk just because baby is now eating semi-solids. Baby still needs breast or formula milk as their staple feed until they’re about a year old.
• If you’re aware of family history of gluten intolerance, continue to breast feed and don’t give foods containing gluten to baby before he/she is six months old.
• If you start semi-solids too early, baby’s immature digestive system may react adversely to the new foods, giving way to all sorts of food intolerances and allergies as he/she grows older. On the other hand, if you start too late, vitamins and minerals stored in your infant’s body before birth will have diminished, leaving, him/her weak and with vital organs (like the brain) that are unable to grow and develop properly.
• Babies, like all children will have a personal taste. They may not like semi-solids the first time it’s offered to them. This will change, however, so don’t give up on them. Make sure that they have a varied diet at the age where they’re not necessarily looking to see what’s on their plate. Doing it this way will invariably mean less work for you later on. As they get older, offer them foods with different textures because many times the taste may be fine, but the texture of the food, if strange, will be a turn off for your infant. It’s something they have to get used to.

Weaning tools

Personally, I think that all the weaning equipment out there are more or less the same. They all compete with each other, but the manufacturers have all got to operate under approved standards. Buy what you can afford, but make sure that they’re all cleaned well after use. It’s improper and unwise to leave baby’s crockery and cutlery in the sink with the rest of the washing up.

Here are some of my thoughts on weaning tools.

• Don’t stock up on too many. Get a good set of bowl, cup and spoon and use them every time. This help baby to relate it to food and feeding.
• You will also need among other things, a small saucepan, a blender, a sieve, and a small grater. If you can afford it, it may be easier to have separate equipment for you infant. This way you can be sure that there is no interaction with anything spicy or half-cooked etc., which you may have prepared for yourself.
• Babies up to six months old should have all their feeding equipment sterilized. Also, remember that things like honey and half cooked eggs which may be okay for older children, may not be suitable for children under six months old.

Weaning foods

Obviously, the very first food to introduce to your baby after an exclusive diet of milk, is something that doesn’t have too distinct a taste. Baby rice is a popular choice because it can be easily mixed with formula or breast milk without baby taking too much notice of a different taste. Already, baby has to deal with a new experience of swallowing semi solids and eating from a spoon. You want the added factor of different tastes to be kept at a safe minimum at the beginning. Other popular foods include the following pureed foods and porridges: cornmeal, potatoes, a banana, sago, unsweetened yoghurt etc.

• There is no need to add sugar or salt to baby’s purees.
• Introduce foods slowly and one at a time. This is to give baby a chance to get used to the different textures and tastes, but also for you to be able to gauge potential food intolerances or allergies.
• Avoid boiling vegetables to make purees. Steam or cook in the microwave to ensure that you don’t lose vital nutrition.
• If you use commercially prepared foods, don’t feed your young infant from the jar as it is unlikely he/she will finish it at one go. To avoid waste, dish out a few spoons full into a feeding bowl and put the remainder into the fridge. Discard as and when the manufacturer suggests. It doesn’t take much to make your baby ill.
• Pay attention to how baby reacts to lukewarm and cold (refrigerated) foods. My friend’s baby refused foods that were heated up, but thrived on cold foods. Mine were just the opposite. I can’t say if this is due to what baby is accustomed to, or if this is what comes naturally to them. I always gave my infants lukewarm foods, so maybe they were just used to it.
• If you use a microwave oven to reheat baby’s food, check and recheck the temperature before feeding it to your infant. Foods heated in microwaves continue to cook (and heat) even after you’ve removed them from the oven.

Play around safely with all kinds of purees and soft, mashed foods until you’ve found things that your infant likes. As we said before, there is no hard and fast rule as to how to feed, and what to give your baby where weaning is concerned. Just make sure you properly sterilise their equipment, give them a balanced diet, and offer foods suitable to their age group.

In our next article in this series, we will look at food development and how to make sure that both baby and mother are eating a balanced meal. Read the entire series by visiting my blog the Relationship Supermarket. Find them under the section entitled, ‘Relationship with your baby.’