Debating weaning my baby

Many mums don’t really want their babies to grow up and really want to have them return to the newborn stage.  I’ve never really been a baby person, although now I see really small newborns it does make me go ahh, which I’d never have done before having N.  But I’m loving seeing my baby develop and grow…he just becomes more like a little person, especially as he spends most of his time grinning & giggling at people.

One thing I’m getting jealous of is some of my NCT friends starting to wean their babies.  All the babies were born within 7ish weeks of each other, and 2/3 of them have started weaning them (generally on mush and baby rice) to help improve their sleeping again as they’ve started waking and fussing at normal feed times.

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Although N’s always been a hungry baby (he feeds every 2 hours in the day, sometimes more frequently), I really want to do Baby Led Weaning which means waiting as near to 6 months as possible.  Gill Rapley’s book Baby Led Weaning is pretty much the only one out there, and explains everything, but essentially instead of pureeing  everything and the baby learning to swallow before chewing, they go straight  to exploring pieces of food, learn to suck, chew and experiment, then chew before swallowing. 

It’s meant to create less fussy eaters as it’s all about playing & experimenting at their own pace rather than the parent feeding them.  Because they have to have developed their gag reflex and be able to pick food up and put it in their mouths, it needs to wait til 6 months.  They may not actually swallow and ‘eat’ for several months so it’s important they still get their same normal milk feeds.

However, it does mean waiting til 6 months you don’t have to worry about the non-dairy, non-meat, non-wheat rules that you would have to watch out for if weaning earlier.  It also means less preparation of mushing/pureeing, as they can just have non salted food from your plate and eat the same as the rest of the family.

At the moment N’s still satisfied with milk and apart from watching us eat isn’t showing any more interest in food, so think he’ll be able to go another month & a half til weaning.  But I can’t wait to start…it’ll be so exciting seeing him learning about food and trying new tastes.  It is going to be messy though, so not sure how my husband will cope as he’s such a stickler about table manners, and he’ll have to wait for a while before N will be using knife and fork and not throwing food around.

When did you start weaning your baby?