Baby Led Weaning Rosie – The first 2 weeks……….

2 Weeks to go……… Rosie is 5 ½ months old. She is unable to sit up on her own but she can hold her head really well. She is very interested in everything around her and is intently watching us when we eat.

She has been sitting in her bumbo and experimenting with holding her spoon. We like to sit her in her bumbo on our dining room table so that can see what we are doing. She looks desperate to have a go herself so roll on the 25^th March when she will be exactly 6 months old.

Rosie is exclusively breast fed and is still waking up at night. She is a big baby but she takes her milk really well going 4 hours between each feed.

 

2 Days to go…………..

Rosie is more than ready for her first food. These past few days she has practically been launching herself at anything resembling food. Today she sat on my lap whilst I had some rice cakes with hummus and salad and she kept grabbing my arm to try and get at the food. I feel quite mean as she really wants to try some of the food we have. We are all getting excited about her starting on solids, particularly Daddy who would have caved in and given her something by now. Today she has been practicing holding a Doidy cup and has even managed to have a sip of water before tipping the remainder all down herself. She currently weighs 21 lb and is still waking up in the night for a feed. Hopefully this will change once she starts to get some food in her as I’m exhausted!

6 months old and ready to go……….

The first day, for breakfast, we gave her some strips of mango with the skin on, a strawberry, a segment of kiwi with the skin on, and a spoonful of porridge and a spoonful of yoghurt. She tried everything; managing very well with her spoon but pulled all sorts of faces (it was as if we had given her the most disgusting thing in the world)! Shortly afterwards she seemed to react to the food. She rubbed her eyes a lot and they became swollen. This didn’t seem to bother her too much. Our first thoughts were it may be the yoghurt since her older brother is dairy intolerant but after giving her the foods again over the next few days it was the strawberry that caused the problem. The swollen eyes lasted a few hours and by the following morning she was perfectly fine.

The first week has been all over the place; sometimes she was really interested and other times she would ignore the food. We made a dinner of lemon sole, sweet potatoes and sautéed spinach mashed all together and loaded on to the spoon for her; she ate four spoonfuls and really enjoyed it. Other foods we thought she would really like, she didn’t seem that bothered. The foods she likes the best are orange segments, yoghurt and broccoli.

The mess is something else………she likes to sit in her bumbo and enjoys drinking the water from the Doidy cup or the Tomee Tippee Free Flow Beaker. Sometimes she shudders when she tries the food. I loaded up a spoonful of porridge for her and she managed to catapult the entire spoonful all over the kitchen; very funny!

This week she has fallen asleep around lunchtime so this meal has been missed quite a lot. She has continued with her milk feeds as usual having one in the morning around 8am, then 11.30am, 3.30pm and then a couple of times before bedtime at 7pm. Her sleep patterns are very erratic; sometimes she sleeps from7pm until around 5.45am; other nights she wakes a couple of times.

As a breast fed baby she would often go a day or two without a bowel movement. Since weaning has started she has definitely gone more often. A couple of nappies have been brown instead of the usual yellow. We have also noticed that she is able to sit up on her own now; something she couldn’t do two weeks ago!

Week 2

This week Rosie has either been eating everything or not been bothered at all! A few mornings she has been quite sleepy so she has missed breakfast. When she doesn’t want her food she removes it all from the tray and drops it over the side. If I load up a spoon and hand it to her she holds it to the side and then lets it go. She really enjoys sitting in her bumbo so we haven’t had to worry about her getting stressed during a meal. She will sit quite happily until we have all finished. Her hand to eye coordination is really coming along and after only 2 weeks in she can easily direct the spoon from the tray to her mouth. She has also been able to pick up smaller food from her tray which seems a lot quicker than her brother managed. I expect she will get her pincer grip very quickly. She has missed quite a number of meals this week due to napping, especially at lunchtime. At other times she has eaten well at all three meals of day. I have not kept to a precise schedule as Rosie is very chilled out so she is not bothered by changes to routine. On the days when she has eaten a lot she has definitely reduced her milk feeds. On average she is having 3-4 feeds during the day followed by a feed at bedtime and then one feed during the night. She has gone through the night on one occasion this week. Her nappies have been very interesting this week; she has had a number consisting of very full brown stools with some undigested foods present.

“I love my Food” says Rosie age 6 months & 2 weeks