Breastfeeding - Mandy Mazliah

Weaning
Purees and baby led weaning: a learning curve
Weaning your baby is an
exciting but often confusing
time. What’s best - purees
or baby led weaning? Ruth
Baldock tells her story...
I am eight years older than my sister,
and eleven years older than my
brother, and I can vividly remember
when our Mum weaned them onto
solids. There were a few incidents
known in our household as a ‘Jesus,
Mary and Joseph!’ scenario; which
involved a child under one, and a
fromage frais. (So called because
that’s what we’d shout when
we came in and saw them and
everything within a 10 foot circle
covered in it). Absolute carnage. My
Mum weaned them, and also me
years earlier, using purees, and then
when we were older, finger foods
such as toast, bits of banana, dairy
milk (I think my Mum was joking
with that one...). I always assumed I
would follow suit.
When my own son, Seb, was around
four months old, I received a letter
from our health visitor inviting me
to attend a weaning workshop. Off
I went, and the nutritionist running
the workshop talked at length about
the importance of making our own
food, purees that is, for our babies
once they hit the six month mark.
We were given a laminated chart
to take home as a guideline for the
consistency and types of food we
could introduce to our babies, and
when was best to do this. We were
to start with smooth purees, made
from cooked fruit or vegetables.
Carrots, apples, bananas, were all
good places to start. A few weeks
later, we were advised, we could
12 Newsletter Spring
‘up’ the consistency of the purees;
custard, mash, lumpy until we were
offering our babies the same kind
of food we, as adults, were eating.
Fair does. One Sunday, my husband
and I went to a local farmer’s market
by Peckham Library, and bought a
dizzying array of organic vegetables;
butternut squash, carrots, parsnips.
They looked delicious. When we got
home, my husband got to work in
our kitchen- baking, then pureeing,
then decanting the contents into
ice-cube trays. They took up most
of our freezer space, and were
used up very quickly. I remember
a few of my friends were taking a
different approach when it came to
weaning their babies’ onto solids;
a more baby-led approach. I was
sceptical. I mean, how could you
be sure anything was going in? And
if nothing much was going in, how
could it fill them up enough for them
to sleep better than they had been
when only being offered milk? I was
under the somewhat erroneous
impression that offering a six month
old solids would ensure better sleep.
This certainly wasn’t the case at
ALL with us, and with a lot of other
parents I have spoken to, but at the
time we were desperate. Seriously.
I feel at this point I should confess
that I am extremely lazy. This is an
important fact to remember for later
on.
When Seb was about eight months
old, we met up with our friends with
their daughter who is about three
months older than Seb. It was the
summer, and a beautiful day; we
all descended on Virginia Water in
Surrey laden with bags from M&S.
All lovely picnicky goods. Seb was
crawling by this point and certainly
knew his own mind. The moment
we put all the tubs of hummus,
strawberries, and cherry tomatoes
on the picnic rug, Seb went at them
like a child possessed. “Huh, well...
he seems to actually be...eating!”
I thought. The next day, instead of
defrosting his purees, I gave him
a portion of my own lunch; pasta
with onions, peppers, courgette and
grilled chicken in a tomato sauce.
He was delighted and whilst a lot
of it was dropped onto his lap, he
seemed to really enjoy being able
to feed himself and, from my own
lazy and hungry point of view, it was
much easier for me. I was able to
eat whilst he did (whilst keeping a
beady eye on him to make sure that
he didn’t choke on anything). We
carried on like this from then on. I
decided that if I ever had another
baby, I’d introduce solids using
Baby Led Weaning (BLW) from the
offset and skip purees and baby-rice
altogether.
About six weeks after the Picnic
Epiphany, I found out that Baby
Numero Dos (as she was known
on Twitter until she was born) was
winging her way to us. By the time
she was born, Seb was 18 months
old and purees and all baby-food
were a distant memory. We were
offering him everything that we were
having. Whether he’d eat it or not
was another matter- he seems to be
able to exist on cheese, bread and
fromage frais. And mashed potatoes.
And carrots. I simply didn’t have
the time or energy to make purees
up from scratch or in pre-prepared
batches.
Our daughter, Lex, has always
joined us at the dinner table in one