Weaning Your Baby with Real Foods

My third baby (Wilfred) is 5 months and 1 week old and I have just started weaning him. I will turn this post into a proper blog post soon but for now I am using it to record what I am feeding him with some notes as to why.

I am following the guidelines as laid out in Super Nutrition for Babies (as I did for my son Len). I really recommend this book as it’s one of the only ones that takes a nutrient-dense, real foods approach to weaning. It’s American so some of the words used (like zucchini etc) can be a little confusing/off putting, but I’ve yet to find a really good British book on weaning that follows this approach (I need to write one!)

You can find Super Nutrition for Babies on Amazon

So what have I started feeding him?

The first food as recommended in the book is egg yolk. This is what I gave to Len as his first food and also what I have given to Wilf.

Egg yolks are nutrient-dense and full of vitamins and minerals and are a perfect first food for baby. It is important to only feed the yolk and not the white because the white can be very allergenic.

I prepare the egg yolk following this method by the Healthy Home Economist.

His second food has been a few small spoonfuls of very ripe, well mashed banana.

Baby Led Weaning vs Spoon Feeding

For my other two children, Olive and Len, I took a mixed approach, doing a little bit of spoon feeding and giving finger foods as soon as they were able to hold foods. I love the idea of baby led weaning but there were two reasons I did some spoon feeding:

1. At around 5 months all three of my children have seemed unsatisfied with only breastmilk, starting to feed round the clock every 1-2 hours, and going from sleeping well to sleeping badly and walking every 1-2 hours, as well as not napping as well as previously. I felt they were ready for some food, but they couldn’t yet pick foods up from their highchair trays and successfully get it to their mouths!
2. I believe that foods such as runny egg yolk and kefir are good first foods and the only way your baby will be able to eat these foods is if you spoon feed them to them.

I have written a couple of blog posts in the past on feeding kids:

• Childhood Nutrition from an Evolutionary Point of View
• 7 Real Food Breakfast Ideas for Kids

Plus if you go to our RECIPE section there are some Real Foods for Kids recipes that will give you some inspiration for easy food ideas for kids.