Parenting Forums

Posted: 10 September 2008 at 1:49pm | IP Logged

Hey All,

My Millie is now 6mths and has been in the weaning process since she was almost 4mths. She is doing really well, and has now progressed into a really regular routine. She has baby cereal and 4floz of baby milk for breakfast, something savoury, with a dessert (mostly fruit based, occasionally choccy pudding etc) and baby juice (mixed 50/50 with water) for lunch and dinner, and then 9floz of baby milk for supper. She also sometimes has a rusk (she never eats more than a quarter) or yoghurt as a snack aswell.

The thing is up until now she has mainly been eating the stage one jars/tins of ready made babyfood. She has occasionally had mash with veggies and one of the sachets of baby gravy etc, but the majority of her diet has been the ready made stuff. She's now absolutely wolfing down the smooth stuff, so I've upped the amount of homemade, slightly lumpier stuff she's having. The thing is I'm a little stuck as to what to give her meat wise. Veggies are really easy to mush up, but a lot of meat is really diffcult to mush into small enough lumps for her. I gave her some organic sausage meat with her mash and veggies today and she loved it, but I really want to get a wider variety of meat into her diet. I've thought about giving her tuna, but I wasn't sure if she's old enough for tuna yet. Does anyone know which meats/fish are suitable for a 6mth old, and are also relatively easy to  mush or flake into easy to swallow lumps?

Posted: 10 September 2008 at 3:56pm | IP Logged

Yes. A small amount of tuna once a week is fine. As is salmon. You can give up to two portions of oily fish a week. Cod, Haddock, etc are not included and counted as Non-oily fish. It is just shellfish such as crab, lobster, marlin and shark which should not be given to any child under 5 YEARS old. I also seem to remember being told that eggs must be hard boiled or the yolk hard if fried for those under 1 year.

When DD was around 8/9 months she was eating bacon once a week (as you have to be most careful about salt intake with meat. If memory serves me right no more than 1g a salt a day is recommended). As well as the occassional sausage meat.

I also made a cod, mash (made just with full fat milk) and peas  mixture, which I froze and defrosted as needed from around 7 months. As far as I am aware there is no limit to non-oily fish.

What I found great about weaning was apart from pasta and carrots DD ate most things I offered her, especially the homemade stuff. Though  she'd never eat cold baby food jars which did make going out difficult if we were away from home at meal times.

I wish you continued success with weaning.

HTH

Posted: 10 September 2008 at 4:36pm | IP Logged

I was terrible when Joshua was little, he loved food but I was always too scared to give him meat. He was about 18 months (maybe older lol) when he had his first taste of sausages bless him. I used mince a lot, you can get pork, lamb, beef and turkey so lots of flavours and can make different meals. Joshua has only been chewing roasted meats in the last year, my own fault I never brought it into his diet, I used to use the sliced meats from the counter for him and chop it up. Cod when cooked nice breaks up easily, most fish if you steam if is soft and flakes easily for mashing up. You can also buy baby pasta, Joshua used to love this, although I quickly used normal pasta and chopped it up.

Posted: 10 September 2008 at 4:48pm | IP Logged

I used to make 'fish pie' with cod, mash and white/parsley sauce for eds which he used to love.

Chicken is also a good one as it is nice and moist and soft