Wednesday 15 May 2013

The art of weaning



I've decided it must be an art because it is so messy...

So our weaning journey has been somewhat different from the nice relaxed let-baby-take-the-lead approach I had envisioned. When Doof was 4 months old he got diagnosed with an almond allergy and so we were prescribed an accelerated weaning regime by his consultant. 

So there I was, sitting in clinic one moment thinking that baby-led weaning was going to start in 2 months time... to suddenly being told that in the next 2 weeks I needed to get him onto fruit, veg, peanuts, sesame, egg, fish, wheat and dairy!

So our schedule was this (only including new additions each day):

Day 0: nothing (pre-clinic uncomplicated bliss!)
Day 1: baby rice
Day 2: banana, carrot
Day 3: butternut squash, apple, pea, spinach
Day 4: peanut butter
Day 5: nil new
Day 6: yoghurt
Day 7: mango
Day 8: sesame
Day 9: fish, apricot
Day 10: rusk, blueberry
Day 11: sweet potato
Day 12: egg

So there it is - a super accelerated regime. None of the "introduce-one-new-food-every-3-days" that you read about in every book. 

Luckily Doof rose to the challenge and ate everything offered to him (hmmm let's hope he keeps that up even when a toddler!). The hardest one was fish - my culinary skills didn't amount to much and the cow&gate fishermans pie did not go down well. Although who on earth would like cold puréed fish pie?!

I love this look of ectasy on his face during his first ever meal :)



The main downside to this has been the laziness it has encouraged... Doof has very little interest in finger feeding. He just opens his mouth like a little sparrow and waits for the spoon/piece of pear/rice cake to magically make its way in... I try to encourage finger feeding with each meal but not sure it can really be called FF if he doesn't use his hands at all...! 



Next week I will be getting out the plastic tablecloth, covering the floor and going cold turkey on the feeding. Let's see what happens when he is armed with a spoon and no magic helper feeding him - wish us luck :)

So conclusion so far... if he gets this messy when I feed him I can't even begin to imagine what's going to happen when he's in charge!!




Disclaimer: Doof was specifically prescribed this rapid weaning based on the results of his allergy tests. It goes against all the DoH guidance!

2 comments:

  1. Interesting. How does accelerated weaning help with the allergy?

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  2. I think it is still a much debated area - there are 2 large trials going on at the moment which should help give an answer. I think it is to do with inducing tolerance while you have a "window". So Doof was allergy tested and only had one allergy, so doctor advised to introduce everything else that could be a possible allergen as quickly as possible before his body "changed" and became allergic to them. Luckily he was game for it and was happy to be fed anything and everything practically from day one!

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