Weaning baby

Baby is 19 weeks old, which is over the 17 weeks old limit for weaning. I know that a lot of babies are not ready for weaning so early, but every baby is different and there were a lot of signs that baby was ready so please don't have a go at me for weaning so early as so many people have done.

The signs for weaning are that the baby can support themselves sitting up- which baby had been able to do for a few weeks. Having good support and control of their head- which she has had since birth.
Taking an interest in our food- for about 2 months baby has screamed if we have been eating, which resulted in us eating one at a time but when I was alone with her she would try and get at my food. Being able to pick objects up and put them straight to their mouth- which again she has been doing for a least a month

Altogether she was showing pretty much all of the signs so we decided we would try her with a little bit of baby rice that she didn't like. So about a week later we tried her with cow & gate banana and strawberry porridge which was an instant hit! She loved it so much she wasn't waiting for me to get more on the spoon before opening her mouth and trying to move forward for the next mouthful! At first she would only have half of what I made- which is 1 spoon of porridge and 8 spoons of baby milk- but after a couple of days she was eating it all and having her milk afterwards.

After about a week of porridge we decided to try new food with her. I was a bit dubious about this as I wanted to stick with porridge and did ask hubby to get some different flavoured porridge but he came back with jars of food instead.

We tried her with Hipp organic carrots which she absolutely loves! She likes her food being warmed rather than having it cold or at room temp though, which isn't a problem at all and not at all unexpected as she likes her milk a specific temp too!

We tried her with cow & gate peas which she didn't like, but I'm not sure whether this is the flavour she didn't like, or the consistency as so far she had been used to more liquid consistencies. The porridge was basically the consistency of her milk, and the carrots were quite liquid too whereas the sachet of peas was more like a paste. I tried adding baby milk to it but she still wasn't interested so we left it.

When I am feeding her I only give her a small amount, I used half a first tastes sachet of peas and she only had one mouthful, and a third of the jars at one time as I know she will only eat very small amounts at first.

Currently I am not looking for her food to replace any of her bottles of milk, and so far this is not the case as straight after she eats she has her usual amount of milk. The only difference being that she is less likely to be sick after she has had food! I listen to her cues and if she looks like she really doesn't want food, or doesn't like that type of food I do stop trying to give it and just go on to milk.

We have a lot of sachets of food by cow & gate and ellas kitchen which I might try when she gets a bit more used to food as they seem to be more paste than she is used to despite these being made for first tastes. We have a few different types of jars by Hipp, which seem to be really good so far and there are so many options available for 4+ months!

Once she discovers what she likes and what she doesn't like (and yes I am going to try each food more than once) we will start to make her food ourselves with the baby blender we have. We didn't do this initially as I wouldn't know how to prepare the food initially, and I would find it disheartening to make the food and her not to like it so it was easier to determine what she likes and doesn't like with jars or sachets first.

We also wait 4 days between each new taste as recommended so that if she has a reaction to one of the foods we will know which one it is.

I will keep you all updated on the foods we have tried and which ones she likes and doesn't like ☺

Xxx