Weaning with a Tripp Trapp

We were lucky enough to receive a Stokke Tripp Trapp chair which has been highly recommended by some of my friends and has also shown to be the best reviewed on Mumsnet, I’ve got a bad habit at looking at Mumsnet reviews before I buy anything for Hugo. You can buy a tray to go on the chair too if you like so you can use it with or without your normal dining table but at the moment we’ve been fine without it. It’s actually helped us spend more time together as a family at meal times as we all sit around the table and are entertained by Hugo’s eating antics. He makes the loudest humming noises when he’s enjoying his food!

H is now seven and a half months and is growing more and more into a little a boy. I’m really starting to see more of his character shine through and there’s no doubt about it that he’s going to be one cheeky little boy! He’s into everything now and is very nearly crawling…eek! I’ve wanted to write so much about lots of different things but it’s not one of those things that I can quickly do in 10 minutes and so I see my Instagram as my mini blog and this where I can perhaps delve deeper into different aspects of motherhood (when I finally get chance). So today I wanted to share about the whole weaning process that we’ve been going through the last month and a half.

It was one of my biggest worries weaning him onto food as I’m not really a big lover of cooking, I think it’s more of the time issue really and also the fact that I have no idea what goes with what unless I’m reading a recipe.  I felt like I put all this pressure on myself that I have to prepare all these fancy fresh meals when really I don’t, as babies tend to like things pretty simple to begin with as their taste buds develop.

The first couple of weeks I found that he was choking and gagging a lot and it scared me so much and put me off giving him anything with lumps in. However when I was asking the midwife about it she said that it’s important to keep giving him finger food and leaving lumps in mashed things as it helps strengthen the muscles in their mouths which helps develop their language and speech skills later on which I didn’t realise. That being said I persisted with it and was ready by his side in case I needed to get smacking his back and everything but as it happened he was quite good at getting it out himself. Another month and a half later Hugo is great at eating now, I can give him lots of solid food and he actually munches and sucks it down, with only two teeth that’s good going in my opinion. Another little point that the midwife said was when giving babies finger food like strips of toast for example, they love mushing it in their hands and then they suck the food through their fingers as a way of helping them swallow it better… this explained a lot. Hugo is soooooo messy at eating, even when I’m spoon feeding him he puts his hands in his mouth straight after the food goes in and then those hands go EVERYWHERE! Top tip for me is to strip them so their clothes don’t get ruined by food stains, I generally do this for the morning and evening meals where he can have fun and get super messy ;). I’d say it takes about an hour every meal time to feed and clean up, we’ve even bought a mini hand-held vacuum which has helped speed up the whole cleaning process – I highly recommend!

I don’t know if you’re coming up to this stage or not but if it helps these are some of the things that Hugo loves for each meal:

Breakfast:
Weetabix, Quaker porridge sachets – he loves the fruit flavoured ones, peanut butter on toast, toast in general!

Lunch:
Cream cheese sandwiches, mashed banana on toast, avocado & banana mashed together (banacado!), Petit Filous yoghurts – loves them!!

Dinner:
Sweet potato & tuna mixed together with butter, mashed potato & veg, rice pudding, he’ll eat bits of whatever we have for dinner too like chicken and other bits of meat etc.

He loves fruit, I make thick smoothies for him sometimes and just spoon feed them him. Sometimes with porridge I’ll make it thick too, let it cool down then cut it into strips so he can feed himself, yes it’s messy but it’s so much fun & I’ve really noticed massive improvements in letting him feed himself too. Another tip which helped me when I first started weaning, I bought frozen veg, steamed them then blended it altogether with some formula milk then made lots of little pots which I then froze again and used throughout the week. Frozen veg and fruit apparently actually holds more nutrients than a lot of fresh produce because they’re generally frozen early in the farm to supermarket process which locks more of the goodness in it. (Just a tip which helped me:))

I am struggling to get him drinking from a cup though as he just seems to want to bite the nozzle not suck it, maybe it’s a time thing?! The free flow cups are working the best so far I’d say. I’d love to know what your fave recipes are for your little ones, especially the quick and easy ones…. please also any tips for helping them drink out of a cup?