Food, glorious food...

Now that Henry is over 4 months, weaning seems to be the next big milestone. There is SO much advice available, all completely contradictory. The 'official' advice from the NHS and WHO is not to start any solids until 26 weeks. They also advise not to withhold any food groups past 6 months because this can cause allergies. If you wanted to follow this advice it'd mean giving your baby every different food group on their very first day of weaning at 26 weeks. Seems a bit of common sense is needed there!

Then there is advice from other Mums, old and young. Some say the earlier the better, some swear that fussy eaters are fussy simply because they were weaned too late. Some say that late weaning is the way forward and there is no point in starting until the baby is ready, sitting up independently and able to feed themselves. Some say that it helped their baby to sleep better, others say it made no difference.

Baby rice was traditionally given as a first weaning food. Apparently it has no nutritional value so is ultimately pointless. A health visitor advised my friend that it was perfectly fine mixed with breast milk. See what I mean? There are contradictions everywhere, it seems that you just have to make a decision and go with it.

There's then the decision to do purée spoon feeding or to do baby led weaning. There seems to be a lot of scaremongering goes on that if you spoon feed, your baby will be obese but if you do baby led weaning your baby could choke and may not eat enough. You read what you think is a good piece of 'research', then later find out that the sample size was 12 babies...therefore totally pointless. I really wish I was able to read proper research and evidence myself and make a decision based on that but there is so little neutral, balanced evidence available that it is almost impossible.

Obviously everyone wants to do the best for their child and everyone's approach to weaning will be different...especially given the lack of consistency in advice, both official and from friends. I've read Annabel Karmel's Weaning book and it seems to be a pretty decent middle ground. It seems logical and sensible so I think we'll follow her advice loosely and just do what feels right. 

I've never been the best at making decisions, this motherhood lark is hard work!!