With the breastfeeding going smooth so far, weaning became something that was placed far back in my mind. I was dragging my feet when it came to weaning baby M. Furthermore, my GP told me that baby M should wean later at about 6 months old, since she seemed to show signs of sensitiveness to dust (a sign of allergy).
Having weaned baby N at 4 months, I was getting nervous about weaning baby M almost 2 months later. And to make things worse, the 5 year gap made recollection of weaning difficult. As with all textbooks, we start with rice cereal with EBM. Baby M did not take it too enthusiastically, in fact she didn't like it. I was constantly struggling to keep the cereal in her mouth. Baby N started cereals early so by this age she was eating pretty well.
After 2 weeks of cereal, I started to puree pumpkin for baby M. Yup it was disaster! Feed was a nightmare of trying to stuff the food into her mouth... Despite that, I continued to make other purees like carrots, potato and beetroot.
After one last feeding of pumpkin and spinach puree, it was a war of making her open her mouth for the food. *horror* I tearfully asked hubby why my kids were so "hard" to wean? After showing mother-in-law the "spoils of war" photo (which is missing from my phone and i have no idea why), she suggested I started making porridge.
The first porridge i made from rice + millet + red quiona + carrot was an instant hit! No more trying to stick the spoon into her mouth. She opens her mouth for the food.
With the porridge going well, I started to make variations of the porridge by adding different sweet vegetables (carrots, sweet potato- the orange and purple variety and pumpkin). After that it was adding a green veg to the porridge, so there would be a sweet vegetable + a green veg (spinach, broccoli). Worried about the iron content, I began to mix fortified cereal into the porridge.
This photo shows jap sweet potato porridge with Barley cereal from Healthy Times.
Introduced protein - fish (ikan kurau or threadfin) to her at 7 months 1 week old.
2 days later, she was given chicken porridge ( first photo is the chicken puree and the porridge base with carrots).
There is much lesser creativity when it comes to porridge. So other than the ingredients, the way forward is to vary the grains. In fact, studies have shown that white rice has the least nutrients. So I do own cocktail of grains. :p
Baby M is not much of a fruits baby. Suprising since fruits are naturally sweet. She prefers savoury stuff hence the preference for porridge vs Nestle Cerelac (which contains sucrose/sugar). I did give her some apple puree which she rejected all 3-4 times, including the gerber jar! She does take some banana - depending on her mood! Was telling hubby that maybe I did not eat as much fruits while pregnant with baby m versus the one slice of papaya per day with baby n in my tummy! :)
Weaning is so much fun! Yipppe!
