When can I start weaning?

Up to six months, your baby has had all the nutrition they need from breast or formula milk. From this point they can start to enjoy smoothly puréed fruits and vegetables and will learn to love different tastes. From this, the next step is to add texture, until eventually your little one is eating what everyone else in the family enjoys.

Your baby’s development is amazingly swift and they will be able to start enjoying food with tiny lumps in it from as early as seven months. At this stage, you can blend the food less finely, leaving little lumps, or simply mash it coarsely with a fork. You can also choose pre-prepared meals with little lumps in them.

It’s now time to let your little one discover a whole new world of tastes and textures.

Safety note:
Always supervise your baby while feeding and never leave them alone with foods they could choke on.
 

Eating leads to speaking

Did you know this stage of weaning is important not just for your baby’s health but for their speech and language development as well? Eating different textures helps develop the muscles of the tongue and the mouth in order to get them ready to create your baby’s first words. It’s also a very important stage between only being able to swallow purée and being able to eat all kinds of foods.

This stage is also a good time to help them master how to chew their food. This is a brand-new skill, as up to now they have just swallowed.
 

Nurturing motor skills

Food helps your baby’s development too. When they are very little, they can only make large movements, called gross motor skills, such as waving arms and legs. As they grow and change, they become more and more adept at smaller, or fine motor skills and this, importantly, includes the finger grip. This means, of course, that not only can they pick things up, but they can also bring them to their mouth and this plays a huge part in helping them start to enjoy becoming more independent with food.

What if my baby doesn't have teeth?

Babies can manage pretty well with very few teeth!
As their teeth come in (this can vary from as early as three months to as late as one year), they will be able to start crunching on harder food, so you can offer raw apples and pears, carrots and cucumber. Even if they just gnaw on it for a while, then spit it out, they are experiencing a new taste or texture, so it’s all good.

Three steps to adding texture to baby food

So, you’ve mastered the purée stage and now want to move on? Here’s how to tackle texture. Try to do this at your baby’s favourite mealtime, when they are more likely to find it acceptable.

1. Make thicker purées
   The first step is to make the consistency of your purées thicker. Mash a little of your child’s food before adding it to a purée, so it’s not quite so smooth. Then make the portions thicker and lumpier each day. When your baby is happy with this texture, you can cut out the purée stage. Choose a dish you know your baby loves when you first start.
2. Sizes & Shapes
   As you increase the size of lumps in your baby’s food, you can also experiment with how you cut them up. So, from roughly mashed veg, you can progress to finely diced pieces, then larger ones – plus you can also leave some pieces in fist-sized chunks for your baby to pick up and chew while you feed them from a spoon.
3. Add extra items
   If you start to add familiar tastes to new ones, you will find that your child will be more likely to enjoy it. Serve a favourite fruit or vegetable purée with a new source of carbohydrate, such as a little rice, baby-sized pasta, quinoa, cereal or couscous.

Be bold with flavour

You don’t like bland food, so why should your baby? Feel free to experiment with herbs, (mild) spices, garlic and unsalted stock cubes. Remember that you should avoid adding salt or sugar to baby food and avoid honey up to one year.
 

Perfect weaning snacks

Whether you are baby-led or trying more traditional methods we have the ideal range of first snacks for your little one. They have a delicate texture so they melt-in-the-mouth and are easy for little hands to hold.
 

View our full weaning range