Honestly, I feel that weaning is as tough as breastfeeding. I feel quite ridiculous saying this, but there is a lot more to research and read up during this stage. At the start, it is pretty easy. You just feed the baby milk and he pretty much gets all the nutrients he need. But now, it gets a bit more complicated, what do you exactly even give him to make sure he has all the nutrients he needs?
Today, I am going to dive into this topic, featuing some of the tools we use and food we try for traditional weaning. I always think the right tools are pretty darn important. Use the right tools and everything gets done more effectively and you pretty much have more time to bond with your child!
Weaning
We started weaning baby off breastmilk from 6 months. His staple till now is still the organic oatmeal from Gerbers, just that the consistency has changed for a more watery form to a less watery form. (We skipped rice ceral because of the whole hoo-ha on arsenic.) Some tips on the bib, get one with a catcher! Ours is from Marcus & Marcus ($19.90), it is really good to catch leaks and when baby is drinking water and helps to reduce the mess!
To wean him off, we use the Marcus & Marcus masher spoon and bowl set ($17.90). The spoon's masher side is really good if you are making your own puree. During meal times when baby joins us at the table (not eating), the set would also be a constant feature to let him feel like he is a part of the meal convos. We initially started with traditional weaning and this spoon was of a good length to feed him.
After a few meals, we noticed that baby seemed to want to snatch the food to feed himself. We changed to the Marcus & Marcus palm grasp self-feeding spoon ($8.90) for some of his meals. We would usually scoop and let him feed himself to reduce the mess. I wouldn't think it is a full-blw yet but it trains his motor skills.
Cooking
In my opinion, a slow cooker is the best for cooking. Although there are other utensils, I find the food cooked from a slow cooker the tastiest. If you have a thermomix at home, you can use it to do a bit of steaming. mashing etc. (The Hubs uses it, but I am not very used to it, so it is not my preferred utensil.) For my parents, they would use a traditional pot to cook my baby's puree. On work days, we would use ready-made purees from Bellamy Organic . Usually, I would get more interesting flavours so that baby can be exposed to a greater variety of food.
Storage/ Transporting
I am not a full-time caregiver for my child so he does go a few places in the day. Hegen PCTO 2 Oz Breastmilk Storage ($52 for 6) is a new product and I use it as a storage cup. I do have the Philips Avent one which I use to store my excess breastmilk, but in comparison, I do feel Hegen products are more secure (on the flip side if you are not use to the mechanism, it can be quite hard to open.)
6 is quite a good number cos I split it around 3 households. Sometimes my parents would prepare puree for my child and pack them in this storage cup to bring them over. I only got this when baby was around 5 months, but if I were to have #2, this would be pretty excellent for storing colostrum.
Snack Box
We use the Marcus & Marcus Suction Bowl ($13.90) as a snack box. This is particularly good because it is air-tight and keeps the puffs fresh. We would fill it up and let him practice his pincer grip. The first few attempts were pretty frustrating for him but now he can pretty much feed hinself and enjoys grabbing handfuls from the snack box.
The suction at the bottom is strong enough to keep the bowl upright. Even when he knocks on it, it doesn't overturn. It also helps that he hasn't quite figure out how to open the cover. He is starting to recognise this box as a treasure box of food and would look at it and make sounds so that we would pass it to him (He adores the organic puffs from Gerber by the way).
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