From first tastes to introducing more flavours, follow our day-by-day meal planner to get weaning under way
Posted: 19 February 2012
by Lucy Dimbylow
Weaning is a slow and steady process, and when you know your baby is ready for solids, a few tiny tastes of baby rice are likely to be sufficient at first. But over the coming weeks, you can start to introduce purees to your little one.
Lunchtime is the best time of day for his first meals, as he should be sufficiently hungry, but not too tired to eat.
This is intended as a guide to the first weeks of weaning, but always be guided by your baby’s appetite: some will want to go faster, whereas others will take longer to move on.
Remember, if you’re introducing solids before six months, only offer fruit, vegetables and baby rice. Click for each week by week planner...
Weaning tips
To avoid your baby becoming too accustomed to sweet foods, make the first purees you offer vegetable ones. As the days pass, you can introduce different vegetables and start to combine them, and then add fruit purees to his diet - we've got lots of ideas for baby recipes as you start to experiment, as well as expert advice on introducing new flavours.
Intersperse fruits with vegetables so he gets a broad variety of tastes, and keep going back to the foods you introduced earlier so he stays familiar with them.
If your baby is a reluctant eater, check out our troubleshooting tips to help them get to grips with weaning.
If your baby’s appetite is growing, you can start to offer breakfast as well as lunch – at first, another simple puree will suffice, but towards the end of his first month on solids, you can add a baby cereal to fill him up more.
