And so, despite my best intentions of waiting until 6 months for weaning, the signs were too strong to ignore.
Katie has sat at the dining table every evening, in her high chair, since she was three months old. For the last week, she's been getting really stressed and chewing on her whole fists while we've eaten, and she's been dragging my fingers into her mouth to gum.
On one evening, I let Katie suck on a piece of melon, instead of my finger. She quite liked it but it was firm enough that she didn't chew any off, but managed to suck the juice. I think she was a little frustrated because it didn't do what she wanted - not quite sure what she wanted, but a feed put her right.
A couple of days later, I was eating an apple and Katie was chewing on my finger, so I ate it so there was a chunk sticking out and let Katie gum it. Again, she loved it for about five minutes, but needed a feed to fill her up.
Our Sunday dinner was the next time the food stressing happened. I never use salt or sugar when cooking so decided I would give her the first taste of carrots and mashed potato. I was unprepared so didn't have a spoon ready but smeared some on my finger then let her suck it off. She absolutely loved it and had about 10 'finger smears' of both.
Monday daytime, Katie was completely satisfied with her normal feeds but became agitated in the evening. Ben was having a banana for supper so I decided to take a risk and let Katie have one. They were very ripe so I knew it would mush up in her mouth and I wasn't sure how she would react, plus it was a very strong flavour, but I needn't have worried!
Tuesday was a difficult day as we were going to Sheffield. Katie was sitting on my lap for lunch and was very stressed again so I did the 'finger smearing' again and Katie got to try mashed potato, carrots and the most amazing mushy pea 'juice' ever.
On Thursday I went to the supermarket and stocked up on the first proper attempt in weaning. I bought mango, sweet potato, bananas and 'Ella's Kitchen' Organic porridge.
For our family's evening meal, we were having baked potatoes and so I roasted up some sweet potato wedges and lightly steamed some mango and apple - complete success. Katie sucked and gummed a sweet potato wedge and a wedge of mango.
This morning I decided to try to hand express some milk and managed to get off about 4 teaspoons. I mixed it up with some organic baby porridge oats and what a success!
This led to the worse nappy ever!
