4 Things to Consider When Weaning Your Baby

Carla (00:00.19)
Hello everybody and thank you for listening to today’s expert podcast. Today I am joined by Aliya Porter, registered nutritionist from Porter Nutrition and today we’re going to be talking all about baby weaning. Hello Alia, how are you?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (00:17.05)
I’m all right, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Carla (00:19.358)
No, I’m excited to talk to you today about weaning because weaning is one of those things. I mean, I’m sure you weren’t like this, obviously with your job, but what weaning for me was one of those things where it absolutely terrified me. So I’m really looking forward to speaking to you all about that today. But before we get started, would you mind just introducing yourself and sharing a little bit more about what it is you do?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (00:42.362)
Yeah, sure. So I’m Aliya and you said about being concerned about weaning or not confident about weaning. When I first weaned my eldest, who’s now 14, that’s how I felt. And that was one of the reasons I started to do what I do and do lots of research and put the course that I do together. So I’m a registered nutritionist. I’ve got three children, varying ages, and I’m really passionate about helping families to nourish their bodies.

So that’s from adults right down to children, whatever age, without chaining them to the kitchen or breaking the bank. Those are kind of my two things. Bickers. Yeah.

Carla (01:20.542)
I love those, both of those. That sounds great. So, so Alia then, when it comes to weaning your baby, what do you think are the four main things that you should think about?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (01:32.762)
So first of all, getting information from the right source. So a reputable source of information, whether that’s my information or somebody else’s, it’s really important to go to a reputable source of information. And information that doesn’t make you feel bad either. So sometimes we can feel really guilty as parents that we’re not making things look perfect. You know, the Instagram plates that look lovely, think of them as picture postcards. But, you know, information that’s gonna be…

Carla (01:58.462)
Yes!

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (02:01.978)
practical but also help you as a parent. There’s lots of information out there and recipes out there that include added salt, added sugar, those are not great for babies so it’s really important you go to a reputable source of information. And it is fun to look at other people’s experience of weaning but perhaps not to think of that as the go -to source of information unless it’s a professional that’s given that information.

The second thing is to think about weaning being a journey, the start of the next stage of a journey, the start of the kind of journey with solids. Because I think we often think about weaning being a very, very short period of time. And it is in some ways, it’s that very first taste, but it’s also beyond that is how to develop a really good relationship with food. And that’s something I talk about lots on the first food course, because actually we’re trying to develop good eaters.

children who have a positive relationship with their food, who go on to be adults who have a positive relationship with their food. So it’s about laying those good foundations. It’s not just about what do I put in their mouth. It’s how you put it in their mouth and how you expose children to food, how we talk about food, that sort of thing. So a big topic. Yeah. Yeah.

Carla (03:17.086)
Yeah, yeah.

It is, I was going to say. It’s just even thinking about everything that you’ve said there. The relationship with food and everything because many of us have… I mean, I used to be a bit of a binge eater, to be honest, and that’s because my brother used to always take all the chocolates as soon as my mum got them. And then I think into adult life, I ended up just being like, right, eat them all before they disappear. So you’re right, as a child, it can really affect your relationship with food from the beginning.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (03:48.922)
Yeah, yeah, and that’s not to add pressure to parents, there’s enough pressure out there, but that’s something to think about as you’re starting that process. You asked me for four things, my two other ones are thinking about an approach that works for your family. So every family is gonna be different. You might be working out of the house, you might be working at home, you might have grandparents helping if you’re lucky. Find an approach that’s gonna work around your family, your commitments, your budget, and try not to be.

Carla (03:49.36)
own it.

Carla (03:56.414)
Yes.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (04:17.114)
comparing yourself constantly to other people. Easier said than done as a parent, but that’s something to consider. And then also safety. So both in terms of how you cut the foods, in terms of reducing choking risk. And I know you’ve had podcasts on first aid, so really important to think about safety there. The equipment that you use, making sure that’s safe equipment and also food hygiene.

Carla (04:21.054)
Yeah.

Carla (04:35.39)
Yes.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (04:43.834)
and then the foods to avoid. And there’s a list on my website, on the Weaning Centre website, all about foods to avoid as well. So that’s the safety aspect to consider.

Carla (04:54.078)
put the link to that underneath this podcast. So if you want to take a look at that, that’d be great. So, right, okay. So there’s quite a few areas too, it’s not just a case of, right, here’s a banana, let’s go. There’s so much to think about, isn’t there, when it comes to weaning? It is, yeah. So.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (05:10.01)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And how much and when you give it and all that sort of thing.

Carla (05:14.622)
I know, well that’s it, yeah. And would you say the weaning can affect sleep as well and things like that, giving the baby the right foods? Because, yeah, sorry, because sometimes people say, my baby’s waking up or they’re not settling and then it’s like, are they hungry? Are they not? It’s difficult, isn’t it, to know what’s wrong when they can’t tell you?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (05:24.534)
Yeah, definitely.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (05:35.642)
absolutely and sometimes we’ll never know. So I think it is a myth that if they’re waking up in the night they are ready to have solids and that’s not a sign that they’re specifically ready for solids. They might be waking up for all sorts of reasons but it is important when we do start introducing solids to include them early in the morning or certainly before lunchtime.

Carla (05:38.11)
No, that’s true.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (05:56.826)
trying not to have that impact on sleep because if food’s sitting really heavily on their tummies because it’s new to them then they’re not going to sleep particularly well so we don’t want to affect sleep any more than it’s already affected by all sorts of different things but yes it can have an impact on on how they sleep.

Carla (06:12.478)
you mention that actually because that is something I hear a lot in parenting groups, sorry, read a lot, is you know like getting the baby to sleep through the night thinking about giving the baby baby rise or porridge before bed and I didn’t actually realise that you’re better doing that in the morning so that’s really really useful.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (06:32.25)
Yeah, in terms of feeding them before they go to bed, obviously they…

shouldn’t go to bed hungry but at this age they’re still having quite a lot of milk so certainly give them the milk before bed but try not to think about those first foods being a really heavy thing just before they go to bed. Also there may be children who eat plenty in the morning and then that sustains them at night time it’s not necessarily that they’ve had a big meal just before bedtime and so particularly for slightly older children who go to nursery maybe and they’ve eaten lots at nursery and then they don’t eat an evening meal because they’re really tired.

it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not going to sleep through the night, it just means that they’ve probably had enough already in the day.

Carla (07:12.798)
really good. So in terms of baby foods, you know when you go to the shop and you see them all labelled different ages and things like that, what is the reason around that and does it really matter or not?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (07:27.706)
So in terms of the reasoning, it’s just marketing. It’s kind of giving you an idea of what sort of texture they are. There’s no legal legislation that kind of focuses on this stage or this age is kind of this texture. And, you know, you might look at it being stages one, two and three, essentially stage one is softer than stage two, smoothest than stage two. And then you kind of get more textured.

even stage three is pretty soft. So it’s not kind of crunchy foods in stage three. The baby food legislation is really strict for foods marketed to the under threes though. So regardless of whether you’re tapping stage one, stage two, stage three, anything that’s marketed for the under threes has to meet certain requirements around levels of pesticides, around kind of salt and sugar. Although there is a move to try and make that stricter, it is strictly regulated unlike

foods marketed to children more generally. In terms of the ages on them sometimes foods say from four months, that’s just a safety thing. It’s to say don’t have it before four months. Definitely don’t have it before four months, but it doesn’t mean you have to start at four months. And actually the recommendations start reading around six months rather than four months. So as…

Carla (08:39.102)
Yeah.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (08:50.682)
the stages go up, the ages go up, the textures kind of get more textured but they also get bigger portion sizes and those portion sizes aren’t standardised in any way, it’s not saying a baby of four months is going to eat this much and a baby of eight months is going to eat this much and actually those portions are far too big if you think about a baby starting weaning at six months. They might be having a teaspoon of food, not a whole jar of food, so…

don’t see that as an old my baby’s not eating enough because they’re not finishing the jar. There’s no real evidence that the different stages kind of impact choking in different ways. We do want to make sure that food is cut and long and thin and it’s soft but in terms of whether it’s stage one, stage two or stage three and the different ages for those there’s not that same kind of evidence. The other thing to remember with the stages and ages though is that

Carla (09:23.198)
Yeah.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (09:45.594)
snack foods should stay from 12 months and that’s because babies shouldn’t have snacks before 12 months. They don’t need snacks before 12 months, they should be having the extra as their milk and if we give them more snacks their chances are they’re not getting enough milk so we want to try and make sure that they’re having the snacks only after 12 months and those sort of snacky foods like rice cakes and the veggie sticks and those sorts of things.

Carla (09:54.43)
Really?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (10:13.498)
they’re not really meals, so they’re not giving the nutrition that you need from a meal. So focus on whole foods really for those.

Carla (10:21.63)
That’s great. And talking about stages and ages, rhymes, but talking about those, how do you know when your baby is ready? Is there set guidance? Because some babies, you know, people think their baby’s hungry four months, five months, and they just want to get started. Whereas, you know, some people start a bit later. Is there a set time that you have to start or you should start?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (10:26.938)
You

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (10:47.13)
Yeah, there are three things that the NHS recommends you look out for and they occur around about the time when the kidneys, the immune system, the gut, the gag reflex are all ready to cope with food. So that’s why we say around six months. The three things are being able to hold the head up and sit steady. And that’s because you want baby to be upright and the food to be able to go down the throat well. You want to be able, they need to be able to pick something up and put it in their mouth.

So that’s obviously demonstrated generally by toys and things that they can pick something up and put it in their mouth. And the third one, you actually have to test with some food and that’s being able to move the food from the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth. Because before that, if you think about the shape of a bottle or if you look at a diagram of what’s happening when you’re breastfeeding, the milk’s actually going to the back, the nipple goes to the back of the mouth. It doesn’t start at the front and they have to move it back.

they haven’t got that ability to do that before, it’s about around six months. So if you give baby a bit of food and it all comes out, I’m not talking about dribbling a little bit, but all comes out, that means that they’re not ready to be able to cope with it. If baby’s premature, then it’s best to speak to your health visitor beforehand to check kind of whether there’s an adjusted age, a corrected age as they call it, to make sure that they’re ready to have those solids. But those are the three.

Carla (11:55.774)
Yeah.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (12:14.426)
indicators that we’re looking for in most children.

Carla (12:17.886)
And you know when you mention about the food moving it to the back of the mouth, is there any particular food that you think is a good one to try that with?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (12:27.962)
So you want it to be a soft food. So like I said, cut long and thin if it’s a soft, so whether you’re going for pieces of food, like a piece of carrot, that would be long and thin, or you could do some mash or some puree. There’s no, you have to do it one particular way, but they wouldn’t even be able to move mash from the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth if they’re not ready.

Carla (12:50.11)
great that’s great so something like a banana or something like that might be useful. So the differences sorry I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here but the differences of different types of weaning now I was a nightmare with Olivia my last child she’s two and a half now but I was that scared of her choking that

mash everything up but you can do it. There’s no right or wrong way is there like you mentioned. If it gives you anxiety the thought of like them holding something would you say that you could mash it up or puree it or do you think it’s important that they do have that kind of hand -to -mouth kind of feeding experience?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (13:32.026)
they need to get used to different textures. So it’s really common to be anxious, particularly around choking. I hear that a lot from parents and I always recommend either doing a first aid course or watching St. John’s Ambulance videos on YouTube because actually knowing what you do in a situation can help reduce that anxiety and having someone around as well when you’re giving baby food.

gives you that reassurance that there’s someone else there to help you. When we’re thinking about the different types though, we need to get babies used to different textures. So if we stay on purees for too long, then they’re not gonna learn how to chew the food and swallow that food. They will be swallowing food obviously when they’re having mash, but they’re not chewing it and that process with the swallowing after chewing it.

So I would try and do a combination. That’s what I tend to recommend to people. So having something soft in their hand and then also the mash or the puree. It doesn’t have to be really smooth. So getting them off the very, very smooth, very quickly can be helpful as well, just to kind of get them used to those textures. If they don’t move fast enough through the different stages and kind of come into solid food, pieces of food,

then that can affect their jaw development and it can affect their speech development as a result, but also they can be much more fussy around what they’re eating. So we do want to move them through.

Carla (15:01.63)
great that’s really really useful and can we talk a little bit about you know allergens like nuts and eggs when you know when should you be looking at introducing those?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (15:16.058)
So the advice has changed from perhaps when we were children, the advice is to include them from six months. And if you have an existing food allergy as a baby, so the baby’s got milk allergy or something like that, then you would include those allergens from four months. Now that doesn’t mean you include the milk allergen. If they are allergic to something, you don’t include that food, but other allergens, you would start from four months. This is because we’re trying to kind of…

reduce the risk of developing an allergy and the evidence says that if we include it from the beginning then we’re less likely to develop that allergy. It does need to be included regularly though so we’re talking about an egg a week, we’re talking about a couple of teaspoons of peanut butter a week so it’s a significant amount of of allergen across the week up until they’re five so we’re trying to kind of continue to include those. So allergens can be

nuts and eggs like you mentioned, it can also be things like fish, it can be celery, it can be peanuts, other types of nuts, mustard, those sorts of things. So the things you see in bold on the back of packaging, on the ingredients list, those are your allergens. But you can be allergic to any food. So when you’re introducing solids, introduce one food at a time, and then watch out for signs of allergy. So things like…

sneezing, runny nose, itchy rash. You can also get some asthma symptoms as well. And then in the more serious form, you can have anaphylaxis, which is basically when they start having issues breathing. If there’s an anaphylactic shock, then you need to call an ambulance straight away. With all allergies, it’s worth getting advice from a health professional.

but the anaphylactic one needs to be straight away. There’s a list on my website of kind of the symptoms that you’re looking out for and some advice around kind of including allergens in the diet as well, so we can put that in the notes too.

Carla (17:25.758)
Yes, brilliant. That’s really, really helpful. And then obviously when we spoke earlier a little bit about Instagram and all these lovely pictures of parents with, you know, I mean, I don’t know how they have time for it all. The pictures look amazing, but it does give the impression sometimes that it can be quite expensive to wean your baby. And, you know, that’s something that your ebook covers, doesn’t it? So, so would you mind just sharing some money saving tips with us on how to wean your child?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (17:39.29)
No.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (17:51.002)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Carla (17:55.664)
child without it being overly expensive.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (17:58.905)
Yeah, you’re right. That’s exactly why I wrote the ebook. So in terms of thinking about equipment, first of all, so do you need to go and buy all the stuff that you’re marketed? Do you need to buy a new as well? Are there places that you can get it second hand? Then think about the fuel that you’re using. So can you batch cook? Can you make sure you’re when you’re using the oven, you’re putting multiple things in the oven rather than just one thing.

Carla (18:01.726)
I love that.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (18:27.29)
you’re being efficient with your freezer and your fridge as well. And then when you’re thinking about baby food as well, commercial baby food, that’s gonna be a lot more expensive than making your own. Now I know that not everyone has time to make their own all the time, but think about the foods that you are cooking. So for example, if you’re having carrot for your dinner, can you cook a little bit of extra carrot to either have mashed up or pureed or some extra carrot?

carrot sticks when you’re cooking, soft ones obviously, that you can then have for baby’s meals. You can either freeze those or you can serve them the next day. So it’s about trying to think about what you’re eating and what’s suitable for baby around that. And then, like I said about batch cooking, so cooking batches of things that are, avoiding the foods that are on that list.

Carla (19:21.406)
Yes.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (19:21.562)
but my favourite ones just because of the types of foods that we eat at home might be like a lentil and sweet potato mash, very simple, quite cheap, freezes really well, also a great one for taking out and about because it doesn’t have to be in the fridge quite the same way as meat and fish. Things like fish pie, whenever I cook a fish pie I cook multiple fish pies because life is too short to make one.

Carla (19:32.414)
Love you. Bye.

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (19:51.002)
So things like that and shepherd’s pie would all be good ones to batch cook as well. And then you can batch cook things like a bolognese sauce. If you wanted to do a slightly curried sauce, then you could batch cook the sauce and then cook the meat separately or mix and match. Babies are getting used to all sorts of different flavours and textures, so we want to get them used to the foods that we’re having at home. So that’s why I talk about kind of…

thinking about what you’re eating and what baby can have as an adapted form of that as well.

Carla (20:25.406)
That’s great. And you know when a baby doesn’t like something yet, how long should you leave it before trying that again? Is it that they don’t like it or is it just it’s not a familiar taste and they spit it out? What’s the best practice with that?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (20:42.106)
So babies have more taste buds than adults do. As we get older, our taste buds reduce. So they are tasting things in a very kind of hyperactive way. In terms of how many times we should offer it, the recommendations between kind of 10, 15 times actually could be more than that. That’s not to say at the same meal, we’re not putting pressure on a child to eat that food at the same meal. But we’re offering it again. And…

Carla (20:46.206)
Wow!

Carla (20:59.326)
Wow.

Carla (21:05.662)
Yeah

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (21:10.682)
the research suggests that actually most of us give up after three or four attempts. Food waste does come into that question as well, because we don’t want to be wasting food, but if you can think about having small amounts that they can taste and then perhaps something that you’re eating as well, so it’s not that it’s going to be wasting lots of food. But yeah, continue to offer it. And in terms of how long you leave it, I wouldn’t leave it too long, because actually babies don’t know…

much about food already. You know when you’re giving them those first tastes they won’t associate that with being something that will satisfy them because milk has done that. So giving them repeated exposure regularly is really really helpful and of single foods as well as mixed foods. So you know single foods being broccoli or cabbage rather than just the kind of mixed ones you know pasta sauce those sorts of mixed ones.

Carla (21:47.678)
Yes.

Carla (22:05.978)
Yeah, that’s great. And one last question, because I know we’ve covered quite a lot here, but I have. I’m getting advice from myself here, but I’ve got my son at home. He’s eight and he’s so fussy. And obviously I’ve got my two-and-a-half-year-old and I imagine quite a few parents are in a similar position. How do you kind of, if you’ve got one fussy child and then one child that you’re kind of getting used to foods, how do you kind of incorporate everything or is that something that you cover in your ebook?

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (22:35.226)
So it’s not something common in the e -book specifically. I do talk about fussy eating on the first foods course, which is the three sessions, all 90 minutes, three sessions with me. So it’s live because actually fussy eating is a massive area and a massive question. In terms of navigating the meal time, a lot of it is about reducing the pressure on the children at meal times. And we can naturally do that because we want them to eat, life’s busy.

We’ve also been trained that this food is healthy, this food is unhealthy and we can start using language that’s not particularly helpful to them. So there is a free download on the Weaning Centre website about removing the pressure. In terms of trying to kind of get them to eat their food, I think it’s about offering the food. Your job is to offer it, to decide when it’s offered and how it’s offered, but then their job is to decide how much they want to eat and if they want to eat it at all.

It’s really important we don’t offer them an alternative though because if we start offering them alternatives, however well -meaning that is, then they’ll soon learn that I don’t have to have this thing that I’m not so sure about. I’ll go for the thing that I know and mummy will always give me that thing or daddy will always give me that thing and then their food reduces even more. And if we can try and avoid labelling them as fussy, particularly in front of them but even around the people.

that can also help because we’re trying to create children who can make choices. Obviously in life more generally we talk about children who are willful, we talk about children who are very strong -minded but those are really good characteristics and it’s a good characteristic to be able to choose what you want to eat and what you don’t want to eat. It’s just a bit difficult to navigate at the meal time.

Carla (24:25.95)
great that I wish I met you six years ago honestly my son it would be a completely different eater so what we’ll do is we’ll put all the links that we’ve mentioned underneath this podcast and we can also show you social media links and everything like that so if you want to connect please please do it’s been so useful thank you so much thank you

Aliya Porter – Porter Nutrition (24:47.578)
Thank you for having me. It’s been great.