Category: Parenting

Weaning your baby can seem like a minefield.  There may be well-meaning advice given about what may be best for you and your little one, the guidelines seem to change all the time and there are many myths surrounding when a baby is ready to wean.  Here Daisy teacher Chloe Sena helps you to sort the facts from the fiction when it comes to weaning.

Weaning Guidelines

Firstly, let’s start by saying, you know your baby. You are their mother and motherly instinct can be a powerful thing – follow it!

Now let’s try to de-bunk some myths surrounding weaning so you know how to best prepare yourself and your baby for the next exciting chapter in your lives together.

The guidelines are to wait until baby is six months. It did used to be 4 months and in some cases, early weaning may be necessary but the guidelines now suggest that you wait until 6 months and even then, it should be a gradual process of dropping milk feeds slowly.  It isn’t that the guidelines change for no reason, they are the result of much research into infant developmental stages.

Why Six Months?

By six months a baby’s immune and digestive system are more mature so they can cope better with solids.  Also, the gag reflex reduces from six months, which means rather than spitting out a lot of food, with more ending up around their mouths or clothes, they will start to actually eat more.

What if your baby is chewing his fists and watching you eat, is he not ready for solids?  No, this is a developmental stage where the baby is learning more about himself and the world around him.  These signs do not mean he is ready for food.

If your baby has started waking in the night when they used to sleep through, does this mean they need food?  Again, this is not the case.  As baby moves through one developmental stage to another and begins to learn new skills like rolling, and sitting up, it can disrupt their usual sleep patterns.  Again, this doesn’t mean they are ready for solid food. It means you may need to increase their milk intake by giving them more milk feeds.

Signs of Readiness

Now let’s look at the signs that DO mean your baby is to start solid food.
Your baby should be able to sit upright and hold their head steady.  They should be able to coordinate their eyes, hands and mouth so they can look at a piece of food, pick it up and put it in their mouth.  Finally, they should be able to swallow food. If a baby can’t swallow food easily, they tend to push the spoon/food out with their tongue. If you are planning on weaning before six months, speak to your health visitor for advice on how to start.

It is important to point out that even though weaning may have started, a baby’s main source of nutrition should be from milk until 12 months old. Choose a time of day when you and baby are relaxed, and give them some milk first so they are not too hungry.  You may be wondering about going back to work, and baby needing to be on 3 meals a day before they start nursery – this isn’t the case and your baby will adapt to the routine you set for them and what fits into your lives.  It may be that your baby doesn’t eat much at first, again this is normal and not something to worry about, your baby won’t be the only one. Remember the adage ‘Food is for fun, until they are one.’

Types of Weaning – Puree or Baby Led?

Puree-led means a baby is spoon fed.  You start with fruit and vegetables, gradually increasing different textures before introducing finger foods around 7/8 months old – no later as if a baby is fed only puree for too long, it can affect their development.  It can mean babies may not able to self-regulate their food intake so are more likely to over eat and not learn the sensations of being full.  It is therefore very important to follow baby’s cues and not keep giving them food if they have had enough.

Baby-led weaning is giving finger food or the same as what you eat, with no spoon feeding.  It helps a baby develop their pincer grip and also means that a baby can self-regulate their appetite more easily.  It also means families can sit down together and eat.  Be prepared for the mess though!  Mums often talk about the fear of their baby choking but gagging is often mistaken for choking and gagging is an important part of baby learning how to eat and is a protective mechanism.  Again, there is a phrase “Loud and red, let them go ahead. Silent and blue, they need help from you!”.  With baby led weaning, there is less control over what baby is eating and some mums may struggle with this.

Instinct

Whatever way you choose to wean, follow your baby’s lead and do what works best for you both.  Ignore well meaning advice if it doesn’t sit right with you, and just allow yourself to be guided by your baby.  Weaning will be a lot more fun if you take the focus away from how much baby is eating, and instead allow them to explore in a sensory way the many different textures and tastes food has to offer in a relaxed environment.  This is a sure-fire way to foster a healthy attitude towards food that will take your baby right through their life.

Love Daisy x

Useful links for further reading:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/solid-foods-weaning/?

https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/baby-friendly-resources/leaflets-and-posters/weaning-starting-solid-food/

The chances are that if you’re a new parent you’ll have uttered one or more of the following phrases: “my baby will only sleep on me!”; “my baby hates their cot!”; “my baby will never be put down!”.  If this sounds familiar, read on to discover the science behind the ‘fourth trimester’ as explained by Daisy teacher Meg Hill.

The ‘good baby’ myth

The phrases above are often uttered as part of an existential crisis and accompanied by the idea that you don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t do this and that you’re a rubbish parent.  You ask and search around for help and the nagging doubts you have of yourself – that you’re not parenting in the right way – are cemented because so frequently these questions are packaged as a problem to be overcome.  A problem to be worked on, to fit in to the “good baby” narrative that is so frequently forced on new parents.  (Sadly, from which many so-called ‘experts’ exploit new parents into shelling out many, many pounds).

Baby’s experiences in the womb

Yet picture, if you will, the life your baby has had while growing inside the womb.  Dark within the confines of your uterus, warm and protected by your body.  Comfortably hammocked, rocked by your movements, the swoosh of amniotic fluid in their ears.  Their every primal need met instantly by your body that they’re connected to.  Then they are born.  The world is a vastly different place to everything they have known to this point.  Temperature changes, the feel of nappies and clothes on their skin, sights, smells, feelings of hunger and thirst.  All these wonderful things we take for granted in this world are brand new sensations for babies.  When you appreciate this, you suddenly take in the enormity of life as a newborn and understand why babies cry to be held close by you.  Why they yearn to be nestled in your warm embrace, able to smell you and hear your familiar heartbeat.  Wanting to be with you is not a problem to be fixed: what baby is biologically designed to need is often not what our environment and culture encourages.

The fourth trimester

If we look at and treat the first three months of a baby’s life as a transition period, the so-called fourth trimester of pregnancy, a lot of the heartache and pressure we place upon ourselves as parents can be reduced.  We need to understand antenatally that when baby appears we must treat them as though they’re still in utero.  If we do this, that terrific pressure of wondering why our baby won’t be put down, why won’t he sleep in his cot, what am I doing wrong will disappear.  You are not doing anything wrong.  Your baby is behaving exactly as he/she should.  You’re doing a great job!  Let’s repeat that, because it’s so very important.  You are doing a great job by tending to your baby’s needs.

There are some great ways of replicating that womb-like environment for a baby, many of which help to soothe them, reducing crying, and reducing the effect of their crying on you.  Because let’s not forget how important you are in this picture.  A phrase which is uttered almost as often as “my baby won’t be put down” is “a happy baby is a happy mom”.  It’s certainly true that if a baby is crying your own stress levels will rise, making it more difficult to understand and react to what your baby is trying to communicate with you.  But remember, none of these are guaranteed to work all the time for all babies because every baby is different and will react in different ways at different times.

Movement: Your baby is used to moving when you move. Which is why so many will be soothed to sleep by the gentle rocking motion of a car or pram.  This is also why so many parents have developed their own baby-sway which is often so well-used that you can see it in practice when baby isn’t even with them!

Noise: Forget the lullabies and soft music: anything that mimics the swoosh of amniotic fluid will help soothe your baby best.  So some serious SHHHHHHing, the hoover, Ewan the Dream Sheep or one of the multitude of YouTube videos.

Water: A nice deep bath mimics the feeling of the amniotic fluid around your baby while they were inside you, and can soothe (or at least distract!) from a troubled soul.  Even better if you or dad can get in the bath with them as the skin-to-skin contact will do wonders for both of you.

Sucking: Sometimes a baby is cross because they’re hungry, so it’s important to be led by their feeding cues rather than a schedule, whichever way you choose to feed them.  However, sometimes babies crave non-nutritive sucking, similar to when they suck on their own fingers in utero.  If you’re breastfeeding offer the breast even if you don’t think baby is hungry, and if you’re bottle feeding try a dummy or a clean finger.

Babywearing: Slings and carriers aren’t just a good way of not getting the pram muddy when you go for a walk!  They’re a really useful tool to enable you to keep your baby close-by while you go about your day.  Research has shown that babies who are carried in slings cry less than their non-slinged counterparts, not just while they’re being carried but throughout the day.  That’s a pretty compelling reason to babywear, right?

Skin-to-skin: Not just for the golden hour after birth, but helpful at any age.  Skin-to-skin contact can help regulate your baby’s temperature, regulate their breathing and heart rate, reduce stress hormones (in both of you!), and can boost oxytocin (the love hormone) production in you both.

Co-sleep: 50% of babies in the UK bed-share at some point before they are 3 months old. Many because their parents recognise that they will both get better sleep when they’re close to each other. Make sure that this is planned, and safe. More information can be found here https://www.basisonline.org.uk/

Many of these methods of recreating the womb-like environment for baby can be used in conjunction with another.  Sometimes one will work where it didn’t yesterday.  Dad may find one works best for him while you find another works best for you.  All of this is ok.  These are tools to add to your growing parenting toolkit and nothing will unilaterally work for all babies and all parents in all situations.  And that’s ok.  Enjoy your fourth trimester <3

Love Daisy x

Contributed by Sharon: a Mum, Teacher and creator of a great new resource for Parents with guidance in supporting our children at school.

Turn back the clocks to September 2012 – the moment that I left a little bit of my heart at the school gate as my daughter started Reception. I was so excited to be starting this next chapter of her journey with her but did not expect to feel so lost, and for me to have a wealth of unanswered questions.

I am lucky. Why? Because I could use the tools that I have been trained in. I am a teacher. I taught Reception. I knew how to prepare my daughter for school – getting dressed independently, opening wrappers in her lunchbox, learning to share, etc. I knew how to tweak information out of her about her school day, no matter how little that information was. I knew that she’d be tired, grumpy, be learning lots of new things. I knew about phonics and how it was taught. I knew about how children learn through play based activities. I knew about free flow, rotation, reading books….. The list goes on.

However, as I didn’t work at my daughter’s school, I didn’t know the little details about what was happening. I knew she was happy. I knew she was learning. I knew she had friends. But I wanted more. I was thirsty for every little detail about my girl because I missed her and I wasn’t alone. I would stand in the playground with other parents also craving more information and I realised that most of them had questions, but ones that I could actually answer for them. What are reading book bands? How do I teach my child to read with a book that has no words? What is phonics? How do I complete this homework? The list of general questions continued and I realised that this was a common thread amongst first-time parents. So I decided to create a website aimed at bridging this gap – helping parents through the education process.

So, Panda-Education was born. A website, a Facebook page, a Pinterest page and twitter feed later and I now have lots of amazing parents following this incredible transitional journey with me and I am so proud to be able to offer support and guidance. I am not a guru, I am just a Mum and a teacher. I love my job and I feel so privileged to work at such an amazing school with supportive and inspiring colleagues.

My top tip, when asked how to help children learn at home is – Go outside, be active, make memories and have fun. Parents feel that they have to sit down and do structured activities in order to progress, but actually, this is not always true. Children are all different and if your child doesn’t ‘sit’ to learn, then that is fine. Embrace their learning style and pack it with fun opportunities to learn; ones which I bet you are already doing without realising it is actually ‘learning’!

And remember, not everything in life is black and white, but you are doing a brilliant job.

Written by Sharon (creator of www.panda-education.co.uk)