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You are here: Home / MOTHERHOOD / Babies / The weaning diaries: introducing finger foods with Organix

The weaning diaries: introducing finger foods with Organix

April 22, 2015 by Molly 1 Comment

It’s been just over a month now since Baby Girl started making a huge mess experimenting with solid food. As we’re following a hybrid of Baby-led Weaning and the odd bit of spoon feeding, she’s been feeding herself since day one. At the very beginning it was mainly rusks and pieces of cut up fruit and veg, but she’s now graduated to bits of bread, toast, rice cakes… actually, pretty much everything we eat, as long as it’s not loaded up with sugar and salt.

Here’s a little video we made last time we were chatting about weaning, where you can see how she’s progressed over the last few weeks, as she learns to pick up food and gets to grips with feeding herself (fast-forward to the end for a handy tip for how to cut bananas up so they don’t go all slippery for babies)…

At the moment, she’s a bit too small to appreciate my incredible *cough* artistic efforts in making her food look fun and palatable. At six and a half months she will attempt to eat anything, whether it’s food or not. But as she gets bigger I’m tempted to try out a few of the fun finger food plates from the Organix Little Book of Weaning (you can sign up to download a free copy yourself too).

This is one of my favourites…

There’s lots more advice on finger foods and recipes on the Organix website too.

At the moment, I’m finding every mealtime is most successful if I make sure there’s a real mixture of textures and tastes for Baby Girl to play around with. I’m well aware this attitude to weaning is probably the messiest around, because allowing her to take the spoon from me and try to feed herself porridge, while shoving bits of banana into her mouth and making a hat out of a piece of toast is… chaotic. Still, if she’s happy then I’m happy, yadda yadda yadda. I just need to silence my inner Monica and let her discover through play. I’d prefer a happy, messy baby than a crying one, after all.

As with everything weaning related (and baby related, come to think of it) my inner mantra has become “RELAX”. There are some days when Baby Girl is totally uninterested in anything I put in front of her and she just wants boob. But then, on other days, she will shove food into her mouth like it’s going out of fashion. Part of the fun of the finger food stage (or BLW) is that the baby isn’t just eating – she’s honing her fine motor skills, developing co-ordination, learning about textures. It means every meal time is like a sensory play session, which can sometimes lead to over-tiredness and meltdown moments. I’m still trying to work out the best times of day for eating, but so far the evening meal seems to be more of a success if it’s around 4.30pm. Any time after 5pm and I just get a grizzly, tired baby who would rather throw her food at me than eat it.

Do you have any great finger food ideas for young babies just starting out with solid foods? I’d love to hear your suggestions.

***

Thanks to Organix for commissioning this post. Don’t forget to check out the Organix website for more tips on weaning and inspiration for recipes. 

Filed Under: Babies, FOOD, MOTHERHOOD Tagged With: baby food recipes, baby-led weaning, finger food, Organix, weaning

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Comments

  1. Mama, My Kid Doesn't Poop Rainbows says

    April 22, 2015 at 11:10 am

    Great banana tip- trying it tomorrow!

    Reply

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Hello and welcome! I'm Molly Forbes - podcaster, presenter and blogger with a passion for positivity, confidence and body image chat. Regularly writing and vlogging about empowering female issues from a motherhood angle, I also cover lifestyle and fashion topics for like-minded mums who want to rediscover themselves after having children. Thanks for stopping by! Read More…

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Tonight should be our first night on holiday in Sp Tonight should be our first night on holiday in Spain. Made up for it with a meal outside at the village pub and a “late” bedtime (any evening out past 8pm is late for us!). Devon is heaven ❤️ #mumlife
ALL children have the right to feel good about the ALL children have the right to feel good about themselves and their body - not just the ones who “look healthy”. Children are being taught at a younger and younger age that their body is a problem that needs to be fixed. 
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The current climate of intense body shaming disguised as health concern is creating policies which actively damage the relationship children have with their bodies. There is a huge amount of evidence showing that the better kids feel about their body, the more likely they are to make choices that make their body feel good - like taking part in movement or eating in a happy, intuitive way. 
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Making health all about weight not only damages kids’ body image, making them either feel like their body is “wrong” or fear it becoming “wrong”, it also gives a free pass to the diet industry to aggressively market their products at children, under the guise of health. Ironically, encouraging kids to engage in dieting and habits which are actively bad for their health. This culture affects ALL children.
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And of course this version of health, and this focus on making kids’ bodies the problem, lets the politicians off the hook. Easier to put the nation on a diet instead of investing in policies which will reduce inequality and give everyone access to the things needed to live a full and healthy life.
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There is a silver lining though, because we can choose to be part of the solution. We can say no to diet culture at home and challenge it when it pops up in the spaces kids should be safest.
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If you’re a teacher our Body Happy Kids workshop is an intro to this subject with tools for creating body happy spaces for the children in your care. Find out more and sign up via my bio. ❤️ #BodyHappyKids
To lift the mood after the last week, here’s a t To lift the mood after the last week, here’s a throwback to this time last year when I roped my husband into filming me for an alternative Love Island title sequence. Out of shot: a packed beach full of people confused why a woman is doing multiple bikini changes under a towel and instructing her husband on different camera angles while her bemused children look on 😂. The video was an alternative title sequence for if Love Island was filmed in Devon and featured a mum the “wrong” side of 35 and the “wrong” side of a size 10. 🔥 HAPPY BLOODY FRIDAY you lovely lot 🥂🥂🥂 #BodyHappyMum #MumsGoneWild
[Stat from @themilitantbaker’s brilliant TED Tal [Stat from @themilitantbaker’s brilliant TED Talk] 
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Poor body image and weight stigma are serious public health issues. These are complex, far reaching issues that impact us on an individual and societal level in many ways. This thread isn’t to say that each of these things alone accounts for the fact kids as young as three are feeling bad about their body, but combined, they create an environment that makes it really tough for children (and adults) to like their body just as it is, regardless of what it looks like.
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If you care about health you need to be aware that weight stigma kills and poor body image has serious health implications. Want kids to eat more nutrient dense food and move their body? Stop shaming them and teaching them their body is wrong, because research shows body hate is NOT a long term motivator for treating a body with care or respect. 
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And then realise that even when kids ARE eating more nutrient dense food and moving more this will not guarantee their body will shrink. And this doesn’t mean they are unhealthy, despite what the headlines might tell you.
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Kids’ bodies don’t need “fixing”. Society needs fixing. Give every child access to good food and safe spaces to move and play. Eradicate inequality and discrimination, challenge stigmatising language. Raise awareness in the mainstream media of what many health professionals already know: health is complex, multi-faceted and is hugely impacted by socio-economic conditions. Saying it’s all down to “personal responsibility” lets the politicians off the hook. 
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Maybe then, as a nation, we can have a fair crack at good health. Until then I’d argue it’s not about health at all, it’s about money. 
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#bodyimage #BodyHappyKids
In an alternate universe I’d be packing for a ho In an alternate universe I’d be packing for a holiday to Cantabria in Spain right now. Yet here we are. This summer is brought to us by Argos (paddling pool) and Monki (cozzie). FYI I’m still bikini all the way, but prefer a cozzie for when I get serious doing lengths at the pool 🏊‍♀️🏊‍♀️🏊‍♀️ #bodyhappymum
Did you know that many of the health outcomes blam Did you know that many of the health outcomes blamed on being in a bigger body can be attributed to weight stigma and weight cycling rather than the weight itself? But despite a huge amount of evidence showing this to be the case it’s rarely reported in the mainstream media and doesn’t form the basis of health policy. 
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You know what’s also bad for health? Inequality. Again, not something informing policies that conveniently apportion blame and simplify weight as all being down to personal responsibility and “lifestyle choices”. 
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If this government really cared about the health of the nation they’d look at the impact of weight stigma and inequality and create health drives based on these things, instead of saying that putting calorie counts on food labels or telling people to go for a bike ride would make everything better. 
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I am all for people living in a healthy way, if they wish to and if they can. Eat nutrient dense food, sure! Move your body, sure! Just don’t assume this will automatically lead to weight loss, or that anyone in a bigger body isn’t already doing these things. 
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The latest focus on the weight of the nation makes me scared for how this will impact children. Will kids get put on diets and begin a lifetime of harmful weight cycling? Will it give yet another green light for bigots to go on national TV and say hugely discriminatory, offensive and uneducated things about people in bigger bodies, thereby perpetuating the weight stigma that we know is so bad for health? Probably. But who cares as long as £££ is being made and the weight loss industry is booming. 
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It’ll keep us all distracted from issues like the inexcusable number of children living in poverty and the many families in the UK struggling to access nutrient dense food.
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Look beyond the headlines and the health rhetoric, know that the shape of your body does not signify your worth as a person. And challenge any person or article telling you different.
#bodyimage
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