Wednesday Weaning- weekly update #2

We've had a hellish week, what with sleep regression and a stinking cold, so weaning has been a bit hit and miss. Some days, D has eaten everything in front of him and some days, he's just wanted milk, so it's been a balancing act between letting him have the fluids he's needed as well as the nutrition.

I've been experimenting with flavours and textures- I found that Natures Healthbox has a half price offer on at the moment, so I decided to snap up a load of Plum baby food (the offer is on until the end of March and I like Plum as it has a good range of flavours and a long shelf life...) I like to either mix these in with baby rice, particularly the savoury flavours, or offer them straight from the pouch as a snack.

D has progressed to three meals fairly easily; he has porridge in a morning, mixed with either fruit puree or a little fromage frais (I put the rest in a little tub for later) and a bottle about 45 minutes to an hour later, by which point he's ready for his morning nap.

I've not been brave enough to give him solids past a bit of mashed banana, which went down like a lead balloon. He doesn't quite 'get' the process of chewing yet, so I'm not going to push it for now. I may give him a small piece of toast to gum on, but I'll wait until he seems ready.

The hardest part of this process is working out the milk to food ratio. The health visitor has said he should be on about 20ml a day of his formula, but this has gone out the window when he's been demanding feeds in the night. I'm hoping that this drops off, as he's not been this demanding since he was tiny. Fingers crossed!

Tomorrow it's my birthday, so we're going out for lunch for the first time since D started eating solids. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to adapt to this, but I'm sure I'll think of something! I also want to start looking into making my own baby food... the problem with this is most of the 'cook books' are aimed at 6 months+ and I don't know how these babies compare to those at 4.5 months. Any suggestions are more than welcome!