Mum Diary: Should my baby eat better than me?

I have spent the week steaming, boiling and pureeing every vegetable I can get my hands on. No, I’m not on some sort of smoothie health kick; I’ve started weaning Baby Olly.

We’re really excited to finally start him on solids. Because I breastfeed, my husband’s not been able to get involved in feeding Olly and this has real drawbacks.

If the baby cries for food, my husband has to rush him over to me – amid pitying glances from any nearby women who just see a useless man who can’t comfort his child. It always makes me want to yell: “It’s not his fault he can’t lactate!”, but I think that might look a bit crazy.

[Mum Diary: I'm a self-confessed 'sharent']
[Mum Diary: I can't wait to embarrass my children too!]

We’re also much more relaxed this time round so we’re all enjoying it more. When it came to weaning Harry, lots of well-meaning friends gave me piles of books filled with exotic puree recipes.

I assumed that every other mother in the country was cooking three adventurous meals a day for their baby. One book even had home-made oat bars and biscuits for snacks, suggesting your child should eat five different dishes every day cooked from scratch.

Soon I was searching the supermarkets for fruit and vegetables I’d never even heard of, like kai-lan and kohlrabi, because a book had told me they contained ‘essential vitamins that your baby needs to grow properly’.

I was convinced that if I didn’t track down these exotic plants and coax them into my baby’s mouth, he would miss out on essential vitamins. I feared that one day he’d just miss out on a place at Oxbridge and this could be traced back to the day I gave him mushed up banana when he was due to have lychee.

And it wasn’t just the exotic ingredients. The books had crazy recipes that required me to slave over four different pans, only to blend the final product anyway. It took hours and the standard of food we ate ourselves noticeably slipped.

My husband would come home from work to find me carefully blending free-range, organic chicken breast and ask what Harry was having for supper. “Oven roast chicken, cooked on a bed of root vegetables with a mild cheese sauce,” I’d reply. “Blended.”

“And what are we having?” would come his anxious next question.
“Oh, I haven’t had time to think. Maybe soup? There’s a tin in the cupboard.”

Poor man, we all suffered. And of course, it was unsustainable. I lost confidence in my ability to feed my baby everything he needed and started buying ready-made pouches and jars.

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Then one day, my husband said: “Why don’t we just give him what we’re having?” That night Harry ate an enormous portion of mash, broccoli and chicken, and since then he’s just eaten everything we eat. Even better, this means we all eat the same food at the same time and so mealtimes have become sociable family events.

So I’ve learned my lesson and barely opened a recipe book with Baby Olly. So far he’s had home-stewed fruit, baby porridge and pureed veg. As a result, he’s eating all his meals with us and he’s developing similar tastes.

More importantly, he seems to enjoy food much more than Harry did at that age, probably because eating is a sociable affair and not the end of a gruelling two-hour stint in the kitchen.

Of course, now that I’m more relaxed about weaning a baby, I can see why these books had such exotic meal ideas. The authors had to pad out a whole book and printing the words ‘take anything you’re eating that doesn’t have salt and blend it’ doesn’t fill many pages.

There are serious safety warnings, such as not giving your young baby honey or blue cheese or food pieces big enough to choke on (the NHS website has a good rundown). It’s also good to flick through some recipe books for inspiration – and to know which fruits and purees can be frozen.

Apart from that I think it’s very easy to over-think weaning. After all, I eat a healthy balanced diet and yet it very rarely includes kohlrabi

What do you think? Were you excited to wean or nervous? Did you cook exotic dishes, puree simple veg or buy in ready-made baby food? Share your experiences with me and other readers using the comments below.

Read more from Mum Diarist Felicity Hannah:

Mum Diary: I'm a self-confessed 'sharent'
Mum Diary: I can't wait to embarrass my children too!
Mum Diary: I was mistaken for a perfect parent!
Mum Diary: Why are mums always late? It's took an hour to get my two in the car...
Mum Diary: Should I just ditch my parenting self-help books?
Mum Diary: That awkward moment when you forget you can’t sing