by Joe Wicks
When it comes to introducing some of these common allergens to a baby during weaning, recent advice suggests that they should be introduced from around 6 months of age, alongside other foods in your baby’s diet. This is because evidence shows that delaying the introduction of foods such as peanuts and eggs beyond 6–12 months may actually increase the risk of developing an allergy to these foods. So, it’s good to introduce them fairly early during the weaning journey, soon after your baby’s first tastes.
The easiest way to know if your baby has an allergy is to just offer very small amounts of allergens at home and to introduce them one at a time. For instance, if they’ve never had fish before, don’t introduce them to nuts on the same day.
It’s also considered best practice by allergen specialists to offer them for the first time in the morning, as the only new food that day, and to leave a couple of days’ gap before introducing another common allergen, so you can spot any reaction easily.
Once an allergen has been introduced without a reaction you can make it a regular part of your little one’s diet, which may also help to minimize the risk of an allergy developing later on down the line.
Your little one may be at a higher risk of developing allergies if . . .
• your baby has already been diagnosed with an allergy or food allergy (e.g. Cow’s Milk Protein Allergy)
• your baby has eczema
• you have a family history of food allergies, eczema, asthma or hay fever
If your baby fits into the categories on the previous page, they should ideally be seen by a doctor who specializes in food allergy, or a registered dietitian, before you start weaning.
If you’re concerned about allergy risk, then talk to your health visitor or GP.
The below is advice from the NHS on what symptoms you may see as a result of an allergic reaction:
• diarrhoea or vomiting
• a cough
• wheezing and shortness of breath
• itchy throat and tongue
• itchy skin or rash
• swollen lips and throat
• runny or blocked nose
• sore, red and itchy eyes
In very rare but severe cases, a food may cause a severe allergic reaction, which can be life-threatening, called anaphylaxis – seek medical advice immediately if your baby is having difficulties with their breathing. It’s important to get medical advice as soon as you think your little one is having an allergic reaction to a food.
Indie’s allergy
After Indie’s first tastes, we started introducing her to tiny amounts of 100% peanut or almond butter, and she had no reactions. But when Indie was 7 months old she reacted to cashews. We spread a little cashew butter on toast for her. After a few minutes she was rubbing around her mouth and eyes, which were starting to get sore. Within 10 minutes her face was swollen and she was sick. She wasn’t upset, but feeling itchy. We both kept calm to avoid scaring her, and because we could see that she wasn’t in anaphylactic shock.
We rang the emergency services and told them our baby was reacting to cashew butter. They asked if she was having trouble breathing or if she was distressed but she wasn’t, so then we knew it wasn’t dangerous. They sent out an ambulance because she was so young. (If you call about anyone under 2 years old, the NHS is obligated to send out an ambulance.) By that point the allergic reaction was on its way down. The flare-up lasted about 45 minutes in total.
The paramedics took her to hospital because she was so little. We were released after an hour, having been told that we should take her to an allergy specialist. The test showed that Indie was allergic to cashews and pistachios. They didn’t give her antihistamines at the hospital because the flare-up had gone, but they gave us some epi-pens, so we’ve always got liquid antihistamine and an epi-pen in our baby bag.
The allergy specialist told us to continue giving her nuts, like ground hazelnuts, almonds, seeds and peanuts. We sprinkle a little on her food, and she’s perfectly fine. When she’s a little older we might consider getting her re-tested by an allergy specialist.
HOW TO PREP LIKE A BOSS
Cooking around a hungry baby is NOT fun, so here are some ideas for getting ahead and planning mealtimes.
TIMING
It is helpful to stick to having meals at a similar time, even if it’s not bang on the dot. Babies tend to like routine when it comes to their day-to-day activities and sleep, so encouraging one around mealtimes can be helpful for them too.
When it comes to the right time of day, this really varies from family to family and depends on what will work for you and your own baby. It’s good to pick a time of day with minimal distractions, when your baby is calm and happy, not overtired or over-hungry. It’s also good to allow lots of time for this experience so you can sit together and enjoy mealtimes in a relaxed way.
When you’ve decided on a time of day, try to roughly stick to the same structure each day, so over time your baby learns when to expect their solid food as opposed to their milk feeds. Remember, initially your baby will just be having tiny tastes at one meal each day. It’s good to introduce meals gradually to build on a routine and give your little one time to get used to the process of eating. Moving gradually from one meal to two meals, and then to three meals after a month or so of weaning might work for you, but every baby will go at their own pace.
Ideally, when your baby has accepted each mealtime and seems comfortable with eating, it might be time to add in another meal, until they are on something similar to three meals a day alongside their usual milk feeds.
CHOOSE YOUR METHOD
There are two schools of thought on weaning: baby-led weaning (BLW) and spoon-feeding.
Baby-led weaning is when babies are encouraged to self-feed from the very start of weaning, without the use of mashed foods and a spoon.
Some parents really prefer this method of introducing solids to their baby and like the fact that it encourages self-feeding and independent eating.
However, offering foods from a spoon is also helpful to encourage familiarity with the use of cutlery, besides being a helpful way to encourage a wide variety of different tastes and textures into your baby’s mouth.
There is no right or wrong way to feed your baby, so you can absolutely choose the method of weaning that works for you, but it’s great to go with your baby’s cues on this too. A combined approach can actually be helpful, as some babies take to finger foods right away, whereas other babies are less sure and prefer to have some of their foods off a spoon initially. We decided to offer Indie mashed foods AND finger foods at the same time, so she was exposed to foods in their whole form as well as purees with each meal.
Offering finger foods alongside mashed foods from a spoon can offer a ‘best of both’ approach, and allow your baby to self-feed and practise with solid pieces of food as well as letting them explore how to use a spoon and the variety of textures that come with spoon-feeding. Lots of babies try to take the spoon off their parents and get fairly efficient at using it to self-feed quite quickly.
Offering finger foods can be scary for some parents, but if you start super soft and gradually increase the variety that you offer to your baby you can quickly build up confidence. We made sure initially that the finger foods we offered – such as broccoli, green beans and asparagus – were really well cooked so that you could squish them between your finger and thumb easily.
Ultimately, offering variety and eating together are two of the best ways to help your baby develop the skills they need to bite, chew and swallow a range of foods early on. Whichever way you choose to feed, it’s important to always sit with your baby when they are eating. Also be aware that there is no evidence that offering finger foods and a spoon together will increase the risk of choking or that either BLW or spoon-feeding results in a greater risk of choking for a baby.
If you are starting with purees, you can move through these textures quite quickly from a runny puree, to slightly thicker
purees that dollop off the spoon, then to more mashed textures, by simply adding less liquid and blending or mashing the foods a little less. Do this nice and gradually, but it’s important to move through these textures fairly early on in weaning so your little one doesn’t get stuck on very thin purees.
A NOTE ON TEETH
Babies don’t need teeth to eat soft finger foods or textured purees: their teeth are just below the gum, so the gums are fairly solid. Some babies don’t have much in the way of teeth in their first year, but they can still explore a wide variety of textures. Just remember to start with soft finger food and gradually build on the texture you offer as your baby gets more confident.
EQUIPMENT
In the early stages a good blender is useful because they’re great for making purees. Other than that, all you need is a baby bowl and spoon. You’ll be using all your normal pots and pans and there is no need to invest in fancy equipment. If you go travelling, carry your own bowls and spoons because most places will only have metal teaspoons. Indie never got into sippy cups, she drinks from normal open cups like a boss. It’s good to have a masher if you like to mash things, but you can also use a fork.
SNACKS
The NHS recommends that babies don’t really need ‘snacks’ until they are around 12 months of age. Before then their usual meals and milk should be enough for them.
Now Indie is older, we give her things like bananas, berries and chopped olives for mini meals on the go. Rosie also makes her little oaty biscuits, pancakes or flapjacks. They’re easy to grab and go and don’t take long to make. Satsumas or rice cakes with peanut butter are also good options.
Snacks are good to have with you for those times your baby gets really hungry and moody and needs a little top-up, but don’t fall into the habit of letting your baby graze on them all day long. This can really make eating at mealtimes even more difficult as their appetite won’t be as big.
There is so much misleading information in the baby snack industry – for example, some bags of snacks for babies have added salt or sugar. The same applies to shop-bought meals. I tasted a sachet of baby food once and I couldn’t believe how sweet it was. I think these are fine every now and again and we did use pouches occasionally when travelling but we don’t rely on them. Home-cooked food will always win over pouches or jars.
GAGGING AND CHOKING
It’s rare and unlikely that a baby will choke – they’ve got a really good gag reflex. I’ve given Indie a couple of peas on her spoon and she’ll often gag it up so she can chew it. It can be scary the first time they do it because it looks like they might be choking, but in just a second you see that they’re only pushing the food back to the front of their mouth.
Most babies will gag at some point during their weaning journey. It’s actually a really normal process that babies go through as they are learning to cope with foods thicker than the milk they have been used to. During weaning, a baby’s gag reflex is fairly far forward in their mouth, and this usually begins to move backwards from 4–7 months of age.
Exposure to a variety of textures helps babies to learn how to cope with more solid textures and helps to develop their ability to chew. This is why offering finger food and moving through textured purees and mashed foods is so beneficial early on in weaning and before 9–10 months of age. However, even though gagging is normal, it can be a really frightening experience for parents. A few tips to help:
* Make sure you ALWAYS stay with your little one when they are eating.
* Make sure your baby is sitting upright at all times when feeding.
* Prep foods properly, removing tough skin, pips, stones and bones where needed.
* Cut large, round foods such as grapes and cherry tomatoes into thin, manageable pieces.
* Avoid hard foods such as raw carrots and apple chunks and whole nuts until your baby can manage them properly. Whole nuts and grapes are not recommended for kids until around 5 years of age.
Going on a baby first aid course can help to boost your confidence, but a gagging baby will usually cough, make gagging or retching noises, and may even vomit to dislodge the food. They may become distressed and have watery eyes and a red face too during this process. It’s best to try and let the baby deal with this and try not to get too distressed yourself.
Choking is very different, and your baby is more likely to go blue and be silent – in this situation, they will need immediate help from you (familiarize yourself with first aid advice for this).
VEG-LEAD WEANING
Following the latest nutritional advice from Charlotte, we decided to start introducing Indie to green and savoury vegetables for the first two weeks of weaning. It worked well because Indie was already getting most of her nutrients from Rosie’s breast milk. Rather than giving her sweet flavours such as sweet potato, pear or apple, we gave her green vegetables like broccoli, kale and asparagus blended up into purees alongside some finger food versions of the same vegetables.
THE LATEST ADVICE
Traditionally many people in the UK have started the weaning process by offering babies foods such as apple purees and baby rice, which are sweet-tasting. We know that babies are born with a preference for sweeter tastes, which is beneficial as both breast and formula milk are sweet. This means that sweeter foods offered at the start of weaning are usually readily accepted and easily gobbled up. However, recent research suggests that starting weaning in a different way – with vegetables – might be a better route.
Infants seem to be pretty receptive to new flavours at the start of weaning and therefore more readily accept a wider variety early on, if offered. Additionally, food preferences tend to start in the early years and can continue into later life, and as vegetables are typically a food that many young children dislike, offering them earlier may help to build familiarity and an acceptance of them that could last a lifetime!
This is where the concept of starting with green and savoury vegetables has come from. Research has so far suggested that starting weaning with veggies and continuing to offer a variety of vegetables during weaning is likely to lead to more veg being accepted and eaten later on. The NHS in the UK also recommend starting weaning by including veggies that aren’t so sweet in order to allow babies to get used to a wide variety of flavours. To find out how you can go about doing this, see here in the recipe section.
FUNNY FACES
It was really funny seeing Indie pulling faces when she first tried the green vegetables – and she certainly didn’t seem to like everything she had at first – but the process introduced her to different bitter and savoury tastes rather than just the sweet stuff that we are naturally programmed to enjoy. Your baby might pull a funny face when you give them spinach and you might feel bad about it, but you really are giving their palate a chance to develop. It’s probably more shock and surprise – they’ve only ever tasted sweet before.
Try not to worry if not much is eaten initially, it’s much more about getting them used to new tiny tastes of a variety of savoury veggies in the early stages of weaning. We wouldn’t expect them to gobble them right up, although some babies might!
Of course there were times when Indie refused to eat, and I could have offered her blueberries, raspberries, grapes or yoghurt and she would have enjoyed it, no matter what mood she was in, but I tried to persevere with the veg. Babies tend to enjoy foods that they are familiar with, so it’s important to keep offering a variety, including those savoury veggies. Babies might grow up to love vegetables or to hate them – but at least you’ve given them a try.
VITAMINS AND KEY NUTRIENTS
When your baby is starting to become more confident with eating, and has had his or her first tastes of foods, it’s a good idea to start thinking about balancing out their food intake, to make sure that they get enough in the way of energy and nutrients every day.
Babies grow at a rapid pace during the first 2 years of life and therefore have high demands for nutrients and energy, relative to their body siz
es and appetites. This means that offering babies foods and meals containing plenty of nutrients is key.
A simple way of doing this is to think about offering your little one a variety of foods from the four main food groups below early on in their weaning journey. (When it comes to introducing allergens, e.g. fish, dairy, eggs, see here and chat with your GP if your baby is ‘at risk’ of allergies.)
* vegetables and fruits
* carbohydrates such as potatoes, oats, grains, rice, pasta and other starchy foods
* proteins such as beans, lentils, pulses, fish, eggs and meat
* some full-fat dairy alongside their usual breast or formula milk
Once your little one has moved on from first tastes it’s time to offer a balance of these food groups at most mealtimes (see here for the 6 months+ recipes). This will help to ensure your baby is getting enough of everything they need, but there are some other important nutrients that might need attention.
IRON is important for making red blood cells, which help to carry oxygen around a baby’s body, and contributes to normal cognitive development of children. Most of a baby’s iron stores come from their mother during pregnancy, and these are sufficient, along with breast milk or formula, for the first 6 months of life. From 6 months of age (after first tastes) iron needs to come from a baby’s diet and so it’s important to include foods that contain iron – such as lentils, red meat, eggs, fortified cereals, beans and nut butters – early on.
OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS are mainly found in oily fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines and trout) and are an important part of children’s and adults’ diets as they are needed for brain development and to help maintain a healthy heart. Recommendations around fish are to offer two portions of fish a week, one of which should be oily fish. However, stick to offering oily fish no more than twice a week for girls and four times a week for boys, as they can contain pollutants from the sea that are safe in small amounts but can build up if we have too much. You can get omega-3 fatty acids from fortified foods, including omega-3 enriched eggs, ground walnuts, soya beans and linseed/rapeseed oil, but the omega-3 fatty acids found in foods from plants are in a different form from those found in oily fish. It’s still beneficial, but has to be converted by the body to be used and this process isn’t 100% efficient. If your baby isn’t eating oily fish, make sure you offer plenty of the plant sources to ensure they get enough.
