# Wean in 15 by Joe Wicks - Blinkist What’s in it for me? Learn the secrets of successful weaning. As a baby grows up, parents often celebrate milestones like the first words and the first steps. But what about the first bites?  From a developmental standpoint, learning how to eat is arguably just as important as learning how to walk and talk. It’s also pretty amazing in its own right.  So, how do you help your baby go from only drinking breast milk or formula to eating the same food as adults? By the end of these blinks, you’ll know the answer to that question. You’ll also get some quick, simple, nutritious, and baby-approved recipes along the way! In these blinks, you’ll learn why weaning might not mean what you think;  when your baby is ready to wean; and  how to prevent your baby from becoming a fussy eater. The goal of weaning is to help your baby develop a healthy relationship to food. When adults talk about weaning themselves off sugary foods or caffeinated drinks, the idea is that by gradually reducing the consumption of whatever substance they’re hooked on, they can eventually eliminate it from their lives.  Similarly, when parents talk about weaning their baby off breast milk or formula, it almost sounds as if their bundle of joy has an addiction she needs to kick.  But this is misleading. In fact, there’s a more accurate, positive, and holistic way of thinking about what weaning really means. The key message here is: The goal of weaning is to help your baby develop a healthy relationship to food.  Complementary feeding is a more modern term for weaning. The idea is that when you start to feed your baby solid food, you’re providing her with nutrients that add to the ones she still receives from breast milk or formula. Over time, her consumption of food goes up while her intake of breast milk or formula goes down – until it eventually disappears. At that point, she is “weaned.” In other words, weaning isn’t just about getting your baby to stop drinking breast milk or formula. It’s about encouraging her to start eating food. That means helping her develop the skills, habits, and attitudes that go into healthy eating.  Some of these are basic things, like chewing, swallowing, handling food with fingers, and eating with utensils. Others are more sophisticated, like having scheduled meal times throughout the day. It’s also important for your baby to be open to a wide variety of nutritious foods. For this to happen, she needs to develop her palate. That means she’ll need to go from only knowing the sweet, smooth liquid of breast milk or formula to being accustomed to a variety of textures and tastes – from the bitterness of broccoli to the lumpiness of lima beans, and everything in between. In other words, weaning is more than just a process; it’s a journey that builds a healthy diet and positive relationship with food. With so much diversity in the world of food groups and cuisines, it’s the job of every parent to help their babies explore, discover, and enjoy what they eat! Let your baby wean at his own pace and in his own way. In the previous blink, you learned that the goal of weaning is to help your baby develop a positive relationship with what he eats. Get it right, and he’ll be a miniature foodie in no time! The author’s baby, Indie, is a case in point. By the time she was only nine months old, she had a big, healthy appetite and was open to eating everything – from cauliflower, kale, and chickpea curry to Moroccan minced lamb with sweet potato and couscous. So, how do you make sure your baby follows in Indie’s footsteps? The short answer is, you don’t. The key message here is: Let your baby wean at his own pace and in his own way. No two babies are exactly alike, and that’s especially true when it comes to weaning. For example, Indie began eating solid food at six months old. That’s a typical starting age, but some babies are ready to begin a couple months earlier or later. Indie also stopped drinking breast milk when she was around 12 months old, which is pretty young. Many babies continue nursing until the age of two or even beyond, which is what the World Health Organization recommends.  If every baby makes progress at his or her own speed, how do you know when yours will stop demanding breast milk or formula, adapt to new textures and tastes, move on to bigger portion sizes, and eat more frequent meals? Well, it depends on your baby. For example, some babies move from eating one meal a day to three meals a day in just a month. Other babies need more time – and that’s OK! Your approach to weaning should take all of these factors into account. Because your baby’s weaning journey will be as unique as he is, don’t get preoccupied with comparing his progress to that of other babies his age. And don’t try to force anything to happen too fast. In fact, don’t try to force anything at all. Instead, just watch him for signals about what he needs and what he’s ready for, and then respond accordingly. This is called responsive feeding. What signals should you look out for? And how should you respond to them? Find out in the next blink! Your baby will show you when she’s ready to start weaning. By now it should be clear that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to weaning, and that different babies have different needs. That being said, there are some general guidelines to follow, and there is a loose timeline to keep in mind. Just remember that the details vary from baby to baby, so it’s best to think of this as a rough sketch of what the weaning journey will look like rather than a definitive picture. Are you ready to begin the journey? More importantly, is your baby ready too? The key message here is: Your baby will show you when she’s ready to start weaning.  Each country has its own recommendations for when weaning should begin. In the UK, the National Health Service (or NHS) says that babies are usually ready at around six months old. But that’s just a rule of thumb. Remember, different babies develop at different speeds, so you need to look for the signs that your baby is developmentally ready. There are three mains signs to look for. First, can she maintain a sitting position while steadily holding up her head and neck? Second, does she have enough hand-eye coordination to be able to see some food, pick it up, and put it in her mouth on purpose? Third, is she able to swallow food? Or to put it another way, has she lost her tongue thrust reflex, where she pushes more food out of her mouth than she lets into it? If the answer to each of these questions is yes, then your baby is ready to start weaning. But if any of the answers is no, she needs more time to develop – even if she’s showing interest in food, chewing on her fists, acting more hungry than she used to, waking up more frequently at night, or growing dissatisfied with breast milk or formula. Many parents interpret these behaviors as signs of readiness, but they’re just normal parts of being an infant. Do not base your decision to start weaning on them.  Two final caveats: If your baby is showing signs of readiness before the age of six months old, check with a doctor before proceeding – just to be safe. Also, don’t offer her solid food before she’s 17 weeks old since it’s very unlikely she’ll be developmentally ready at this age. The first month of weaning is about exposing your baby to new tastes and textures. If your baby is showing all the signs that he’s ready to start weaning, how exactly should you proceed? Two words: slowly and gently. Weaning is a gradual process, and that’s especially true of the first few weeks. You’re not going to be feeding him very much during this period. And what you do feed him is going to seem pretty tame compared to what he’ll be eating later on.  But don’t let that fool you. The start of the weaning process is the most important time in your baby’s journey, as it will lay the foundation for everything that comes next.  The key message here is: The first month of weaning is about exposing your baby to new tastes and textures.  During this initial period, continue offering him just as much breast milk or formula as he used to drink. This will still be his primary source of nutrition. As you begin to introduce him to solid food, the main goal is to help him become familiar with as many new tastes and textures as possible – the more daring, the better. This might seem counterintuitive. If you’re like many parents, you’ll be eager to encourage your baby to eat as much as possible, and so you’ll want to feed him the foods he prefers the most. Unsurprisingly, these tend to be sweet things, like apple puree and baby rice. After all, breast milk and formula are sweet, so that’s the taste he already knows and loves. But you’re not just trying to get him to eat in the present; you’re trying to set him up for a lifetime of healthy eating in the future. This means that the food preferences he acquires in the first few months of the weaning journey could stick with him for the rest of his life.  If you start with the sweet stuff, he could become a fussy eater who turns up his nose at foods with more adventurous flavors. That’s bad news, since many healthy foods like broccoli and kale tend to have bitter flavors. Meanwhile, sweet flavors tend to be associated with junk food. Even if your baby doesn’t have any teeth, he already has a sweet tooth. So, instead of encouraging it even more, help him develop a love for other tastes. Vegetable-led weaning is simple and effective. Despite your best efforts, there’s no guarantee that your baby will grow up to be a carrot-crunching, spinach-munching vegetable lover. But you can give her the best possible chance by exposing her to non-sweet vegetable flavors right from the start. This approach is called vegetable-led weaning, and it’s supported by scientific research and recommended by the NHS. It’s also a lot easier than you might think. The key message here is: Vegetable-led weaning is simple and effective.  During the first few weeks of weaning, your baby is more receptive to new flavors than she’ll be later on. This makes it the perfect time for you to help her integrate as many vegetable flavors into her palate as possible.  Research even shows that babies who are exposed to a variety of vegetables during the early stages of weaning are more accepting of them when they’re older. That’s good news if you want to avoid turning your baby into a fussy eater. What makes it even better is that the recipes for vegetable-led weaning are some of the simplest you’ll ever make. For instance, you can start by making and serving one single-vegetable puree per day. The idea is to focus on one flavor at a time while making the food as soft and easy to swallow as possible.  To make sure you’re covering a wide range of flavors, your line-up of vegetable purees in the first week might go like this: broccoli on day one, potato on day two, green beans on day three, asparagus on day four, rutabaga on day five, kale on day six, and avocado on day seven. For week two, you’d change it to zucchini, cauliflower, eggplant, mushroom, spinach, cucumber, and peas. To make a puree, all you have to do is chop up your chosen vegetable, boil it until it’s soft, drain the water, mix it with some new water or your baby’s usual source of milk, and blend until it’s creamy. The exact measurements depend on the vegetable, but here’s an example using broccoli. Take one small head of broccoli weighing about 150 grams, break it into small florets, and steam or boil it for eight to ten minutes, until it’s soft. After you drain it, mix it with 80 to 100 milliliters, roughly 5–6 tablespoons, of water or milk. You’re looking for the consistency of lightly whipped cream – in other words, loose enough to fall out of a spoon. You can choose between spoon-feeding, baby-led weaning, or a combination of the two. Once you’ve made a palate-expanding vegetable puree, it’s time to consider an important question: How exactly should you feed it to your baby?  The short answer is: with a spoon. The long answer is a bit more complicated. In fact, there are two main schools of thought on the subject, as well as a third, hybrid approach.  The key message here is: You can choose between spoon-feeding, baby-led weaning, or a combination of the two.  Spoon-feeding is exactly what it sounds like. First, you make food that’s spoonable, by mashing it up or blending it. Then you feed it to your baby on a spoon. The advantage is that it helps him become accustomed to cutlery. It also makes it easier to introduce him to new flavors since just about anything can be blended into a baby-friendly consistency. With baby-led weaning, in contrast, you encourage your baby to feed himself right from the start. That means giving him finger food that he can put into his own mouth. The food needs to be soft at the beginning of the weaning journey, so squishy vegetables like well-cooked broccoli, green beans, or asparagus work well. The advantage of this approach is that it encourages independence.  Both approaches are valid, and you can choose the one that works best for you. For example, some parents are terrified at the thought of their baby choking on finger food. If you’re one of them, you might feel more comfortable sticking to spoon-feeding.  Just keep in mind that babies have excellent gag reflexes, and the risk of them choking is low – as long as you take the right precautions. That means sticking to small, soft foods. Avoid hard foods like raw carrots or whole nuts, and cut larger, round foods like grapes and cherry tomatoes into slender pieces. You can also do what the author did, and combine the two schools of thought into a hybrid approach. To do this, just offer your baby some finger food alongside the blended or mashed food you’re serving him on a spoon. For example, remember that broccoli puree from the previous blink? When you’re making it, you could also let him eat a single, small, and super-soft floret of steamed broccoli as a little side dish. Develop your baby’s palate further by combining flavors and offering more complicated textures. Over the first two weeks of the weaning journey, you exposed your baby to a variety of vegetable flavors. These were mostly packaged in watery purees, and each of them was delivered to her one at a time. Over the second two weeks, you’re going to take things to the next level.  The key message here is: Develop your baby’s palate further by combining flavors and offering more complicated textures.  After two weeks of single-flavor purees, your baby should be ready for more adventurous combinations, like a zucchini, pea, and mint puree. To make this, just cut a large zucchini into cubes, boil it for eight to ten minutes, and add in 100 grams of frozen peas right before the zucchini is finished cooking. After draining the vegetables, blend them together and stir in two sprigs of finely chopped mint. To make the consistency smoother, you can add in 80 to 100 milliliters, or about 5–6 tablespoons, of water or her usual milk.  At this point, the liquid is optional, and it depends on what she needs. Try experimenting with looser and thicker consistencies by adding or taking away liquid. If she already seems to be well-adjusted to a certain degree of thickness, try making her food even thicker. If that’s too much, keep it smoother until she’s ready. That’s what responsive-feeding is all about! Depending on how your baby responds, you can even move past purees altogether and try mashes instead. They’re like purees, but you mash the vegetables with a fork or a masher for a thicker texture. Broccoli, rutabaga, and potato mash is one example. Avocado and lima bean mash is another.  You can also mash up more grown-up dishes, like cheesy zucchini and scallion rice, or sweet potato and broccoli with little pieces of white fish. The fish is a two-for-one deal because it introduces your baby to a new flavor and a new texture at the same time. While offering all these spoon-fed dishes, you can also let her keep exploring finger foods, such as steamed carrots and green beans. As an added bonus, handling these vegetables will give her a chance to practice her pincer grip, making the meal good for her body and her brain! Use responsive-feeding to guide how much food you give your baby. By now you should know what to feed your baby – and how to feed him – during the first four weeks of the weaning journey. But how much should you be feeding him? There are no standard recommendations. Different babies have different appetites at the same age. Even the same baby has a different appetite on different days.  It all depends on a variety of factors, ranging from your baby’s individual growth needs to whether he happens to be tired at a particular mealtime. That’s where responsive-feeding proves its value once again.  The key message here is: Use responsive-feeding to guide how much food you give your baby. The process is simple: offer your baby some food, see what happens, and adjust his portion sizes accordingly. If he doesn’t eat everything during a meal, that’s OK. Just stop feeding him when he starts acting full. If he’s consistently eating less food than you’re offering, scale back the portion sizes to avoid overwhelming him. As his appetite grows, he’ll naturally start to eat larger portion sizes. All you have to do is keep up with him. Also, as he gets more of his nutrients from solid food, he’ll gradually start drinking less breast milk or formula. Just keep offering him the same amount, and let him decide when he’s had enough.  It’s important to remember that most babies will keep getting the bulk of their nutrition from breast milk or formula up until the age of 12 months, so don’t cut back on it too soon. But you should also know that breast milk or formula is a highly nutritious substance that fills him up, potentially spoiling his appetite for solid food in the process.  To avoid this, nurse him at least an hour or so before mealtimes, or immediately after. For example, the author’s wife breastfed their baby first thing in the morning, which was an hour before breakfast. Her next breastfeeding wasn’t until right after lunch. Your baby’s feeding schedule may look different, and it should be based on his particular needs, but you must establish a routine. This makes sure you’re spacing out mealtimes and nursing sessions, and it also gives him a reassuring sense of regularity. Continue increasing the complexity of the food you offer your baby. After the first four weeks of the weaning journey, you’re going to keep doing what you’ve already been doing – just to a greater degree. It’s a lot like gradually turning up the volume knobs that control the tastes, textures, and portion sizes of your baby’s food. The goal is to find the right balance that works for you. The key message here is: Continue increasing the complexity of the food you offer your baby.  In month two of the weaning journey, your baby might be ready to take her consumption of finger foods to the next level. Kale chips, cheese and broccoli scones, and vegetable sticks with hummus are just three of the possibilities. But if she isn’t quite ready for more solid foods, keep giving her the softer vegetables we’ve already looked at, like steamed carrots. From month three to month four, she could be ready for more adventurous foods, such as cauliflower, kale, and chickpea curry. While this is a standard and simple recipe, it has one main twist: remember, you’re cooking for a baby, so you still need to make things baby-friendly. Go light on the curry powder, using only one teaspoon of the mild variety for a batch that contains 60 grams of chickpeas, 2 teaspoons of coconut oil, 100 grams of cauliflower, 200 milliliters, or about a cup, of coconut milk, 20 grams of kale, and 1 tablespoon of lime juice. Also, make sure you squash each chickpea with a fork or your thumb, break the cauliflower into tiny florets, and finely shred the kale while removing the stems.  When it comes to more adult-like dishes, you can mash them up before serving them to your baby. That way, you can adjust the texture to find the right consistency. Then, from months five to seven of the weaning journey, you may be able to cut back on the mashing and focus more on food that’s minced and chopped.  After month eight, she might be ready to take things to an even higher level. For example, maybe she can try Caribbean-spiced chicken and squash curry, using stronger spices and incorporating vegetables and meat that are cut into larger pieces than that milder curry from a few months ago. From here, the possibilities can only grow! Remember your baby’s nutritional needs. Now that you’ve gone through the entire weaning journey, it’s a good time to step back and look at the bigger picture.  At the beginning of the journey, your baby gets most of his nutrition from the breast milk or formula he continues to drink. Initially, you’re just giving him food so that he can whet his appetite and sample new tastes. As his appetite grows stronger and he shifts from liquids to solids, he’ll get more of his nutrition from food rather than breast milk or formula. That also makes it more important for him to get a balanced diet from what he eats.  The key message here is: Remember your baby’s nutritional needs.  Your baby’s diet needs to cover four main food groups. The first is vegetables and fruits. The second is carbohydrates, which he can get from potatoes, oats, grains, pasta, and rice. The third is proteins, which he can get from legumes, fish, eggs, and meat. And the fourth is full-fat cow’s milk, in addition to breast milk or formula. You can add cow’s milk to your baby’s food starting around six months of age, but it shouldn’t be his main drink until he’s 12 months old. From that point on, you can continue breastfeeding while also introducing full-fat cow’s milk into his diet. Aim for about 350 to 400 milliliters, or about 1.5 cups, per day, although this amount can vary from baby to baby. If you’re using formula, you can switch entirely to full-fat cow’s milk at this point. If you don’t want to use cow’s milk, you can use a fortified alternative milk instead. The author believes that it’s possible to provide a baby with a healthy vegan or vegetarian diet, but admits that it’s tricky and requires careful planning. You need to make sure your baby gets enough iodine, calcium, omega-3 fatty acids, protein, zinc, iron, and vitamin B12. The advice is simple, and it applies to any major decision you make or concern you have while weaning: talk to your doctor. You and your baby don’t have to go on the weaning journey alone. There are trained medical professionals ready to support you every step of the way. Final summary The key message in these blinks: Weaning is a journey in which you help your baby gradually progress into eating food that contains increasingly complicated flavors and textures. Meanwhile, your baby also starts eating larger meals with greater frequency, which naturally decreases her desire for breast milk or formula over time. In guiding your baby through this journey, remember that each baby proceeds at her own pace, and your job as a parent is to respond to her individual needs. Actionable advice: Don’t give up on new foods too easily.  Just because your baby doesn’t like something the first time he tries it doesn’t mean he’s incapable of liking it. If he rejects it at first, don’t make a big deal out of it. Just pause for a little bit, and then try again. If it still doesn’t work, try again another day – perhaps getting creative while you’re at it. For example, you could subtly blend the food into a dish he already likes rather than just giving it to him in its original form.  Got feedback? We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to remember@blinkist.com with Wean in 15 as the subject line and share your thoughts! What to read next: The Happiest Baby on the Block, by Harvey Karp As any parent can tell you, a hungry baby is often an unhappy baby. Many tears and tantrums revolve around food (or a lack thereof). But if making your baby happy were just a matter of feeding her right, life would be much simpler! Alas, there’s a whole range of things that can make babies cry. Why are they so upset so often? And what can we do to calm them down? To find out the answers to these questions and more, check out our blinks to The Happiest Baby on the Block.