janelle's chronicles: Preparation for Weaning

The standard for introducing solids is at 6 months when baby is able to sit upright on his or her own and tongue thrush reflex much minimized. Preparation for weaning was an exciting 2+weeks which involved preparing ingredients for use after baby turns 6 months(tad advanced planning as I won't have much free time when I start work); shopping for storage and feeding utensils to that of high chairs. It was definitely an enjoyable and fun-filled process.

For a start, I began with preparing ikan bilis powder from scratch. This meant decapitating 0.5kg of ikan bilis, washing, drying and toasting and then grinding them. I wished my mom had gotten me the headless ones but well, since she said those with heads are better. She's the guru after all.

I spent a good 3 hours removing the heads of these little silvery creatures.

The sheer amount of ikan bilis compared to the 1 litre water bottle.

Finally, wash them to remove tons of salt,i.e sodium; dry and toast them before grinding them into powder form!

Next on the agenda was finding a good brand of cereal. Those commonly found in supermarket contains milk powder and after asking around, the reviews were just not ideal. I spent a good few hours researching online on the type and brand of baby cereals. My conclusion was that Healthy Times seems to be the better brand amongst others. Reason being, it's organic, i.e. pesticide free. It is the only brand which carries a series of different grain cereal- brown rice, barley, oatmeal and multi-grains. I hardly come across other brands carrying brown rice cereal, whats more barley! However, the full range is hard to come by in supermarkets, and boy was I happy when I saw those boxes at lot1 fairprice! I swept them off the shelves instantly! I also bought an organic rice cereal from cold storage and rusks for baby to munch on later.

Following the guidebook which was written in an Asian context that I have in hand , I decided to experiment with the preparation for weaning 4-6 months stage before the early stage of weaning in 6-7months. At the preparation stage, babies are encouraged to try juices and broth to expose them to a myriad of flavours. Referring to the 'What to Expect in the First Year', parents are advised to give single grain cereals to their child in the bracket of 4-6 months to minimize risks of allergic reactions. And so, I've decided to combine these 2 sources and introduce my little darling to both juices and cereal!

For starter, baby can only take in very little, probably like only 1-2 teaspoons of food. Most of the food is spitted out due to the tongue thrush reflex. The bumbo seat which we bought to train him to sit upright came in handy when we have yet to purchase the high chair.

Other than introducing him to cereal, I also made diluted fruit juices like orange and starfruit for him to try. On the menu list is also tomato juice, barley water and vegetable broth (pumpkin and carrot). As baby takes very little, it is wasteful to dump away bulk of the remaining. I got this rubber ice tray from Ikea which is easy to press the cubes out when frozen. And so, with a small quantity of each type of juice made, they were frozen, prop them out and store in zip lock bag. This way, the liquid can be stored for a month or more without deteriorating. Even so, I won't be keeping them for more than 2 weeks since I can make new ones every weekend.

A sample of the vegetable broth cubes!

With all the food set and prepared, what is now left is where the prince is seated! We rationalized that buying those expensive high chair which offers reclining option is not necessary if we were to just use it for feeding. In that case, just a normal high chair would do the job! We bought 2 highchairs from Ikea swiftly on a Sunday afternoon. I was shopping at their online store the night before to generate a shopping list. Armed with that, it was merely grabbing the items on the afternoon itself! Well, we needed 2 because little Ean would be shuffling between 2 places and we didn't want to lug so much barang each time we come back home with him!