What Next for Baby after First Tastes?

One question I am regularly asked is what happens next once you’ve offered your baby their first tastes and completed the first month of weaning. It’s natural to get past the initial stage of preparing first taste purees, only to be left wondering what the next part of the journey looks like! So, this blog is an introduction to weaning after first tastes. It sets out what to consider regarding nutrients, textures and timings, alongside some all-important practical meal suggestions for you all. I hope you find it useful.

This blog post is for you, whether you have started weaning your baby with purees, opted for baby-led weaning or combined the two (my preferred approach, especially alongside veg-led weaning).

First up: next step textures

When it comes to introducing new textures during weaning, there isn’t a set-in-stone, one-size-fits-all approach.

The timing is quite individual and will depend on how confident you feel and how your baby is taking to their first tastes and progressing at the start of weaning.

Some babies might start weaning with thin purees and might take a little time to adjust to the puree texture.

Other babies might go straight in with finger foods and thicker textures, and that means that your “next steps” meals will vary depending on how a baby has got on with weaning so far.

Overall, though, you want to gradually transition through textures – from purees to mashes, to lumpier foods and then on to minced and chopped foods.

With the ultimate aim of your baby eating the same foods as the rest of the family – just with a few mini adaptations, if needed.

So, this means that the “next steps” part of weaning is really trying to help your baby move through textures – away from purees and to more complex, lumpier and more challenging textures – gradually and stealthily.

Next: Next steps meals

As your baby progresses through the first month or so of weaning (especially if you’ve been following my book How to Wean Your Baby, you’ll see that we move from one ingredient meals, to combining ingredients to ensure that baby starts to get exposed to a really wide variety of flavours, tastes and ingredients. You might go from just one ingredient meals, to two ingredient meals and then move towards meals with multiple ingredients similar to what we have as a family at home.

This is super important for:

• Getting a variety into their diet early on
• Moving them on to meals you can easily eat together
• Exposing them to lots of different textures in their food
• Helping them learn to eat “meals”
• Helping them eat a balanced diet.

After the first few weeks or months of weaning therefore, babies should ideally be eating baby-sized versions of family meals in a form that they can readily manage (see textures above).

Examples of meals that help move your baby beyond first tastes might include:

• Scrambled eggs with a handful of added green veg plus toast fingers
• Salmon with potato fingers and broccoli sticks
• Porridge with fruit sticks and yogurt
• Toast fingers spread with avocado and a little grated cheese
• Pancakes with yoghurt, nut butter and fruit
• Potato tots with added lentils and veg sticks
• Pesto pasta fingers
• Lentils mashed with avocado and ground seeds/nuts
• Sweet potato and bean mash with potato or veg fingers
• Strips of omelette with quartered tomatoes

For more easy meal ideas for transitioning babies during weaning – check out the finger food, breakfast, lunch and dinner ideas I’ve shared below!

Adding flavour to baby’s foods

I’m a BIG fan of making sure that baby’s meals have plenty of flavour. Whilst it is advised to avoid sugar and salt for young babies, that doesn’t mean they can’t have flavoursome meals. I have plenty of tips in my blog on adding flavour to family meals WITHOUT sugar and salt. I’ve also written about using herbs and spices in baby’s meals.

Here are some top tips for using herbs and spices:

• Don’t be afraid to use them right from the start (after the first week or so of single tastes). Lots of the meals I’ve shared below include herbs and spices and they’re totally fine to include in your baby’s early meals
• Use your family spices – using herbs and spices are a great way to get your baby used to the flavours that you enjoy as a family
• Start with milder flavours such as cinnamon, basil, parsley and build in stronger flavours as your baby gets used to having foods with flavours
• Avoid very strong flavours such as cayenne pepper and chilli for young babies (for some babies, and in some cultures, these flavours are introduced right from the start, so they’re not necessarily harmful, but they may be more difficult on little babies’ digestive systems)
• Remember not EVERY meal or food needs to be packed with flavour too – it’s ok for them to taste and accept plainer foods too.

Next Steps: Balancing Baby’s meals

A key consideration as you move past first tastes is to aim to offer your baby a balanced diet. Babies start to need more in the way of nutrients than milk alone can offer. So as we transition babies through their meals, help them learn to eat and offer a variety of foods, we also have to think about WHAT they are eating, to ensure they are getting plenty of energy and essential nutrients from their food.

Offering a balanced diet means offering babies small portions of foods from each of the main food groups (carbohydrates/wholegrains, veggies and fruit, protein/iron rich foods and a little dairy) at most of their meals. Read more about a balanced diet here.

Essentially this just meals offering more complex, family style meals, as we referred to in the above section about moving on with ingredients, as quite often these are naturally balanced. We just need to start thinking about nutrients for babies as these do become important during weaning.

For all the details you need on this, take a look at my complete guide to essential nutrients during weaning, as well as my guide to vitamins and minerals during weaning.

Remember that although we want to offer baby plenty of variety, we don’t need to be strict about trying to tick off every essential nutrient in every meal, day in, day out. Of course, that’s never realistic! ‘Healthy eating’ is about keeping in your mind what a balanced diet for your baby looks like and incorporating a variety of different nutrients whenever you can into their mealtimes.

A note on allergens

As you move through more balanced and complex meals, you also want to ensure you’re continuing to regularly offer allergens to your baby. Once you’ve introduced allergens to your baby during weaning, it’s important to keep offering them to your baby to ensure their tolerance is maintained.

This doesn’t have to be EVERY single allergen – but those that you eat regularly as a family. Just bear in mind that if you introduce an allergen to your baby and they don’t then have it as a regular food in their diet, they could still have a reaction to it later on.

In conclusion:

As you prepare their food beyond first tastes, think about offering combinations of different flavours and different foods – together, this will help to build balance and variety. Aim to build up to family style meals in place of mashes or purees. You will also need to ensure you know about introducing allergens during weaning as well as foods to avoid giving babies under one.

Most importantly always remember that every baby is unique and different so resist the temptation to compare your baby’s weaning journey to others. You know your baby best so try to be guided by them as you go through the weaning journey together – that’s true Baby Led Weaning for me.

Finger Food Ideas

• Carrot and sweetcorn fritters or my easy courgette fritters
• Figgy porridge fingers
• Cauliflower macaroni cheese bites
• Family friendly fish fingers
• Pizza wraps (deconstructed may be easier as baby gets used to them)

Check out my blog for more easy finger food ideas for babies.

Breakfast Ideas

These breakfast foods are all great “next step” meal ideas as babies progress through textures. Serving pancakes/muffins mashed together with a little bit of yoghurt can help to soften them into more of a lumpy/mashed puree texture for younger babies or those that may be more used to purees.

• Peanut butter and banana muffins
• Raspberry sheet pancakes
• Banana bread with yoghurt and nut butter
• Oatie blueberry muffins
• Porridge – you don’t have to buy baby porridge, normal porridge oats are absolutely fine – check out my blog on oats for babies and toddlers for more tips

Lunch Ideas

• Creamy lentil and butternut squash mash – this is ideal as a first “next step” meal, particularly if you’re following a puree approach. It starts to build in balance and flavour and offers a little bit more in the way of texture, too
• Easy peasy veggie stew – make sure to flatten the chickpeas and you can also blend or mash as needed. Cous-cous is great for babies but it is nice and messy too – so be prepared! This is ideal for young babies, too!
• Easy rainbow traybake – The veg should all be nice and softly cooked for babies to self feed but you could blend this to a thick puree or mash if necessary – it might need a little extra liquid
• Deconstructed sandwiches – try some of my sandwich filling ideas here – these make ideal finger foods and are great “next step” meal – you can serve alongside a puree and encourage them to dip the toast in the puree. Adding toppings such as avocado, mashed fish, nut butter helps to soften the toast to make it easier for babies to manage
• Creamy, lemony salmon – I love this recipe as it’s super easy and ideal as a family meal. The salmon is super soft and an ideal “next steps” finger food. Leave off the skin from the potatoes and courgette and mash a little if needed

Dinner ideas

• Spaghetti bolognese – this is one of my favourite family meals that is ideal as a “balanced meal” – check this post on Instagram where I’ve showed how it can be adapted to progress through textures as needed
• Baby-friendly bean stew – this can be blended into a thick puree or mashed with a fork to a more lumpy texture – the beans should always be flattened for younger babies
• Easy cheesy potato pie – as long as the veggies are really softly cooked, this can work well for babies to self feed with their hands, or to be spoon-fed. It can also be mashed with a little extra milk to soften or blended to a thick/lumpy puree
• Chicken fajita traybake – another great example of a perfectly adaptable family meal – the recipe has some notes on adapting for babies – mash the beans into a puree and serve with softly cooked pepper sticks, chicken strips (can puree if you prefer) and some wrap
• Mushroom and chickpea stroganoff – this can be blended to a thick/lumpy puree or simply mashed depending on your baby’s stage

Online Weaning Course

If you’re soon to begin your baby’s weaning journey, Charlotte’s Online Weaning Course is your complete step-by-step guide to introducing solids.

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