The Pura real parents interview. What it’s like to wean....

It’s Pura’s mission to make life a little easier for others on this crazy but wonderful journey we call parenting. We want to create a Pura community where we can share stories and advice. This is why we’re running a series of interviews on the blog, chatting to real parents about their various experience.  

Today we chat to Emily Jones, mother of 13-month-old Nova who lives in Bristol with her husband.  

When did you start weaning? How is it going?  

We started weaning a little before Nova turned 6 months as Nova sat up well and she started showing a good interest in food. We started with some purees and baby rice. I was worried about baby-led weaning and choking – you hear such horror stories! So, we stuck with purees for a long time… she didn’t turn her nose up at much…. Until peas!  

At around 7 months old, she started wanting to feed herself; trying to grab the spoon from me and even the food from my plate! We then decided to start introducing some elements of baby-led weaning, with the idea we would do a mixture of that and purees. We began with with some soft foods like cooked carrot sticks and sweet potato, and she ended up eating so well when feeding herself, she never wanted mummy’s purees again!  

When you first start weaning, it can be quite daunting.  Aside from the choking risks and so on, there’s also some added pressure of making everything from scratch… prepping and freezing stocks and stocks of pureed foods. 

I have always tried to make as much as I can from scratch, but I am not the kind of mum that has stock in her freezer – I tried… it didn’t last!  

She has always been a really good eater. We love food in our family, so it’s been so nice seeing her enjoy so many new tastes and textures. 

What are Nova’s favourite foods? 

For main meals, she mostly eats homecooked foods such as porridge, banana pancakes, pastas in a veggie sauce – even mild turkey chilli! She absolutely loves all fruit, so we’ve end up keeping A LOT of berries in our fridge too. We do have some prepared foods bought in such as age-appropriate rice cake snacks and so on. 

How are you making weaning fun for your little one?  

It’s never been hard for us to make it fun – she has just always loved food, to the point she is known as the “food stealer” in her nursery! But I think the biggest thing for us was to ensure that we were relaxed as parents. This made Nova confident that it was ok then to try these new and exciting things. Her favourite foods are pasta… and strawberries 

Which finger foods do you recommend? 

Cooked soft veggie sticks like carrot and sweet potatoes when starting out. Soft foods like avocado are also good. As babies get bigger, you can then look at what food you have and make age-appropriate versions. 

Are you doing anything to avoid food waste such as batch cooking and freezing foods? 

We don’t tend to batch cook loads, but, where we can, we give Nova the same food as us – I simply don’t cook any of our food with salt and use salt-free stock cubes. The I take out her portion and then season what’s left over to mum and dad’s taste. It makes life much easier. 

Do you have any other weaning tips? 

Get a recipe book or two when starting out – it really helps give you with ideas. Have some even have weekly plans you can follow to help take the stress out of weaning. As a parent, especially as a first-time mum, I always question if I am doing things right, so to have some guidance through weaning books has been extremely valuable.  

Thank you for sharing your story, Emily. You can follow Emily’s parenting journey on her Instagram or TikTok.