Adventures in Baby Led Weaning: Week 3: much of the same and drinking from cups

Week 3 was pretty much the same as week 2: similar foods, similar mess. The only changes were I tried introducing drinking from a cup and some self feeding with a spoon.

Why introduce a cup?

Baby M is breastfed and at 6 months I may as well get her used to drinking out of cup than a bottle for milk when we aren't together. Lots of parents have reported that if they introduced a cup with water their baby wouldn't later take milk from it (and vice versa). I think it's more important for Baby M to learn to drink milk than water so I put expressed milk in the cups.

Many people introduce water at meal times when starting solids. This isn't necessary while she is so young and I want to ensure Baby M continues to get as much breastmilk as possible. This is a personal preference.

The Cups

I gave Baby M expressed milk in a few cups: a nuby sippy cup, a tommee tippee sippy cup and a doidy cup. She managed to drink with varying success, but I needed to hold the bottom of the cups to help her drink.

The Nuby "Grip N Sip" is non spill so Baby M could throw it around without making a mess. To get liquid out the silicone mouth piece needs to be squeezed and the cup tipped up. The first part Baby M managed without any problems. The second not so much so I had to tip the cup up for her.

The Tommee Tippee First sips cup is also non spill and it requires the baby to suck to get the liquid out. I've heard that sucking is meant to be easy, but Baby M struggled to get any liquid out.

The Doidy Cup from Bickiepegs is like drinking out of a normal cup except it doesn't need to be tipped up so far. Baby M took a little while to get used to sipping (orginally she was lapping like a cat). I wasn't brave enough to let her hold it herself until it was practically empty. And then she turned it straight upside down.

The spoon

I gave Baby M curry mixed with rice. The curry rice made it easy to pick up in handfuls, but I thought I would load some on to a spoon and give her the spoon and see what happened. Impressively she put the spoon in her mouth. The right end of the spoon! She then took it out of her mouth and put her other hand in the bowl and straight to her mouth. She continued holding the spoon for a while longer, but showed no interest in using it as a tool for feeding herself.

Curry: my other half made the recipe so I don't have the recipe but it contained chick peas, vegetables and beef.