Weaning is an exciting, messy, frustrating and entertaining developmental phase for you and your child. I wrote a while ago about the different approach to weaning I have adopted with my third and fourth children, compared to how I used to do things. The main difference being that I relaxed a bit, didn’t panic if absolutely everything wasn’t organic and learnt to try the children with small quantities of things before making a large batch of something for the freezer.

Third and fourth time around there has been a lot more finger foods, probably twice the mess and some funny expressions along the way. I love their little faces when they react to something cold or a different texture or even something a little spicy.

How are you finding the weaning process?

Weaning: 8 tips on introducing new foods – From Dr Frankie Phillips, Nutrition Advisor to Organix

Dr Frankie Phillips, Nutrition Advisor to Organix shares her top tips for introducing your weaning baby to new tastes:

1. Don’t give up with new foods – try, try try again. It can take between 10 and 15 attempts before a baby learns to like a new taste.
2. Sit and eat with your baby and let them share from your plate – mealtimes are all about being sociable, sharing good food and talking about it.
3. Have fun and play with food and encourage your baby to experiment – to mash, lick, squash and squeeze, to examine, to play, to try and to taste their food and its flavours.
4. Offer two courses – a savoury one followed by a sweet one, it helps introduce a range of tastes, and provides variety and interest for your little one.
5. Let baby enjoy the real taste of vegetables – don’t mask challenging tastes with easier ones, let your baby enjoy the real taste of veggies without the sweetness of fruit, or they may find them difficult to accept later on. For example, don’t mix broccoli with apple purée.
6. Provide choice by offering lots of different tastes, textures, shapes and colours.
7. Babies like flavour – so don’t be afraid to add some herbs and spices.
8. Every baby is different – give them the freedom to explore and to go at their own pace.

To help inspire parents Organix’ children’s food expert Lucy Thomas has lots of simple, fun activities to help introduce new taste sensations to babies. Here you can see how vlogger Charlie O’Brien put some of them to the test with her son Noah.

To understand the meaning behind that face your baby pulls as they try a new food for the first time, follow #realfoodface .

Weaning is an exciting time for everyone so for lots more weaning advice, weaning foods from Organix, weaning recipes – from purées to finger foods – and to download your free copy of the Organix Little Book of Weaning please visit.

If you and your little ones love Organix you will be excited to hear about our new competition. We are offering you the chance to win £20 worth of Organix weaning foods.

Want to know how?

We would love you to visit our Facebook page, click the ‘like’ button and then upload a picture of your little one’s funniest eating face to the page with an appropriate caption. If you also tag Organix Food and use the hashtag #realfoodface that would be wonderful. I am then going to ask my 9 year old daughter to choose the one she likes the best and that person will win the prize bundle. So look through those photos and send us your best!

Only one photo per person to enter and the competition will close on 14th May.