If you’re reading this chances are your baby just hit or is about to hit 6 months of age! Whether you’re starting with purees, following “baby-led weaning” or doing a combination of the two, there are 5 essentials every parent needs to make this transition to solid food as seamless as possible.
Image via Little Whimsey
Bibs
This may be a “duh” thing – but after leading several kids through this transition to solid food we’ve figured out which bibs are best. Our main tip – avoid cloth bibs! Babies are messy. And we mean really messy. So unless you want to be washing bibs every day we recommend using silicon or leather bibs that you can easily rinse or wipe clean. Bonus if it has a pocket at the bottom to catch all the chunks, drips, and crumbs that will otherwise smash themselves into your baby’s pants. Our favorites are from Mushie and Gathre: silicon – check, pocket – check, adjustable neck sizes – check, cute prints, and colors – check.
Pouches
You may have every intention of making homemade solid food for your baby (we did!) but the truth is life happens and sometimes meals happen on the go or schedules are tailspin out of control. It’s a good idea to have a backup plan when it comes to feeding your baby! We always keep a stash of pouches or jars of food for our little ones. Our favorite brand is Serenity Kids – their pouches and puffs are crammed full of nutrition growing babies need. They also don’t use fruit which is great for savory food exposure as you’ll soon find every other baby food has fruit included. Other favorites include Once Upon a Farm and Cerebelly!
Image via Pinterest
Sippy Cup
When a baby starts solids, they also start taking sips of water. Our checklist included – cups that weren’t too heavy and tough for small babes to live on, had handles for easy gripping, and weren’t plastic. We landed on the Haakaa silicone sippy cup (bonus, it can also be a snack cup!) for our small babes and love this stainless steel option by Thinkbaby that can also transition to a straw lid. When your baby is old enough to know how to sip from a cup, we recommend the Munchkin Miracle cup because it’s the only genuinely spill-proof cup we’ve tried!
High Chair
High chairs are a godsend when starting a baby on food. It gives you a place to contain them, an easily cleanable surface and helps keep you and your clothes free from baby food! Trust us when we say there are so. many. options. to choose from and there is certainly no right or wrong answer! Because babies are in high chairs for such a short amount of time we chose a chair that was able to grow with our babies. Pieces can be removed as they get bigger to become a toddler chair. This made us feel like we were making more of a long-term investment! Our favorites are by Stokke – the Steps chair and the Tripp Trapp chair both transition, and are beautiful! For a budget-friendly option that gets the job done – this one by Ikea is your best bet. We also recommend this travel high chair if you enjoy meals on the go. And bonus – it folds up small enough to fit into a suit case!
Image via Pinterest
Disposable Placemats & Bibs
Whether you’re an always-on-the-go mom keeping up with multiple kids or a busy career or more of a hang-at-home mom working hard to keep your babe in a routine (both are great, btw) meals on the go will happen. After a few stained onesies and broken restaurant plates, we learned it’s best to be prepared. Once our babes started solids we always had in our diaper bags disposable bibs and placemats. Trust us when we say both are necessary for meals at restaurants or even friends/grandparents house where highchairs aren’t present and you want to protect the table. We found these cute bibs and placemats off Amazon, but there are lots of choices to choose from! Even if you don’t have plans to be out, trust us and grab these now so you have them on hand when the time comes.