ok so my LO is going to be 6 months next week and I really don't know what I'm doing with regards to weaning.

At the moment she has bottles at 6am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm and I also have been giving her a small bit of porriage with her 10am feed.

So I not sure what to start her on first and at what time of the day? Do I drop a bottle? when should she be taking 2 or 3 meals a day?

I hope someone can steer me in the right direction. I really want to make my own food for her, is that easy enough to do? I would rather do that than buy the jars.

My little one is 6 months now, and I've been giving him food for about 4 weeks now. I started with the baby porridge too. He was very similar with his times of bottles as your little one, and to be honest he's only now started to cut down how much he takes. i still offer him his bottles, and let him take however much he needs. It is still important that they get a lot of milk. I am sure i read somewhere that as long as they are getting 18-21 fl oz a day then they should be fine.

I have made all my own veggies for him. I was told to start with veggies and then gradually iintroduce the fruit, so they get used to savory before sweet! I started with carrot - boiled then pureed with a hand blender. Start with root veggies - i did carrot, then parsnips, sweet potato, butternut squash, potato. Then i introduced brocolli and most recently a little lentil. It was easiest to feed them at lunch time - so probably around your 1pm feed. Initially I gave about half the usual bottle, stopped him and then gave him a couple of teaspoons of the pureed veg (just one veg at a time) and then let him have some more milk. I have seen mixed advice about waiting about 3-4 days between introducing each new veggie in case of allergies - other things say just introduce one per day. Gradually I introduced mashed banana, then pear and more recently apple. Again, everything is mashed up, but am starting to leave a few more lumpy bits in it. I find that making your own food means things are never as smooth as the jarred food anyway. Eventually I started to give a bit of food at dinner time too, but offering him his bottle too. Now I tend to give him his food and then a bottle a little later, and i'm trying to get him to drink water now too.

My advice is make in bulk!!! Get some ice cube trays and fill them up. When they are just frozen, take them back out the feezer and put them in ziplock bags. That way when the wee one starts to eat more you can give them an icecube of carrot and an icecube of pototo! When they are in the ziplock bags they stay in their cubes so it's really easy for mixing the veggies as you please.

I hope that is some help to you. I'm clueless about how to introduce meat and more lumpy/finger food....anyone able to help me??? Good luck - and have the wet wipes ready

Just an alternative view - at 6 months there is no actual need to mash or puree food unless you want to. You could try offering normal food to LO for her to feed herself at your own mealtimes, providing it is suitable. 6 month olds are capable of chewing, moving food around their mouths and swallowing

I can strongly recommend this book by Annabel Karmel. It has loads of recipes and meal planners to make the whole process clear and straightforward. I was completely daunted by weaning when I started Emma off a couple of weeks ago so at the moment am just following the 'first tastes' meal planner, but when I get more confident I will branch out a little!!

I used that book too.....well worth getting

If you can't afford that book btw (like me), google her website - there are tonnes of recipes up on it which I've used!

Do you have a childrens centre near by? If so ask if they run weaning workshops as I went to one at mine and it was really good.