The absolute essential when it comes to weaning here is a baby highchair. It sort of goes without saying, but your baby should absolutely be sitting up when eating solids so they’re able to digest their food properly. Part of the fun when your child starts eating solids is introducing them to the dinner table with the rest of the family. We can’t go past the Evolu highchair from Childhome. Functionality meets style with this chair and we love that it will last well into the toddler years. Looking for help picking a highchair? We wrote a whole article about how to choose a highchair here.

We’re all about getting creative in the kitchen, but it pays to do some pre-reading if it’s your first time cooking for a baby. It’s important to make sure they’re getting the right nutrients from their food, in friendly serves and shapes. We absolutely love Annabel Karmel’s book on weaning as the bible for knowing when to start, what to cook, advice on allergies and more.

They’re not going to be eating much in one sitting (remember their main food is still milk, for now), so don’t let your culinary masterpiece go to waste. It’s a great idea to cook up a big batch of food that will last you the week (or even a couple) and then dole them out into individual portions to freeze. It makes meal time a breeze when you’re not sure what to feed them, and don’t have time to get your baby chef hat on. Don’t look past the freezer pods from Wean Meister. Think of them as the Rolls Royce of all freezer pods basically- you’re set with these!

So cute!! If you’re anything like us, you probably won’t be able to stop with just one set. They’ve got little fingers and hands so adult cutlery just won’t cut it here. Love Mae Studio has some beautiful baby feeding sets with gorgeous illustrations on them, whilst Done by Deer makes extremely adorable spoon feeding sets. We’ve never been so excited to say ‘open wide, here comes the airplane’, than we were when using these basically!

When you start weaning your child onto food, then you can also start giving them their first sips of water. Obviously milk will be their main food and drink until at least 10 months of age, but it’s important to start getting them used to drinking water too. Offer it to them at mealtime in a sippy cup, and keep a drink bottle handy when you’re out and about for them. We have a range of sippy cups available, but one of our most loved bottles is the BBox Sippy Cup. It’s BPA-free, so no nasties allowed here, and won’t leak either!

We’re sure you know, but just in case you don’t then we want to prepare you to accept that weaning is messy. Especially baby-led weaning! But it’s all part of the fun. Food is likely to end up all over your baby, probably a little on you, and surely over their highchair and your floor. But that’s okay. It’s a temporary period and you want to allow your child to have fun with their food to help set positive eating habits from an early age. It’s all about exploration and new tastes, smells, textures, we’d probably get it all over us too! Keep mess a little under control with a baby bib. You’re going to want to stock up on these since you’ll likely be washing them after every use. Our pick is the Catcher Bib from Rommer. It’s made from silicone (read- easy to clean), and has an indentation at the bottom shaped like a little bowl to help catch any food that misses their mouth. Ingenious!