When was the last time you kicked your feet in happy anticipation of a meal?

No, me neither. I can’t remember being so excited I drummed my feet against chair legs or my hands on the table.

Tiny, on the other hand, regularly does both things. Especially when the plate comes out and a portion is separated out. Waiting for it to cool down takes an eternity.

There are two schools of thought for weaning babies: baby-led, and pureed.

Pureed is exactly what it says on the tin – or the pouch. Perfectly ordinary foods turned into spoonable mush, so baby doesn’t choke. And also so baby has absolutely no idea what he or she is eating because everything looks the same. The health visitor running the mother-and-baby group we went to was vehemently against this method. She was even more against the parents doing the feeding, because it’s too easy to over-feed a baby that way.

Can’t say I’ve ever been to keen on it either. Just sounds like a lot of extra work and faff, or expense in buying the pre-mushed stuff.

We had a couple, in the beginning, mainly to assuage M’s fears of Tiny choking, at least in the early days, but these weren’t popular with Tiny. Whatever we were eating looked far tastier! One of the few things Tiny hasn’t liked was a puree of various fruits, including blueberry. Naturally, it was a bright purple mush, which isn’t a colour we normally eat. Tiny was just a wee bit suspicious and refused to eat it. Very sensible, really. The pink Turkish Delight ice cream, on the other hand – well, I was eating it so it must be all right.

Blueberries, though. Likes blueberries. And the bananas and pears which also made up the puree.

Baby-led weaning involves giving the baby bits of food – fingers of cucumber, for example – and letting baby decide what and, crucially, how much to eat. It’s messier than the puree (unless you let the baby feed itself with the puree), but baby learns different foods: the tastes and textures. Learns to recognise things. And appetite-cues: when baby is full, baby stops eating and just plays with the food. Throws a lot of it on the floor, it’s true, and smears it all over everywhere or saves bits for later in all sorts of unexpected places.

The first six months of weaning are all about learning to eat, anyway: baby should still get most nutrition from milk until 12 months. As the health visitor kept saying “Food under 1 is just for Fun!”. And there’s no fun in pureed foods. If you ask me, which I appreciate you probably didn’t.

Make sure you have a stain-remover for the clothes. The most unlikely foods can leave a trace. And be remarkably resistant to removal. Did you know banana could stain? No, neither did I – a horrible grey-brown sort of colour, too. Or just strip baby: it’s usually easier to clean skin than clothes.

But don’t bother with the suction-plates. Baby will still manage to up-end it on the floor, so save your money. Besides, the suction tends to make them too tall, so baby can’t really see what’s available.