I remember hearing my mom friends talk about baby led weaning and thinking it meant letting baby decide when to wean from breastfeeding. Turns out that isn’t what it’s about at all! Baby led weaning is the process of teaching baby about real foods and textures from early on, and skipping the baby purees that are the commonly given as first foods. There is a ton of research to back the method of giving baby real foods from the get go as a way to prevent picky eaters, encourage healthy eating habits, and introduce healthier foods earlier on. Once I did the research on BLW and had a better idea of what it was, I knew it’s how I wanted to introduce Elliott to solid food.
My friend gave me this book as a beginners guide to BLW and I highly recommend it to anyone considering taking this journey. It is incredibly informative, logical, and helpful with sample foods, menus, and feeding schedules. I like that it encourages introducing BLW in association with breastfeeding and explains how the two work together to give baby a well rounded nutritional system!
We started introducing solid foods to Elliott right after she turned 6 months old. The first food I offered was sweet potato fries and she wanted nothing to do with them! She actually thought it was fun to pick one up, shove it in her mouth, cringe, and then throw it on the floor. The next food we tried was lightly sautéed yellow bell pepper and she was obsessed. I don’t know what baby prefers bell pepper over sweet potato but whatever! We try to introduce one food at a time to watch for any allergic reactions (since those run rampant in my genetics) and so far I’ve been really impressed with how much Elliott will eat. Over the course of the last two months she’s also had avocado, chicken, roast, carrots, toasted bread, spaghetti sauce, zucchini, scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, crackers, cheese, yogurt, apples, bananas, oatmeal, butternut squash, quinoa, kale, spinach, and rice (I’m sure I’m forgetting some). That’s literally more foods than Reagan tried in her first TWO YEARS of life!
Now that it’s been a couple of months, we offer Elliott a few different foods at each meal and let her pick what to eat. I know it sounds ridiculous to let an 8 month old decide what foods to eat, but she’s so good at eating whatever we give her that it’s working out really well. A typical dinner looks like avocado slices, quinoa, chicken pieces, and bell pepper or zucchini. We normally just take what we’re eating for dinner and make it appropriate for her. We offer most foods in stick shapes so they’re easy for her to grab and eat alone, but we spoon feed her the grains and messier foods (mashed potatoes, yogurt, etc). We don’t add salt to her food, but we have lightly seasoned her meat and veggies before and she liked that!
I posted on my Instagram about baby food from Raised Real and I thought I would mention it here as well. Their prepackaged food can be steamed or blended and contains all real ingredients that are healthy and suitable for babies. These are SO helpful for nights when I don’t have the energy to cook but still want Elliott to have a good meal, and they’re so good that I don’t mind stealing a couple bites for myself. I highly recommend picking up some of their baby food, the first 20 people to use code CASEY10 will get $10 off their first box and a free Beaba Babycook (steamer/blender just for this food!).
I think Elliott’s personality is one that fits BLW really well. She’s super adventurous even as a baby, and started lunging towards our food very early on. I still breastfeed her every 3-4 hours during the day and we seem to have a good balance and schedule going on. She is very good at letting us know when she’s hungry, and we let her try our food anytime we’re all eating a meal. She has almost four teeth right now but she didn’t have any when we started giving her solids and it wasn’t an issue at all, babies gums are surprisingly strong and good at mashing food!
Overall, I am very happy that we chose to give this method a try! We have saved so much money from avoiding the baby food purees at the store, and I know exactly what’s in the food that she’s eating. I am positive that this will help her down the line with trying new foods and having a more developed palate, and I’m hoping that her curiosity with new foods will help Reagan want to try new things as well. I know that the thought of making your own baby food can be overwhelming, but it really hasn’t taken more time or energy than we were already putting into cooking meals for ourselves, and the benefits are so numerous that it’s totally worth it to us! As always I love to chat, so if anyone has questions feel free to comment below or DM me on Instagram!