Baby-led weaning

April 8, 2014

Baby-led weaning, what’s that heck? Ya ya, another one of those hippie techniques. But this one stood out to me. It’s the baby leading themselves off of the boob. They eat what you eat, no purees, no rice cereal, they eat what you eat. When I heard about this, I was like, YAHTZEE, this is how I wanted my baby to eat. I loved the idea of the social part of Ivy joining in with our dinners and getting her to explore textures of different foods, instead of seeing just mushed purees. I wanted her to be an explorer, be able to feel and see what the food itself actually looked like. I was a chicken strips and french fry lover, and that’s pretty much it. I was a very picky eater, and I don’t know why, but now I love to try everything. I want Ivy to grow up unafraid to try things and to figure out what she wants and doesn’t want. With this baby-led weaning, she feeds herself, no force feeding with a spoon to get her to eat, and no, “here comes the airplane!!!” business. This is just the real deal, real eating, real food. So far, she’s pretty much just sucking on things, but she is getting bits and pieces. The trick to this is to cut the food into french fry shapes so that they can pick it up with their hand and bring it to their mouths easily. It is supposed to help with their hand-eye coordination (future athlete, holla). I can tell already in the few weeks we have been doing it that she is getting better and better at picking up and actually opening her hand to put the food in. It’s quite fun to see what she does with the food and how she figures out how to pick things up. Super smart little girl. IMG_4649

Ok, sooo, I know what you’re thinking… but JOHN put that there!

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She loves asparagus! And it’s easy for her to hold

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Ribs mmmmm

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Daaaaaaaaaad

And, she’ll pretty much eat anything.

6 thoughts on “Baby-led weaning

    1. Kaylee Koch

      I hear ya on the rice cereal and purees! I bought all of the equipment to make my own baby food and I did it one time then found baby-led weaning! So this was way more up my alley. I started giving Ivy real foods at 5 1/2 months. I was anxious to try it after I had read so much about it. I started by just giving her strips of foods we were having. She would just suck on them and if she got pieces in her mouth she would spit them out. She did that for about a month and then she finally got used to chewing and swallowing. Now she eats everything we do! It’s really fun to see how she progresses. And she has excellent hand-eye coordination with it! She mastered the pincer grip quite quickly. Good luck if you go for it! We are loving it!

      Reply
      1. Elizabeth Skillman

        Ok, so we started this about 2 weeks ago and Liam isn’t all that interested in food. Do you try one food at a time or do you just put a little bit of what’s on your plate on hers? We started with bananas, went to avocado, and tonight summer squash. He’s had some rice and rib bones but otherwise not much else! I have to admit I’m feeling a little lost!

        Reply
        1. Kaylee Koch

          I just gave Ivy everything at once. So it was usually 2-4 foods at a time, whatever we were having for a meal. Ivy dug in to her food right away. But remember, the greatest thing about BLW is that you don’t have to prepare other food, they eat what you eat. So I haven’t ever prepared different foods, I just give her what we have. For example, the other night we had brisket, beans, and zucchini, and I just gave her all of that. Sometimes she is weird with texture, like bananas or avocado, so maybe if Liam has an issue with that, he isn’t picking them up. But he will eventually! Now Ivy loves avocado. Really, the first month, she would just look at the food, grab things, put them back down, suck on them a little bit, etc. She didn’t REALLY eat anything, more just exploring. So give it a month as he tries to figure this feed himself thing out. He will eventually take interest! I even give Ivy spicy things now, and she loves them. It’s so funny! Keep at it girl! And good work on the rib bones, that’s one of Ivy’s favorite. Any meat, she loves! I think it’s how juicy they are.

          Reply
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