If you’re not aware, baby-led weaning is the practice of starting your baby on solids from the start of baby feeding, completely skipping over pureed foods. The idea behind this is that babies become in control over what and how much they eat when they are developmentally ready. You serve babies the food your family is eating (but obviously served the right way and not all foods are allowed from the start).
There are benefits of baby-led weaning over purees:
- You’ll save money! Baby purees & baby marketed foods are expensive!
- Teaching independence. From a young age, you’re letting your child feed themselves instead of spoon feeding.
- Healthy eating habits can form. From a young age, you’re teaching your baby to eat when they’re hungry and not eat when they aren’t. So many times, parents are forcing “just another spoonful” into their baby’s mouth when maybe the baby isn’t even hungry.
In order to successfully and safely start baby-led weaning, your baby needs to:
- Show interest in food. Is your baby watching you eat and looking interested?
- Sit up. Your baby is not ready if they can’t be keeping their torso and head straight up.
- 6 months of age. They should be around 6 months old. By 9 months old, a baby should be eating 3 meals a day, so anytime around 6 months old is when they can begin eating real people food.
How to begin once your baby is hitting the above criteria:
- Get them a baby seat of some sort. This could be a high chair, but if you feel like they aren’t big enough to safely sit in the high chair, there are a lot of alternatives for when they’re smaller. A Bumbo is a great option. I found ours for half the price used at a kid’s consignment shop.
2. Download the ‘Solid Starts’ app & follow them on Instagram. This app has helped me out a lot! Basically, it is a food database where you can type in any food and it shows you at what age you can serve it to your baby, how to serve it depending on their age, and if it is a high allergenic food. You can get a paid version (I did not) where you can track what your child eats along with other things too. This app gave me peace of mind to know what was safe for my baby & what is not.
3. Start by offering one food item per day. Fruits are some of the easiest foods to start with. Both my kids’ first foods were bananas. Offer it at mealtime when the rest of the family is eating too.
4. Introduce highly allergenic foods first. It is said that babies are less likely to develop an allergy if they’re introduced to that food early on!
Take it one day and one food at a time for your baby. Let them guide the process. And enjoy it! It’s such exciting times when your littlest one begins eating solids. 🙂
Tia Marie
tia marie 