Baby Led Weaning

disclaimer: I truly believe there is no right or wrong way to feed your child. BLW works for some families and not for others. this is a judgement free zone for all. 

I knew pretty early on that I wanted to do Baby Led Weaning (BLW) with Ronin. it just made sense to me to allow him to feed himself instead of me painfully trying to get him to slurp puree off a spoon. I'd heard stories from fellow moms explaining to me how difficult it was to get their baby to eat any baby food. once I read the BLW book, I understood why. 

Baby-led weaning is, it must be said, a somewhat cheesy term for just letting your infant self-feed. You cut food up into manageable sticks and offer it, they eat. It’s really pretty simple. 

The key difference between BLW and traditional weaning, when you think about it, is in the order that children learn to eat. With a puree, they learn to swallow first and then chew, which works fine until they meet a lump. With BLW, the babies learn to chew first and swallowing might come some time later. 

It’s ‘baby-led’ in the sense that you let them do what they need to do while they’re learning, and as the parent you resist the urge to get wound up in knots about how much they’re eating, whether they like the food you thought they’d like and whether it’s smushed into the nearest curtain. The main thing is… it’s all good clean (messy) fun.

what I loved about the BLW concept was the idea that Ronin was perfectly capable of teaching himself how to eat. of course, the gag factor totally freaked me out, but I watched a few YouTube videos of BLW babies to prepare myself. gagging is the baby's way of working the food back out and training the gag reflex to recognize food that is too big for them to swallow. eventually, they learn to either suck on the food to break it down or they take smaller bites. 

what most people don't understand is that there is a huge difference between choking and gagging. in fact, choking is very rare with babies who have been allowed to feed themselves from the beginning, simply because they've learned what to do in the instance of taking too large a bite. when a baby goes from pureed food to solid food, they instinctively suck the food  to the back of their throat because that's what they've been taught to do with purees, and they end up with food lodged in their throat. 

we waited until Ronin was 6 months old before introducing him to anything other than breast milk or formula. the AAP recommends the same, as babies receive all the essential nutrients from breast milk or formula until this time.  

his first meal at the dinner table consisted of zucchini, carrots, and toast. 

he really didn't care much for the zucchini or carrot, but he had a lot of fun trying the toast. it's important to remember that in the beginning, babies really don't ingest a whole lot. this beginning stage is mostly just about exploring different flavors and textures. we make sure not to feed him when he's hungry - he always gets a bottle first. he won't make the connection between food and hunger for quite some time. sometimes he's in the mood to eat, sometimes he's not. these meals aren't meant to replace his milk feedings yet, so we just go at his pace and allow him to eat as much or as little as he wants to eat. 

so far, his favorite foods are pears, chicken, toast, broccoli, oranges, and ground turkey. he doesn't really care for bananas, carrots, or green beans, but he will try whatever we put in front of him. I think it's safe to say he really enjoys joining us at the table. 

I love that I can (for the most part) just give Ronin what we eat, although I do make sure he gets more fruits and veggies than we do to make sure he gets accustomed to them. we also stay away from anything processed and anything with a lot of salt or sugar. 

I highly recommend reading the book if you're interested in trying BLW. this method of feeding seems daunting, but it really is lot of fun watching a baby figure out how to eat real food.