What are the benefits of baby led weaning?
Baby led weaning is quite simply self feeding. Allowing babies to feed themselves gives them the opportunity to explore and enjoy family meals from an early age. It encourages them to develop fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and confidence, all while exploring the taste, colour, and texture of a variety of foods.
When to start?
Most pediatricians recommend introducing solids at 6 months of age since babies at this age start to develop the skills that enable them to instinctively start to feed themselves. Some signs that baby is ready are;
- sitting up with little or no support
- being able to reach out and grab things with ease
- being able to bring objects to their mouth
These 50 baby led weaning ideas; a round-up of nutritious, fun to eat foods that will inspire you in the kitchen and have babies excited about meal time!
How i wish i could start BLWing my 8month old daughter. We started giving purees to her when she turned 6 months. I attempted to give her finger foods last week but all she does is to stare at it and mash the food using her palm. She won’t put it inside her mouth as much as she puts toys inside her mouth.
Any tips how can I let her eat using finger foods? :S
I didn’t use the blw approach with my kids however, I think the strategies are the same with trying to get kids to eat…keep offering them to her! If she’s not interested at all in feeding herself, you could take a break for a week or so and then try again. As for eating particular foods (blw or purees) try different textures, make multiple attempts, and add trying adding herbs and spices to the food-they add a ton of variety and flavour!
I actually tried w/ pureed food w/ my daughter when she was 6 mo and she just wasn’t interested! I got the Gerber puffs (specifically those b/c they really melt fast in their mouth) and she LOVED them! She liked that she could suck on them without needing teeth and I loved that she couldn’t choke on them since they dissolve. I fed them to her myself and she learned to want them and so would also try to feed herself with them but she doesn’t have a very good pincer grip. After a week or 2 of that, she started just being more interested in more foods and I tried finger-length puffs and that really helped her learn to put food in her mouth because they are larger than her hand so she could at least get the edge into her mouth even if the rest was crushed in her hand 🙂
I alternated between finger foods and purees and that seemed to work. Also, whatever I had pureed for them, I started leaving it on the chunky side so they could get used to the texture.
My kids liked the Gerber puffs too! I’m not an expert on BLW but maybe she’s not completely ready. I think it’s important that you keep offering her finger foods so she gets used to them. My kids loved Laughing Cow cheese and other soft foods…anything mushy that is similar in texture to purees might work?!
Quite an awesome list if you ask me. Would be great for those who have kids!
Thank you! To be honest, I would be content with some of these meals, lol!
Great points and tips. I don’t have a little one of my own yet , but this is definitely getting bookmarked for the (near) future.
Thank you…I hope you do refer to it in the future 😉
Good points. We followed a routine when my twins were little and the transition to solid foods was seamless. Babies still need to be supervised when they make that move, to avoid choking incidents.
I completely agree, in fact, I didn’t do blw with my two children because I was too afraid of them choking!!
What a great list. The only thing that I’ve given my son when he was a baby were fruits and vegetables. Didn’t think of the snacks and mains.
Thank you. That’s the exact reason why I came up with this list…to give parents ideas and inspire them to offer baby a variety of foods 😉
This is a great list of foods to use when trying to wean a baby. I know it’s also important to introduce a variety of fruits and vegetables at a young age…so there’s a lot of variety mentioned here.
Thanks! I think I’ve covered quite a few options, lol!
I only nursed until each of the six kids were six months too. I think that’s the perfect age, with a few weeks difference here and there
Was it difficult to transition them from being nursed to a bottle and solid food at 6 months?
Both my boys were born big and they quickly ended up wanting real food. So happy that my Dr. was even on board to start them earlier than ‘most’ do.
I understand the reasoning behind waiting until a certain age, but at the same time each baby is different and has different needs. I KNOW my son was ready! 😉
Thanks for sharing! This is the sort of stuff I never think about. Guess I will once I have kids.
Great…hope you come back here once you do have kids!
Great post and very great Weaning ideas for parents with babies. Thanks for sharing.
I don’t have any children, but I am bookmarking for the time. Great tips!
YOU can enjoy these until the kids arrive!
I’m trying to remember when we started with the kids. It’s been a long time!
I kept a journal of my kids’ frist two years solely because everytime I had asked friends about milestone moments they could never remember…so I didn’t want the same to happen to me 😉
we waited until 6 months to start any type of food even cereal. Some of those are great snacks
I knew that was the ‘rule’ but my son was ready at four months! My daughter on the other hand was about 6 1/2 months!
All of these are great ideas. When kiddo came in to my life she was three, so we were passed a lot of these. I do have some friends who could benefit from this so I’m going to share it with them.
Thanks so much for sharing 😉
These are really great ideas! My nephew is about to reach this stage, so I think I’ll share this with his mother 🙂
Great! Perfect timing 😉
The quesadillas cut into quarters is my favorite, just because my daughter loved them so much when she was little (and we laughed because the one she tried first was a little spicy!). She still loves them and she’s a teen. 😉
My son loved them too…now, he’s not so interested in tortillas!?! My daughter gobbles them up though!
I was always so excited when it came time to start introducing food to my kids diets. It was always fun to see them react to a new taste.
I love their reactions to tart or sour foods, lol!
We started with our youngest when she was around 8 months old. She didn’t show any interest prior to that and I didn’t want to force the issue.
I started my son right before 4 months…although not with blw!
I wish this article was around when I was pregnant with my son! It is so helpful – Will pass along to my friends who are expecting
Thanks for sharing!
I wish I knew more about this when my son was little. I think it’s great idea and I think it would be very helpful.
BLW has become really popular, although I don’t know since when. My oldest is only four and I knew about it when he was a baby…
Lots of helpful information here. I wish I would have known about some of these back when my kids were babies. I’ll have to share this post with my sister. She’s expecting her second child soon.
I think a lot of people have this notion that blw is difficult to do. Although I didn’t do it for my children I know many moms who have. The food ideas are actually simple…it just takes a little imagination 😉
This is really helpful! I wish I knew about it back then when my kid was an infant! 🙂
This is great! I’ve done BLW with my last 4 babies. Sad I didn’t know about it with my first 2. It’s been incredible and I believe helped keep food aversions from our house!
I’ve always wondered how blw helped with food aversions?!
This is my first time of ever hearing about baby led weaning. Learn something new everyday! These sound like interesting meal ideas, alas by children were uber selective when it came to food when they were babies.
Really? Yes, you do! The concept is simple, you offer a variety of foods to baby and they feed themselves…although this method doesn’t work for everyone.
I did baby led weaning on all three of my kids. We did this for their bottles as well as their food and sleep schedules.
I’ve never heard of blw for bottles and sleep schedules?! Interesting!
Definitely bookmarking this post. Thinking about doing this for baby no.2. These tips will help me so much as I have no clue on where to start.
That’s great! A lot of people I know decided to try blw the second time around…
These are great tips for any mom trying to wean her baby. My kids were horrible for their weaning. They wanted no part of it!
I actually didn’t do blw with my kids…I was too paranoid that they would choke!