Anyone doing baby led weaning?

ibis

Aka baby led solids...

I just listened to a podcast about it and decided to give it a try since it sounds sooo easy. Basically the idea is that if your baby is 6mo +, you don't need to do purees. Just give them fist-sized bits of food they can easily gum and let them play/eat by themselves.

We started last night w/ avocado. Pretty slippery and hard to pick up so I helped him a little but he seemed much more interested in that than the cereal/purees I had been doing before.  

xnbride

we do both because the kid LOVES to eat but he is really good with his pincher grasp and he prefers to be in full control of his food without mommy getting in the way LOL. I doubt that will change as he gets older. He better marry a woman who can cook.

It is really cute watching them concentrate on how they are going to get the food into their mouths. You find find that he will develop his own technique.

PurpleK26

Our pedi had us start at just under 5 months. He said skip the purees altogether. He said just feed her whatever we are eating. I thought it was a bit early for table food, but I asked on the AP board and many of them started right off with table food 'adult meals' as well.

We've so far just been cutting things up small and giving them to her.  She doesn't have much success in picking things up and getting them to her mouth unless it's something big like a toy or book. Although she's beginning to master the mesh feeder. Since she does have a couple of teeth and knows how to use them, I don't let her bite off her own bites, because she won't just gum off little bits, she bites and tears of chunks way to big for her!

We've had great success with pasta, meat, veggies, breads, rice krispies and broken up cheerios etc. The only thing that she really hasn't cared for is watermelon. We haven't had any trouble with her stomach being upset, so we're just going to keep trying everything till something sets her off. She had fresh blueberries(in the mesh feeder) and turkey bacon for lunch! Very happy girl! 

ibis

It helped me to hear the lady who wrote Baby Led Weaning say you should think of mealtime as playtime and the food as a new toy. DS is surprisingly (given how much he nurses) not that into food for food's sake, but he does like to play, so this is perfect for us.

erinkate23

I had planned to do this exclusively, but DS grew too fast and formula couldn't keep up, so we've had to introduce some solids for calories - he was eating close to 50oz a day of formula, and the doc said we needed to bring that down and solids up.

We are still trying baby-led weaning a bit - DS loves steamed/cooled broccoli, asparagus, and bananas. 

lil_rhody

This is what we plan to do, so I'm interested in how it goes!