Growing up in the country, I think we kind of did baby-led weaning before baby-led weaning was a thing. Grandpa would give you a taste of his coffee and grandma would let you lick the spoon while you watched her stir the gravy from your high chair. I don’t remember anyone ever saying there were specific foods my younger siblings couldn’t eat because they were too little or the food was a an allergen or choking hazard. You just fed the baby food from the table and that was how it was.
Now, raising two small kids, I know there is so much more thought going into what a baby eats these days. Do I do purees or whole foods? Do I buy a subscription meal plan for my baby? Is organic really worth the extra money? Are the European options really that much better for my kid? How big do the pieces need to be? When do I introduce allergens? What do I do if my baby does have an allergic reaction when eating at home? How does the allergen ladder work? What do I do when my kid who once ate everything suddenly becomes a picky toddler? I could go on and on and on.
We tested the waters with spoon-fed purees for a week or so just to see how our boys took to solids, but quickly jumped in the deep end of baby led weaning. I was constantly consulting Solid Starts website for how to prep each new food, when to introduce another new food, and recipes. We are still in the thick of it with our eight month old, well on our way to 100 foods before one.
We try one new food every day, or sometimes every other day if mama is too lazy to come up with a new option. This allows us to observe any possible allergic reactions to each item. Purees are not totally out of the picture, just part of the offerings. Purees are mostly those that occur naturally, like applesauce, yogurts, and mashed potatoes. Although I love a pouch for outings and travel.
Whole foods for babies has not been the easiest route when considering childcare. My mother-in-law is our main childcare during the week, and she was so nervous with this process with our oldest. I would prepare chicken legs and steak strips for an infant and she would wait until I was on my lunch break for him to eat so I could help supervise. I similarly packed up three lunches and my baby to go introduce a friend’s twins to baby led weaning because she was too nervous to do it alone.
No lie, the first time they gag on a big piece of food, your instinct is to lunge forward and scoop it out of their mouth. But babies are remarkably adept at survival and can work that food to the front and out of their mouths in most cases. Of course, I also have infant first aid training in my back pocket to be extra safe, but have not had to use it up to this point.
Baby-led weaning has aided our boys in learning to chew properly from an early age. It has also allowed going out to eat a lot easier, as we can just feed them from our plates instead of packing a whole separate meal for them. You should see the looks we get when we set down pancake bits and scrambled eggs in front of our 17 pound eight month old who can barely see over the table ledge. That baby can eat though and will scream at you if you don’t feed him fast enough.
One more wonderful thing about baby-led weaning is that it has encouraged our ever-pickier toddler to try more foods again. Last week, while his brother munched on a steamed radish, he requested one for himself. Did he finish it? Heck no. But continued exposure to different foods is always a positive!
There are no tiny jars of baby food, no special subscription orders, or baby Beaba blending sessions in our lives thanks to baby-led weaning. Instead, I spend about five extra minutes each week while I make the grocery list to ensure we have at least five new foods for the baby try and maybe another 30 minutes prepping things for him to have separately from the family. (The rest of us have no desire to eat steamed beets and radishes, but he loves them.) Some of his favorites so far include green beans, raspberries, beets, and hardboiled eggs. We are right at 50 solid foods that he has tried at eight months old, and are so excited to get to 100!
