Baby Led Weaning

I think it can be ok, but I see a lot of people using at as a reading to feed their baby bread, French fries, pizza crusts, whole broccoli and raw veggies, and other things that really don’t make sense for a baby to eat. Babies need soft, highly nutritious easy to digest food. I start with broth, meat puree, avocado, butter cubes, mashed sardines and salmon, carrots cooked and mashed with butter. Cooked fruit mashed up. A lot of this mushy stuff doesn’t really work with baby led weaning. When they’re bigger I’ll give them strips of steak to suck on, ribs to gnaw on, and small pieces of food to grab. But babies really shouldn’t be eating grilled cheese and raw veg and other goofy stuff I see promoted in some BLW discussions. Check out the book super nutrition for babies - it has some great info

I had no idea what it was either until like a month ago lol . I think I'm going to do a combo of BLW and traditional feeding. I want my baby to get used to a spoon but at the same time be able to feed themselves however much they want.

Baby led weaning is the standard of practice for feeding baby solids by dietitians. Its technically not a trend It’s really just a way to introduce solids where a baby gets to use all of their senses to learn about solid foods. The goal isn’t to meet their nutritional needs through solids (that’s why milk is so important) but to explore food and their textures (puréed is a texture) and practicing the “hand to mouth” for more independent eating. Highly recommend reading Simple & Safe Baby Led Weaning by Malina Malkani, RDN to learn more!

@Jamie Metzger so do dieticians recommend babies to start a BLW diet instead of soft purees? I've been seeing media encouraging BLW diets to start when baby can eat. I understand BLW in general but why to start?

I’ve heard the idea is to get their jaws used to solid foods, the reason we all need braces these days is because puréed foods doesn’t allow for good jaw development in childhood

My pediatrician is strongly in favor of BLW and I did it with my first. It’s less of a “diet” and more of a method to preparing what you want to feed them. Examples include chicken (shred it for the youngest, cubes for the older kids), banana (split into handheld strips), eggs (hard fry it flat in olive oil then cut into handheld strips), broccoli (steam handheld size trees until soft), yoghurt (preload onto a spoon and let baby hold the spoon). There are many examples and lots of resources on how to prepare each type of food based on age and ability. Benefits include less pickiness (they’ll always be picky about something) sensory development, learning the shapes and feels of different foods, language development, fine motor and gross motor development, etc… honestly it’s too much to type here but I use the solid starts app to search for the food I want to feed to remind me the proper way to prepare it.

Just seeing this! You can do BLW with purées too. You can start as soon as baby’s show interest in eating what you’re eating and have good head control. Typically 4-6 months. @Chella nailed it!