Baby led weaning questions

[sezzolou]

I will be reading through the support thread but wanted to ask a couple of questions.

I hope to do BLW once my 4 month old reaches 6 months or when he is ready for it. With DS1 I did a combination of traditional weaning and BLW but am keen to purely BLW this time.

Main questions are what's the best food to start with and do you introduce things one at a time like with traditional weaning or do you just go for it as a lot probably won't get eaten anyway. (For example, I seem to remember being told to start with porridge/baby rice, then try carrot for a few days, then add more foods as the weeks went on while their tummies adjust and to ensure there are no allergies).

And I'm keen for him to have porridge as myself and ds1 have it most mornings. How do you go about giving porridge when doing BLW? Is it just made thicker and picked up with hands from a bowl? I don't mind mess lol.

Thanks 😀

 

[MindUtopia]

You can start with whatever foods you usually eat yourself, but I found starting with things in stick shape or fist size were easier for my daughter to pick up - sticks of roasted carrot and parsnip, homemade 'oven chips' (basically roast potatoes), yorkshire pudding, cucumber sticks, melon sticks, toast fingers with mashed banana, mashed avocado, hummus or cashew butter, stone fruits like nectarine or plum cut in half with the stone removed, big pieces of banana (usually about 1/3 of a banana), pieces of omelette. We also did porridge balls (have a search and you'll find a recipe), which my daughter liked for a bit, or you could just make normal porridge and offer it in a bowl to taste and scoop with hands. You don't have to start with offering just one food at a time. That's outdated advice and not even recommended with traditional weaning anymore unless you have a history of food allergies.

 

[Cangaroo]

We started yesterday. The first food we offered was a burger at her sister's barbecue birthday party! I made a special burger for her with no salt (I was making gluten free burgers anyway) so it was basically just mince, herbs and garlic. We also gave her a stick of cucumber and one of red pepper and a lettuce leaf. The only thing she actually put in her mouth was the lettuce! Strange child. She loved mushing up the burger, though.

Today she has been offered:
Breakfast- Staffordshire oatcake (sucked this and ate tiny amounts)
Lunch- Cheese scone, cucumber, carrot stick (enjoyed sucking the carrot stick, didn't try the rest)
Dinner: Cottage pie, roast carrot and parsnip sticks, broccoli (tried the carrot and broccoli, covered hands in cottage pie then sucked them, then fell asleep in it!)

She's eaten almost nothing so far, but it's great fun to watch her play with it! She'll eat when she's ready. It takes a while for them to work out how to get to the food they're holding, so stick shapes longer than their first are the best starter foods!

 

[Button#]

Check out the BLW cookbook or it might be on the website, you can make porridge fingers to start with. Or you can just give normal porridge on pre loaded spoons if you want the fun of a messy baby!