To briefly answer your questions, you give pretty much all foods; you just give LO a plate of normal family food and let them have a go; you never put something in LO's mouth, they feed themselves; you don't mush things specifically for LO.
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BLW means Baby Led Weaning, which is a method of weaning described by Gill Rapley in her book "Baby Led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food". It's worth a read as it explains it perfectly.
To put it really simply, BLW means:
- No puréeing or mushing anything you wouldn't eat like that yourself e.g you can give mashed potatoes if you're having them, but you wouldn't mash a chicken or a pear!
- No feeding LO - let LO feed him/herself.
- No introducing foods in a certain order, just give LO what your family is eating unless there is an allergy or family history of allergy.
- Avoid praise or encouragement - let LO enjoy food for its own sake, not because you'll make coochy-coo noises!
- Don't tell LO what to eat off a plate - if LO wants the meat and leave the potatoes, just let them. They know what they need.
- Trust your baby's abilities, basically
You don't avoid much, just things like honey before a year old (risk of infant botulism with it, even cooked), no whole nuts or big pieces of nuts, keep salt down to a minimum and you normally avoid the kind of things you avoid in pregnancy until a year old, like undercooked eggs, certain fish.
It's quite common to see people say that they are combining TW and BLW, but that's impossible because TW involves purées and BLW is NO purées. You can do TW in a baby led way (no force feeding, let LO choose etc) and include finger foods, but it's still just TW.
it's weaning! Do what works for you, and have confidence whatever you do!
