Baby Led Weaning

[Laylasmummy2012]

Hi, we are about to start BLW and I just wondered how people had actually started - first foods, time of day, frequency of meals etc? I would quite like to plan the first few days/weeks and wonder what worked for other people?

DD is now 11mo and we started BLW when age was 6mo. We gave her well cooked broccoli (the long tenderstem type) and sweet potato wedges (baked in the oven) and banana for the first few goes. TBH not much went in but that's the point.

Over the next few weeks we tried all kinds of things...mild cheese, ripe mango, toast (bread cut in soldiers and baked in oven for 10 mind - was better than from toaster for some reason!), watermelon sticks, rice cakes, cooked carrot, ripe avocado sticks etc.

After a few weeks I wanted to give her weetabix, porridge and yoghurt etc and no way was I going to let her at it with her hands so we started spoon feeding these types of foods.

We also gave things like hummus with breadsticks from about 7mo.

Now we do a mix of 'styles'. DD will have fish pie, spag bol, chicken & sweetcorn pasta (although I still have to cut chicken up small) with a spoon. She has a spoon and I have a spoon so she digs in the bowl and I make sure she's getting something in her mouth! She has most of her veg and fruit in stick form. She eats muffins, cheese, bread/sandwiches as finger food.

She's currently a really good eater - although I'm aware this MAY change. Doing a bit of both has worked really well for us and has meant she gets good practice using her fingers/hand eye coordination but also I can make sure she's eating enough from all the food groups. She wasn't able to pick up lentils etc at 6mo so spoon feeding these were great!

Its great fun, esp if you are happy with a bit of mess and flung about food...Good luck!

I did breakfast and lunch and then after a week or so we introduced dinner. Sometimes we'd miss a meal as I found it quite had to fit it all in. She just had what we were having from the start but we but or veg into chip size pieces. We eat a lot of fish baked in the oven with pasta or roast vegetables, spag bol or chilli, roast chicken, brisket done in the slow cooker. The BLW cookbook is good for inspiration on lunches. Another bonus of BLW is you don't have to plan, DD's first breakfast was a bit of banana and first lunch was roast trout with vegetables, what we were having anyway. I have batch cooked some chickpea patties for the freezer for lunches and a few other bits as I prefer to avoid her having bread every day like I do.

You can also check out the Gill Rapley BLW book on amazon. I found another which talked about mixing BLW with spoon feeding in the 'you might also like this' bit on amazon.

Check out mydaddycooks blog. A bit more advanced but great food. I loved it and we just bought his book on amazon.

Also there's a River Cottage Family Cookbook which I've cooked a few things from.

Amazon bargains!!!

We started when I was holding dd and eating an apple and she launched at it. She's a bit of an apple fiend. She was a couple of weeks short of 6 months and I was trying to follow the guidelines, but for those couple of weeks she helped herself to bits off the edge of my plate (obviously I stuck to healthy stuff).

Once we got into it properly I started with fruit and veg sticks, hummus on toast, pasta, hard boiled eggs, generally whatever I was having. Rissotto works well if you roll it into balls. I tried offering sloppy foods on loaded spoons but dd took a long time to get the hang of them.

I found the blw cookbook had some good recipes in.

DD started BLW at 23 weeks when she stole and ate a ham sandwich. After that she completely refused spoons, you would have thought we were trying to poison her so it was BLW all the way.

We just gave her what we had. If you are offering food just watch the salt content, you can buy low salt stock cubes from most places now. Once she is 6 months the only things you need to not give her are honey and nuts.

Have you had a nosey at the BLW website some great information and recipes on there and you might also find the MN weaning sections useful too, MN weaning information, MN weaning talk and MN baby and weaning recipes.

I'd just start with offering something at lunchtime, that way you have plenty of time to see if there is a reaction before bedtime and keep offering her milk an hour before offering solids. Once she is one you can offer milk after solids.

Oh and get a cheap shower curtain for your floor and plenty of bibs with sleeves .