Food for a 6 month old?

[toffeeboffin]

I've just started weaning my 6 month old DS. Been giving him baby porridge and fruit and also veg purees.

However I've just been reading some of the posts on here and other babies are eating toast, cheese cubes, pasta, all sorts of stuff!

Am I being a total scaredy cat? Can you really honestly give a baby stuff like this!?

No need to add that this is DS1 : )

I've commented on your other thread too ... But yes.

From 6 months you can bypass purees entirely and go straight to finger foods, which is the basis of BLW. Lots of people take a mixed approach, using purees or mashed food with finger foods too.

Great starter foods are roasted veg cut into large chip shapes (sweet potato is a huge hit here), porridge fingers (basically a cross between porridge and flapjack), slices of apple or pear softened in water in the microwave, cream cheese on rice cakes, etc etc.

If you're happy to spoon feed (either feeding baby directly or giving loaded spoons and letting baby find his mouth himself), lentil curry, jacket potatoes with cheese and beans, conchiglietti pasta (or something like farfalle cut up) with cream cheese work well.

DD is 8 months and we've pureed nothing. She was what we eat, minus salt, basically.

How do you make porridge fingers anything? Sorry for hijacking! Thanks!

I haven't got round to making them myself as we tend to do breakfast with a spoon, but I think you make porridge, press it to the bottom of a flat bottomed container, and microwave it. You can do it in the oven too. Then you cut it into fingers and serve.

Like anything said, a lot of parents do baby led weaning (BLW). It is easy to do (no cooking separate foods) and baby gets to choose what he/she wants to eat and when she's finished, as well as exploring different textures, heat, tastes etc.

The BLW book by Gill Rapely is very good at explaining the science behind BLW.

I've only ever heard success stories and again, like anything said, it is flexible that you can still give sloppy foods like porridge, soup etc by either giving loaded foods or spoon feeding (although technically not BLW). I was a lazy parent and never spoon fed dd - just left her to it. I would occasionally load a spoon in the early days but with days she got the hang of it.

General rules on BLW:

• don't add salt to cooking
• suitable if you have a fairly balanced diet food
• cut things in to chunky size for little hands to grab
• avoid choking hazards such as whole nuts, cherry toms (can still have them, but cut in half)
• old towel or cheap mat for the floor (or buy a dog it gets messy)
• long sleeved bibs or strip naked when food time
• let them eat what you eat!