If you’ve heard about baby-led weaning or baby-led solids, the premise is that by six months old, babies are ready to chew their own food and skip purees altogether. Toothless babies can handle more than mush. Anything that can be gummed into oblivion or melted by saliva is a contender.
I’ve compiled my been-there-tried-that lessons learned along with more inspiration for baby meals. The book, Baby-Led Weaning: The Essential Guide to Introducing Solid Foods – and Helping Your Baby to Grow Up a Happy and Confident Eater, offers a detailed guide into this method of feeding if you want even more info.
6 lessons learned from research & testing on my new eater:
- Offer big pieces. For the youngest eaters, start with larger wedges of food that a baby can easily grip with his fist. Once your baby can easily pinch food with fingers, move onto smaller pieces (around 9 months).
- Offer small quantities. More food means more to clean up. I like to offer no more than I can count so I’m not wondering,”Oh where did that fifth raspberry end up?!” then squish it.
- Crispy = good. By 10 months old rocking 4 teeth, Sawyer was happy with toast, breadsticks, O cereal, and Mum Mums. Yeah, it’s a carb-heavy diet sometimes but it seems to feel good on his gums.
- Share what you’re having. I give him pieces of steamed or roasted veggies like sweet potato, broccoli, zucchini, asparagus, and butternut squash. He’ll noodle over pasta too. And then throw it on the floor.
- Little things for bigger babies. I make small piles of little things like rice, lentils, and shredded cheese. See photo above of Sawyer chucking his shredded cheese onto the floor. Did I mention small piles?
- Coat slippery foods. To make avocado and banana easier to grasp, coat them with crushed up O’s or baby cereal.
More mealtime ideas?
My friend Alissa’s daughter, Emily (pictured above with Sawyer and the pumpkin) is a very adventurous eater. She also has a lot of teeth. I interviewed Baby Emily a couple months ago and this is what I learned.
A 10 month-old’s favorite foods:
- Cooked broccoli florets and baby carrots, not falling apart, but pretty soft so I don’t choke
- Yogurt + applesauce + cinnamon (I think this is from you, right??)
- Eggs/omelet with veggies like tomatoes, mushrooms sautéed with olive oil then cooked with the eggs and sliced up with fresh spices so I don’t become a bland eater, either basil or CILANTRO!
- Pupusas or cut up tamales of any kind from Whole Foods
- Diced up fruit that I can pick up like mango, nectarine, cantaloupe, strawberry
- Beans that I can pick up, either black or pinto
- Tortillas spread with spicy black bean dip from Trader Joes; I also like goat cheese on top of that. Pieces cut up small.
- Leftover salmon or chicken pieces; I ate leftover chicken tikka masala the other day and couldn’t get enough
- Tortellini with tomato sauce, pieces cut up a bit
- All of the normal baby bread-y stuff like cheerios, puffs, breadsticks. Sawyer likes to steal my Happy Munchies rice cakes.
Brittany from A Healthy Slice feeds her baby fresh and beautiful combos.
She also collects photos and meal ideas from other parents of babies and toddlers in her regular round-up called Munchkin Meals. She describes it like this:
Munchkin Meals is a series that focuses on what moms are feeding their kids. I got the idea when I started sharing what Hailey was eating when I started her with baby led weaning at 6 months old. Other moms became interested and the idea grew. Now, Munchkin Meals takes place every other Thursday and is a place moms can share and get new ideas for healthy foods for their children. For questions, please email me at Brittany@ahealthysliceoflife.com
Important caution: get to know the difference between gagging (a normal response) and choking (requires intervention and possible CPR).
[related: Baby-Led Weaning: The Essential Guide to Introducing Solid Foods - and Helping Your Baby to Grow Up a Happy and Confident Eater and Munchkin meals round-up from A Healthy Slice of Life]
[Photos are from Heather Flett except the hot dad from BabyBjorn and the gorgeous food from Brittany Dixon]
We’ve been doing BLW since Max was about 5 months old (he’s 1 now), and it’s been great. Yeah, he makes a mess, but being able to share mealtimes as a family is well worth it. He tries everything, and we’ve never ever had fights about food. We usually have a few things that we know he’ll eat ready to go, and then we share whatever we’re having as well.
I would add cottage cheese to your list of good baby foods, and blueberries cut in half. Max loves those! Other favorites include mango slices, avocado with a bit of lemon juice mushed up on toast, Amy’s black bean refried beans, and yogurt with cheerios and (reconstituted) prunes. And always, always bananas.
A number of my mom friends were convinced to try BLW after seeing Max’s joyful mealtimes. We decided to try it after seeing my brother’s daughter relish a peach when she was 9 months old. She just seemed so much happier about her food than her cousin, who was a month younger and being stuffed with spoonfuls of mushed and creamed things.
Thx for your great tips! We just started BLW a week ago w/ our 6mo and it’s been a blast so far…pure entertainment for us.
@Frances, I will have to try mushing more stuff on his toast. I’m always trying to vary his diet. Good suggestions!
@Meredith, I’d love to know what you started with.
Mushed up stuff on toast seems like a good idea! I will have to try that too. Heather, I love the idea of rolling the slippery stuff in something more grippy (cheerios, etc.). That is so smart.
More favorites…. pancakes (I add fruit or veggies to the batter), muffins, and cream cheese on toast.
Wow! I cannot wait to try this. My baby is 4 months now and exclusively breast fed. I am so wired to think that a baby can only have totally pureed foods only, but maybe that’s just to sell baby food!! 100 years ago they didn’t have food processors.
holy cow! roll the avocado in cereal?? You are a genius! Holy cow! HO-LY COW!
Thanks @Katy. Let me know if it works for you. Those avocado slices are slippery buggers.
@Jen, feeding solids is a whole new ball of wax. We’ve done a fair share of purees in my kitchen too but so many babies LOVE to feed themselves.
I’m going to give it a go! I will let you know how it goes. She will be ready after the holidays.
@Sara, I want to try some new pancake recipes. I tried some flavorless ones and they spent more time on the floor than in his mouth. Oh well. I won’t give up.
I make a batch of this mix from Weelicious. Then when I make the pancakes, I substitute applesauce for the oil and then will add in some fruit or veggies. I’ve done pumpkin puree, butternut squash puree, and grated zucchini. And since I don’t generally have buttermilk, I usually thin some yogurt as a substitute. My little also likes to dip the pancakes in something, generally applesauce.
And here’s the link:
http://weelicious.com/2012/03/13/whole-wheat-pancake-waffle-mix-a-must-have-in-the-pantry/
We’ve been doing BLW since the start and it’s been AWESOME!! I just did a whole blog post on what my son tried in the first 3 months of BLW (it’s a lot). There’s an entire list after you scroll through the photos on this post:
http://www.ourlittlebeehive.com/2012/10/baby-led-weaning-first-few-months.html
@Felicity, your post and photos are AMAZING. You and M are doing a terrific job exploring foods. I wish Sawyer ate half that stuff but I guess I’ll just keep trying.
Our son is 9 months old and has been doing BLW for 3 months. He’s a great eater! In the beginning, his favorites were avocado and cucumber. He now loves pasta, cheese, and roasted butternut squash. Another tip for when they’re starting: leave the peels on things like apples and avocado so they’re easier to grab. Since babies are mostly tasting and sucking at that point, they will gum the flesh of the fruit and then spit out the peel. Also, any fruit or veggie that’s naturally hard/crisp (such as apples), I either boil or microwave in a bowl of water for a couple minutes to soften. Then cool it in the fridge for a minute and it’s ready to serve.
@Lisa, Great tip about leaving on the skins. My son WILL slurp the heck out of a lemon and leaves the skin behind. (I remove the seeds)
Funny, I’ve been doing a variation of this and didn’t realize it has a name. Just today I was considering ditching the baby food just because DS much prefers our food over the mush. He likes the sweet purees and that’s about it. Anyway, I love the tip about coating bananas and avocados in crispy food, thanks! As a side note, one of your suggestions was to offer eggs. Just this week my ped told me egg whites were not safe until 1yr. Apparently there is a potenial allergen in the egg white protein (albumin). Again, great article, love you guys!!!
@Meaghan, I had heard that about eggs with my older sons, but this time around the pediatrician was much more open. All that being said, he does not let scrambled or hard-boiled eggs pass his lips. They only go from the tray to the hand to the floor!
@Sara, too funny! I made black bean pancakes from weelicious omitting the cilantro which I HATE and they were horrible and bland. I will try the other ones and stop cutting out the spices.
This post did it for me. You have now made my list of 5 top blogs.
http://oururbanplayground.com/?p=645
Sorry to put the link here, I could not find your contact page!! I wanted to email you directly. But oh well.
I just remembered something else Emily loves that falls into the BLW category — corn on the cob! So great for teething too.
@Alissa, I’ve seen her with those cobs and I love it. Felicity (above) has a link to the stuff her baby will eat and you will love that too.
@Jen, thank you so much!
@RookieMom Heather…just saw your comment! Ada actually started it herself grabbing some acorn squash skin off of my plate (a lady who knows what she wants = love).
She’s now 6.5 mos and we’ve moved onto steamed broccoli, carrots, sweet potato, avocado, brown rice, cantaloupe, even brussel sprouts!
Of course our pediatrician freaked out on us the other day, but we’re following our instincts.
[...] some good nuts and bolts information on BLW, check out the book “Baby-Led Weaning.” Rookie Moms and A Healthy Slice of Life also have some great posts on the [...]
Babies shouldn’t be overly limited in the types of foods they eat. You may find they like variety, and feeding them different foods at an early age may help them to be less picky eaters later on. Also, fantastic tip on coating slippery foods with something like baby cereal.
@Julia, that’s the goal. I will definitely have to write about my “reality” as compared with my goals though.
[...] Take a pumpkin picture. I took a splendid photo of Sawyer and his best gal, Emily, but he was already a man of 14 months by the time Halloween rolled around. Near [...]