Bye-Bye purees hello BLW!

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Baby-led Weaning, otherwise known as BLW, is an approach to infant feeding where you follow your baby's cues when it comes time to eat.  You don't push your baby to eat, you don't feed them with a spoon, you don't worry about how much they are actually eating.  You say good-bye to glass jars and plastic tubs laying everywhere, you put away those handheld grinders, ice cube trays, and blenders. You just let them explore, play, learn, and eat.

I rarely eat vegetables and fruits out of can or a jar, so why should Phia?  We originally made all of her purees using this blender and I loved it.  I was able to puree a whole big sweet potato at one time or a quarter of a medium sized squash and then pour it into ice cube trays and freeze. But do you know how hard it is to spoon feed your LO while trying to feed yourself?  And it's even twice as hard to do that if you forget to take the food out of the freezer like I so often did.  

Then Phia started reaching for our food as we were eating and I just couldn't resist giving it to her. Come on could you say no to this face?

So one night I gave her a sweet potato fry and OMG she loved it! She ate like 4 fries total with no problems at all.  She didn't choke and she knew how to "chew" the food even though she didn't have any teeth at the time.

That was about a month ago and now the only times she eats purees is if grandma watches her or we are eating something she can't have (dairy products, nuts, etc).

She loves baked, un-breaded chicken strips, French Toast, pickles, Chili, Chicken soup (yes these both can be eaten with the fingers!), any kind of pastas, breads, Ham, beef. 

I'm not going to say that BLW is for everyone, because it's not.  YOU need to do whats right for YOUR family! You need to follow your baby's cues  My parents, DSMs parents, our aunt's and uncle's and grandparents alike think that we are crazy and are "hurting" our baby in some way but we are not. We are actually preventing our daughter from being picky later on in life.

According to Gill Rapley, the person who coined the term "BLW/ Baby-led weaning":

“Children not subjected to the deception of disguising foods and airplane games will likely be more trusting. If you get orange slop one day and it tastes like something and you get orange slop another day and it tastes completely different, how are you to recognize food? If you can tell that a carrot is different from a nectarine, you’ll be able to identify which foods you like, and which ones you don’t. Of course, children will still have cyclical preferences.”

So give it a try.  When you notice that your LO is reaching for your food or showing other signs that she/he is ready for solids (chewing motion, sitting up some what unsupported) give them a little something off of your plate and let them get messy and explore the different textures and flavors.

Pickle

Pasta!

NOTE:  For more information check out the BLW site here! And while reading it will say that it is a way of weaning your LO's from the breast but you can practice this even when you are formula feeding like we are. Rapley just says that it is sometimes harder for formula feeding parents to do this with their children because they are no longer measuring how much food their LO is taking in like they did with bottles of formula. But just ignore it and go with the flow and have fun!