Baby lead weaning

Rachel#3 mentioned in an earlier topic about Baby lead weaning. I hadn't heard of it before, although I think my mom did something like that with us that but not so early.
It sounds really interesting and with two, how great to be able to just put the food down. I recently started them on cereal. They do chew some but they often push the food forward with their tongues so I was thinking it is still a little early for them.

I am interested to hear from anyone who has tried BLW and what your experiences were. What foods did you start with? How did you prepare the food (how soft) and what size did you give them. How big was the mess and how long did they continue to make a mess. (although, I am not overly concerned about messes.. that is part of the fun of being a baby!)

Thanks in advance for sharing.

 

Well, obvs I did BLW! Let's see. We started Emmett on solids at 6.5 months. His first foods were things like banana, apple, broccoli, zucchini, carrots, pears, peaches, nectarines, blueberries, kiwi, chicken, beef, watermelon, etc. For the fruits, I sliced them into fairly wide slices or chunks (at least the size of his fist & usually a bit bigger) & trimmed the peels off (I've tried on & off offering the peels with the fruit - sometimes he just eats the fruit off of the peel [like with watermelon & apple] but with other things [peaches, nectarines] the peels are very stringy & cause him to gag almost every time). Blueberries we offered in a mesh feeder at first but now (at 9 months) he eats them no problem just loose. Veggies we sized the same (large slices or chunks the size of his fist or bigger) but I lightly steamed them. Generally till they were about the softness of fruit. Chicken & beef was tricky - he pretty much gagged on them every single time till about 8.5 months. Now he can eat chicken cooked any old way. Beef he still does best when it's just ground. I think beef done in the slow cooker would be fine but I haven't cooked anything like that recently. Eggs he eats hard boiled & sliced or scrambled, although we just recently introduced those. I offer crackers whole. He's actually not spectacularly messy - he really loves the food so it's almost all going into his mouth. I only do spaghetti on bath night though! :laughing: He pretty much just eats what we're having now - I just let it cool a bit & plop it on his tray & let him figure it out.

The biggest thing for me was learning about and understanding the difference between gagging and choking. Gagging is the human body's way of protecting itself from choking & is a good thing for your baby to do when first learning how to eat. Babies have very sensitive gag reflexes & so will gag a lot at first. But as they figure out how to move food around in their mouth, chew & swallow, the gagging quickly gets less & less. Sometimes, Emmett would even throw up a little bit (or a lot) if gagging alone wasn't bringing the food back up out of his esophagus. It never bothered him much & I usually had to move fast to get the thrown up food out of his reach so he didn't try to eat it again. ardon: He was very noisy about his gagging & I usually just left him to it as trying to scoop food out of a baby's mouth who's gagging or thumping on their back can actually CAUSE a choking incident. As long as they're making noise, they're doing fine. As for choking, that's an entirely different matter. It means the food's gone into the trachea. Choking incidents are silent & usually involve the victim beginning to turn blue. Every person, regardless of age, is at risk of choking when eating. Emmett has never once had a choking incident. While I was concerned about the possibility I wasn't too freaked out as I have my current CPR certification & knew how to deal with it if it happened.

My favorite BLW resource is this site/blog. Lots of great info, tips & BTDT stories. Now that I've done this approach to introducing solids, I won't ever go back to purees. Too much work!

Some pics:
Trying asparagus
Cracker
Apple slice (great for teething!)

 

Your previous post peaked my interest too! My question is if we've already started on mushy solids, can we safely do this in conjunction with mushy foods? We tried watermelon chunks today and it was a huge hit! Just wondering if we can do a bit of both. Thoughts?

 

Oh yeah, absolutely! I would just make sure to let them feed themselves the food chunks & resist the urge to put any food in their mouths. It's safer for them to be in control. Glad to hear they enjoyed the watermelon!

 

Thanks for the info Rachel.
Finger foods, here we come!

 

Just wanted to say we tried wild blueberries today and it was a huge hit! Thanks for expanding the possibilities for us!