Tuesday's Unwrapped – Baby Led Weaning – Part 3

Thanks to my Guest Blogger Ella at Baby Love for the first of many Tuesday’s Unwrapped editions. I got the idea for BLW from Ella and I am so glad that I met her online and read her story for BLW.  It truly opened my eyes to the differences in parenting and what works for one parent may not always work for another. I always thought that babies just got baby food and that I would have to be buying purees and I remember back to my little cousin Rachel the few times I babysat and had to feed her purees (plus other babies I was around) and she wanted nothing to do with them (at least from me).

So when I got pregnant and I was reading about BLW from Ella and a few others as they went through the solid journey with their babies, I got excited about starting it with my soon to be daughter. When Gabby turned 6 months we made gave her bananas as her first food. I have to admit that my expectations were a lot higher than what actually happened.

We didn’t have a high chair at the time, but I just let her sit on my lap. We sliced a banana into quarters and I held it for her and let her grab at it. It didn’t really go into her mouth, nor did anything really happen. We were excited to start her on solids. To see her start the next stage of her little life, but it was sort of anti-climatic I have to say. But exciting non the less.

We then tried Sweet Potatoes and that went over much better. Daycare was pushing for me to send rice cereal and other things from 4 months on. We never did cereal. However I did pick up some cereal (Plum Organic Cereal) and we started sending some of the purees that my BIL & SIL gave us (thanks guys!) and mixing it in with that. We still do that today. For us a combination of purees and BLW works well for us. Since she goes to daycare and I am not with her at every meal it was difficult getting her one meal in when we started at night. Sometimes she would fall asleep before dinner and head off to bed. So it just made sense to send her some food at daycare.

I have to say that’s been the biggest struggle with BLW is trying to educate people how we are choosing to feed her. My parents and some others were worried about choking when we first started. But since seeing it and since I explained that a babies gag reflex is closer towards the front of the mouth and that when they look like they are choking it’s really gagging which is just how the body stops a person from choking.

 

 

The other part that has been a struggle is sending finger foods to daycare. For the first few months purees were not a big hit, she HATED them. The only solids we could get into her mouth were finger foods, so I started sending those and a few purees. Eventually she liked both. A few weeks ago I sent some taco fixing with her (Corn, Rice, Shredded Cheese and Ground Venison). I thought that they would just let her eat her food like they do with the toast and other things, but when I got there they mentioned that she was choking on the corn. I thought that was a bit odd, until I saw on her sheet that they were spoon feeding her the food. So I had to explain again that she needs to feed herself and then she won’t choke.

 

Overall it’s been a great experience and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I will definitely be doing this with our next one and probably getting a little more daring with the food.