Baby-Led Weaning, and Why it Works For Us.

You may have heard the term "baby-led weaning", but if you're anything like my family, you may just be staring at me silently and obviously confused about the term! Baby-led weaning is a pretty simply concept -- it simply means that you let your child feed themselves. Which means no rice cereals, no purees, no mama spending the entire dinner spoon feeding baby and letting her own dinner plate get cold. You give baby a piece of food that's the right size for them, and you let them go to town. 

Mushy, grippable banana was one of Emmy's first foods at five months. I thought at first that this may be too early to introduce food but we let Emmy decide when she was interested in food, and although we didn't start giving her actual meals so early, she was interested in food very early on. Check out this funny photo op at a picnic in the park..

.. Which lead to this. We've always taken cues from Emmy about when she was ready for something, and she spent a lot of her early months teething on pieces of real food. 

One of the biggest things that interested me in "BLW" was not having to make separate meals for Emmy. When I was younger, my mom used to have to make two or three different dinners for our family, and that is something I have never really been interested in doing! So we pursued this knowing that we could feed Emmy whatever we eat and for the most part we're pretty successful. Some of Emmy's more brave dinners have included curry, eggplant parmesan, spicy chili tomato soup, and one of her favorite salads, which is a mixture of cabbage, kale and brussel sprouts!

(Salad isn't as fun to photograph as spaghetti and meatballs)

While sometimes we buy into those organic squeezeable fruit pouches (they are amazing on the go!) we try to stick to non processed, made at home foods. As a family on a budget, we only venture out to eat every once in a while, but baby-led weaning has made it that much easier to take Em to dinner. No messing with a bottle that gets thrown on the floor, no having to spoon out baby food and no ordering off the kids menu. Mom and dad order what they want to eat, and Emmy shares with us. 

Of course like any 15 month old, Emmy has her picky days. Sometimes all she wants is toast and strawberries. Sometimes the vanilla yogurt she loves ends up on the floor without even a bite making it into her mouth. Once all Emmy wanted for a week straight was fried rice. Every baby is different, and you can never expect one thing to work for every single baby. We're very lucky that BLW has worked out so well for us. If it sounds like something you've been thinking of pursuing, there are definitely a few tips I have for you!

1. Let baby be curious! Let her try new things, even if it's something you don't think she'll like or something you don't like. I've been a vegetarian for ten years but Emmy loves ham, chicken, turkey, meatballs... pretty much anything meaty. 

2. Taste buds are always changing, so don't write off one bad encounter with a food as something to never try again. Emmy used to hate avocados, cheese and pasta! They're now staple foods for her.

3. Buy a highchair without a cover. Seriously. Our cover is always in the wash! Ikea has a cheap and easy wipe down highchair that I wish I would have known about before we bought our highchair. And you may want to invest in a floor mat! Some oil cloth is a cheap solution, but grandma recently found a highchair mat at Winners for $2.99. Score!

What about you? Do you practice BLW at home? Is it something you're interested in? Don't be afraid of the mess! Having a toddler who has a huge palette for all sorts of foods is definitely worth the two baths a day Emmy has to have.