Family Recipes for Baby Led Weaning (2024)

FAQs

How many meals should I start with baby-led weaning? ›

To start BLW, ensure readiness and begin with one solid meal a day during family mealtime. Use a highchair in a safe setting, allow exploration and play with food, offer age-appropriate soft foods in manageable sized pieces, and let the baby lead the feeding process.

Baby-led weaning means offering your baby only finger foods and letting them feed themselves from the start, rather than spoon-feeding them puréed or mashed foods. You can offer a range of small, finger-sized pieces of food. Some parents prefer baby-led weaning to spoon feeding, while others combine a bit of both.

Some parents worry that baby-led weaning is more likely to cause their baby to choke than spoon-feeding. Emerging evidence suggests that baby-led weaning may result in more gagging as babies get used to swallowing but no increased likelihood of choking . Baby-led weaning can be messier than spoon-feeding.

Yes! I firmly believe that it's never too late to switch to BLW. They will need to learn to eat solids eventually. While a baby who has been started on purees and spoon feeding can't truly be defined as having been fully BLW'd, it's never too late to offer pieces of food.

Since BLW encourages self-feeding, this often makes vegetables and fruit the primary first foods offered, as fortified baby cereals and other foods may be initially more difficult to self-feed.

Overall, it's up to parents to choose whichever method you are most comfortable with, purées and spoon-feeding, baby-led weaning or a combination are all safe and healthy ways to introduce solids.

Baby-led weaning (BLW), proposed as a new form of complementary feeding, has emerged as a real trend phenomenon in the media. Infants are seated at the family table from the age of 6 months, facing the foods they grab and bring to their mouth: they decide which foods they want to eat and what amount.

Baby Led Weaning Makes Some Parents Nervous

But at the end of the day, if someone is still really nervous, we want parents to know that it's 100% acceptable to start with purees! You don't want to stay at that stage too long but you can definitely start there! Starting solids is a big milestone!

Another observational study underlined that mothers following a BLW approach estimated that their babies ate more milk feeds and less solid food compared to those following a traditional weaning; this may provide inadequate nutrient intake for infants from 6 months of age onwards [30].

Is baby-led weaning recommended by pediatricians? ›

Healthcare professionals suggested that BLW has certain advantages. It promotes health dietary behavior as it allows the child to explore the texture, smell, color, taste, and temperature of a wide variety of foods, which prevents food aversion, one of the most common eating disorders during the first years of life.

Feeding your baby: from 7 to 9 months

From about 7 months, your baby will gradually move towards eating 3 meals a day (breakfast, lunch and tea), in addition to their usual milk feeds, which may be around 4 a day (for example, on waking, after lunch, after tea and before bed).

If a baby is older than 8 months, has had a few weeks or months of positive opportunities to explore food, and displays the signs of readiness for solids but is still uninterested in food and refusing to eat, it may be time to get further evaluation from a feeding therapist.

Feeding at 7 to 9 months

Your baby will gradually move towards eating 3 meals a day (breakfast, lunch and tea). Offering a wide variety of different foods is important to ensure they get enough energy and nutrients (such as iron).

From 6–8 months old, feed your baby half a cup of soft food two to three times a day. Your baby can eat anything except honey, which they shouldn't eat until they reach 12 months old. You can start to add a healthy snack, like mashed fruit, between meals.

Most babies won't be having any significant amounts of food until about 7 months. One small 'meal' of solid food each day will probably be enough for a while. You can slowly build up to three meals each day (plus drinks and snacks) over the next 6 months.

Offer 1-2 pieces of finger food and 1-2 tablespoons of each mashed food. Offer more if your baby is showing signs that they want more. Offering large portions at mealtimes can either overwhelm your baby or lead them to eat more than they need.

Allowing babies to gauge their own appetite — and sense of hunger and fullness — is enormously valuable. “Over time, they can self-regulate,” says Dr. Churbock. “They're not going to overeat because they're in control of what's going in their mouth and what they're swallowing.”