Baby Led Weaning

We decided it was time to start Bella on solids especially as we had a spate of night wakings again. Rather than go down the puree route we decided to do Baby Led Weaning (BLW) where the baby feeds themselves with their hands or a spoon. We offer a selection of foods each day, all cut into shapes easy for a baby to pick up and get into their mouth. They then explore the textures and flavours, put the food in, have a little chew, spit it out mainly. The idea is to get them used to food in it's proper form rather than puree feeding and then having to adjust to solids later. I must admit I felt very nervous the first time we gave Bella food and she bit some off and started moving it around her mouth but she tends to cope well with it. Most of it gets pushed back out but judging by her diapers we know she's eating some of it! The theory is that the fine motor skills required for picking up food items develops around the same time as the ability to chew and move food around the mouth. So, if the baby can put food in the mouth they can control it once it's in there. The one thing you can't do is feed your baby as in put food in the mouth in case they aren't ready for it. On the whole it's a fun method but extremely messy. So far she's had rice cakes, cucumber, melon, pear, avocado (great for rubbing in the hair!), banana, lemon. Here are a few pictures of her feeding herself with a spoon.