Flashback Friday - Baby Led Weaning

When I was pregnant with Leo I read a book ( I did a lot of that, always trying to find the elusive 'Baby instruction manual) about Baby-Led Weaning. Not that I'd given it much thought but I'd always assumed I'd be pureeing carrots and stuff when it came to it but the more I read the more that baby led weaning (BLW) seemed the most logical thing to do.

If you've no idea what I'm talking about the basically BLW is letting your baby feed itself, right from the very start of weaning, no mush! Not to be started before 6 months, which is when they are capable of feeding themselves (and the advised time to start any kind of weaning although I later found out that everyone seems to ignore that) but after that time you just feed your baby as part of the family, giving them a bit of what everyone else is having (within reason, no added salt, etc)

I waited quite happily until Leo reached 6 months, in fact he was six months on the dot as we moved to Cyprus 3 days before and we spent a couple of days getting organised before embarking on this new phase of his life!

Not impressed with mush!

I used to drive Aaron mad debating over what I 'should' and 'shouldn't' be doing and referred back to the book so many times! I sometimes had doubt that I was doing the right thing, and often felt like I should be puree feeding, on a couple of occasions I went against my instinct and made some purees, each time he was not interested at all so I went back to the original plan!

I knew there was a great website babyledweaning.com and had I have had internet access I would have been on the forum getting all the answers I need from other Mums but we were on our own.   I'm glad though in many ways that we were on our own, quite literally in fact as we had no opinionated
health visitors to tell us not to do it (as many BLW'ers find) or friends or family disapproving. These were the early Cyprus days when we hardly knew anyone, just the three of us in new place with no real idea what we were doing!

I had a few worries at the start, Was he going to choke? (No, he gagged a few times but never choked) Was he getting enough food?  (The BLW mantra is 'Food is fun until one' as they get all the nutrients from milk). and most of the people I'd read about who were doing it were also breast feeding so I was worried about him getting enough nourishment from formula, but then I worried about everything - there is disadvantages of not having health visitors and experienced family and friends about too!

The thing I found most tricky was eating as a family as Aaron was home too late, so I usually ate lunch with Leo but fed him dinner on his own, usually leftovers from whatever we had the night before. But I was always (and still am!) racking my brains for what to feed him.

Looking back I am pleased that I did what I did, he has always been a good eater, although especially now can be very fussy, demand ketchup with everything and suddenly announce he doesn't like something he's loved for ages but from what I can gather this is no different to any other 3 year old however they learnt to eat!

The only downside was the mess, and boy was there mess, but I've got marble floors so it wasn't the end of the world, and I worked out not to give him weetabix if I was in a hurry to go anywhere!

Weetabix - do you know how hard that stuff sets!

Louka is now just over five months old, and when he reaches 6 months I will do the same with him (maybe with less weetabix!)  However this time round I will probably be giving him a few tastes of puree or baby rice before hand as he seems a little more interested than Leo did in food and I'm not so worried about sticking so rigidly to the '6 month guideline'