Baby-led Weaning : The Essential Guide To Intro...
The best time to begin introducing your baby to solid foods is around six months. Most babies at this age can sit up themselves, grab and hold onto objects, and their intestines have developed the enzymes they need to digest solid foods. As this happens, you may have already noticed a change in their poop as it solidifies! Hey, we give it to you with honesty. Instead of spoon-feeding your baby purƩes at six months, baby-led weaning allows your child to go right to picking up and eating soft foods themselves, at their own pace.
Baby-led weaning : the essential guide to intro...
Starting baby-led weaning should be a family activity - now you can let your little one eat alongside you. Mealtimes should be a social activity, and your baby will be able to watch what you do with your food and mimic you. Introducing your baby to a wide variety of foods this way can also help develop an adventurous palate.
Look to offer your baby a wide variety of tastes and textures, opening their eyes and palate to the wonderful world of food through their first bites. The best baby-led weaning foods are ones that are soft, cut into appropriately sized pieces, and are not a choking risk. That gives you a pretty wide variety of solid foods to introduce to your baby.
Baby-led weaning has many benefits. It can encourage your little one to become familiar with a wide variety of foods, textures, and flavors, which can help him develop a varied and healthy palate. Offering baby-led weaning meals like the ones from Tiny Organics, which introduce your baby to their first 100 flavors, can help develop healthy eaters for life.
Still not sure if BLW is for you? Let Gill Rapley, the generally acknowledged pioneer of baby-led weaning, walk you through this approach. Together with writer and journalist Tracey Murkett, Rapley introduces her readers to a definitive BWL book.
If you want to understand the history and theory behind baby-led weaning, this could be the one for you. The book goes into the essentials and basic principles of why the method works. It also explains in detail the benefits your little one can get by following baby-led weaning.
If you prefer something quick and easy to read on baby-led weaning, this might be the one for you. Written by Malina Malkani, a registered dietitian nutritionist, the book gives practical advice for creating safe and balanced meals.
With so much information there is to know about baby-led weaning, this book sums it up in five steps. Courtney Bliss is a pediatric registered dietitian and a mom of two. This book is another quick and easy read on the basics of BLW. It can be helpful for new parents or caregivers unsure of where to start.
Some parents or caregivers fear that baby-led weaning might not give the necessary nutrients for proper growth and development. This may not be the case. Studies show no significant difference in nutrient intake between baby-led and spoon-fed babies. (5)
In preparing baby-led weaning foods, there are important factors to consider in order to lower choking risks. . For starters, foods must be cut in sticks or slices the size of adult fingers. For a complete guide, our BLW Guide might help you.
Baby night weaning is unexceptionally very helpful for having a proper sleep. Nursing is obviously good at night but for a certain time. You cannot feed your toddler at night by expecting tight night sleep. Thanks a lot author for writing such an awesome and helpful guide for us.
my oldest son, Ben, preferred to be spoon-fed most of the time, whereas my daughter, Lylah, only ever wanted to eat finger foods. I was also a lot more relaxed by the time she came, and felt more comfortable with baby-led weaning. With my youngest, James, we used a combo of baby-led weaning and purees, depending on the day and meal.
Hi Genevieve! I loved all of the scientific information your provided in your article so I linked it in a blog post I wrote about my personal experience with baby-led weaning. I also included a video that you might find as fascinating as I did. Your insight plus this video is what caused me to practice baby-led weaning to begin with. Blessings!
This is really just scratching the surface understanding how to start baby led weaning when your babe starts solids. I hope this learning how to start baby led weaning beginners guide will give you the confidence to get started. Follow my Instagram stories, to get lots of inspiration for tasty baby appropriate meals.
To try baby-led weaning, your baby will need to be able to grasp whole pieces of food and bring them to their mouth. Babies usually develop this skill at around six months old (Naylor and Morrow, 2001; Wright et al, 2011).
There is no evidence to suggest babies are more likely to choke with baby-led weaning, compared to spoon-feeding (Boswell, 2021). The NHS says there is no more risk of choking when a baby feeds themselves than when they are fed with a spoon (NHS, 2019).
Brown A. (2018) No difference in self-reported frequency of choking between infants introduced to solid foods using a baby-led weaning or traditional spoon-feeding approach. J Hum Nutr Diet. 31(4):496-504. Available at:
Morison BJ, Heath A-LM, Haszard JJ, Hein K, Fleming EA, Daniels L, et al. (2018) Impact of a modified version of baby-led weaning on dietary variety and food preferences in infants. Nutrients. 10(8):1092. Available at:
This beginners guide to baby-led weaning is a comprehensive guide that will help feeding newbies learn everything there is to know about this starting solids strategy, why it is registered dietitian-approved, how to implement it, and some nutritious recipes to test out with their babies.
A study compared a group of babies who were fed by baby-led weaning (whose parents were trained in this method) to a control group using the standard puree method. While the baby-led weaners did gag more at 6 months than spoon-fed babies, they gagged less by 8 months. By this time, the baby-led weaners were used to eating solids, and the pureed feeders were just starting! And there was no difference in the number of actual choking episodes reported between the 2 groups.
Baby-led weaning is a hands-off baby-led approach to feeding. Hand-held finger foods are introduced to the baby rather than spoon-fed purees. It is not a new method it was made very popular in the UK and is now starting to make its way down here. Skipping the purees and spoon-feeding, the baby goes straight to feeding themselves with finger foods. The key is that the baby is in control of feeding, it lets the baby control its food consumption by self-feeding and self-regulating its food intake, pretty amazing right?!
Wait till your baby is ready, there is no need to rush this. Once your pediatrician gives you the green light, you can start baby-led weaning. Your child should be able to sit up and have good neck strength usually around 6 months of age. Here are some guidelines to consider before you start:
Baby-led weaning became a parenting phenomenon in the UK practically overnight, inspiring a fast-growing and now international online community of parents who practice baby-led weaning with blogs and pictures to prove it! In Baby-Led Weaning, world-leading BLW authority Gill Rapley and early BLW practitioner and coauthor Tracey Murkett deliver everything you need to know about raising healthy, confident eaters.
Baby-Led Weaning explodes the myth that babies need to be spoon-fed and shows why self-feeding from the start of the weaning process is the healthiest way for your child to develop. With baby-led weaning (BLW, for short), you can skip purƩes and make the transition to solid food by following your baby's cues.
Baby-led weaning became a parenting phenomenon in the UK practically overnight, inspiring a fast-growing and now international online community of parents who practice baby-led weaning--with blogs and pictures to prove it! In Baby-Led Weaning, world-leading BLW authority Gill Rapley and early BLW practitioner and coauthor Tracey Murkett deliver everything you need to know about raising healthy, confident eaters.
But, are you ready? With so much conflicting information and decisions over whether to traditionally spoon-feed or opt for baby-led weaning can lead to confusion for many parents. Forearmed is forewarned - and that's why we've rounded up 15 of the very best weaning books to help you all through this exciting new phase (although, we can't guarantee there will be no Jackson Pollock style situations ahead!)
We love this guide to baby led weaning (BLW) that empowers you to help your baby feed themselves. Helping them develop motor skills and develop an adventurous palate all the while making meal preparation becomes easier and cheaper for you. In Simple & Safe Baby-Led Weaning you'll learn when to begin baby led weaning, and find out what to expect along the way. Pick up practical advice for creating balanced meals and eating them together. The brilliant handy to-scale diagrams takes the guesswork out of safe serving sizes too.
A cross between a parenting guide and a cookbook this family cookbook from Welsh/Italian cook Michela Chiappa and her sister Emanuela offers an Italian approach to weaning. It aims to have your baby eating solid food and enjoying meals with the whole family by the time they celebrate their first birthday, and well into childhood.
Just over ten years ago, when Baby-Led Weaning was first published it ended the myth that babies need to be spoon-fed purƩes. In fact, at about six months, most babies are ready to discover solid food for themselves. Today, baby-led weaning (BLW) is a global phenomenon - and, this guide explains all its benefits in a practical way. Baby-led weaning is the healthy, natural way to start your baby on solid foods and can mean no purees, no ice cube trays, no food processor, no potato masher, no stress, no fuss and frankly, no mush!
Truly Scrumptious Baby offers an in-depth introduction to weaning with useful nutritional information, lots of lovely recipes (developed over the process of weaning her own three children) appropriate to suit each stage of weaning and a running theme of no one-size-fits. Practical advice on spoon-feeding purees or baby-led weaning, what equipment you really need and the ones where you should you spend extra. 041b061a72