The Best Guide to Baby Led Weaning
Introducing food to your baby is such an exciting time, but it can be SO CONFUSING! You might have heard the term baby-led weaning (BLW), but you aren’t quite sure what it even means. Well, after this blog post, you’ll know exactly what baby led weaning is, what age you should start, the best tips for starting baby led weaning and the perfect first foods to introduce to your baby.
What is baby led weaning?
Baby led weaning generally refers to (like it’s title suggests) allowing the baby to take the lead with eating, and learning to eat.
The philosophy behind it is that babies inherently know how to eat, we just have to give them time and space to kinda work it out.
In baby-led weaning, you would skip purees, and move straight onto finger food type meals that your baby would be able to pick up and put in their own mouth.
There are some benefits to this approach, such as your baby learning how much they can fit in their own mouth, how to move food around their mouth, how to swallow chunks of food, and even how to gag (which can be scary for mums!). Baby led weaning also enables babies to play with their food, which is part of the learning process, and also decide when they have had enough of their own meal (which with puree feeding, they often don’t get to make the choice as the caregiver will continue feeding them if they don’t know their baby’s signs).
What I love most about baby led weaning is that your baby, by learning different textures and sizes of things in their mouth, will stimulate their vagus nerve development. Unfortunately for you this means they will gag a lot, and I get that can be scary, but long term having high vagal tone is really important for health and vitality. Interested in the vagus nerve and how it affects the physical and emotional wellbeing of your children? Take a read of this blog post Vagal tone in babies.
What age should you start baby led weaning?
Baby led weaning advocates say you should begin the process at 6 months of age, and never before. They often refer to the “virgin gut” which should not be exposed to anything but milk for the first 6 months of life.
I personally believe there is some grey area in this recommendation, and if you read any other Fearless Foodies blogs you will see me state over and over that every baby is individual, and you really ought to be watching your baby’s readiness rather than watching the calendar (or your facebook mums group!).
Some mothers even opt for beginning their baby on foods much later than 6 months, however the research indicates there are in fact some dangers with doing this, including iron-deficiency anaemia, increased risk of food allergies, and decreased oral development.
It is my professional opinion that if a baby is not ready for solids by 7 months of age (at the latest), then they likely have an oral swallow issue happening, whether this is an undiagnosed tie, poor swallow, decreased vagal tone, or low lying tongue posture. These will need to be addressed to support the baby’s oral growth and development - as it can affect eating, sleeping, speaking, and airway function (and therefore brain function).
On the other end of the scale, babies are very rarely ready before 5 months of age, and some mothers mistake interest in what you’re doing with readiness for food, so I would encourage you to wait until your baby is 5 months at the youngest before you start baby-led weaning.
The digestive system actually produces it’s enzymes based on what you put in your mouth, so some of the ideals behind BLW are a little outdated, in that your baby’s system does not automatically produce digestive enzymes at 6 months of age (on the dot). What you feed your baby, and what they are exposed to, is much more important for developing their digestive abilities, whether you begin them at 5.5 months of age, or 6 months, or 6.5 months of age.
Best tips for starting baby led weaning
The best and easiest way to start baby led weaning is to ensure your baby is demonstrating signs of readiness. If you haven’t read my blog post on this, you can find it here.
You must be prepared for mess, gagging, and lots of wasted food while your baby learns all about eating! It is all part of the fun, ha!
Grab a fun recipe book, or consider how you might adapt your current diet to be able to feed your baby the same foods.
I’ve got a fabulous, nutritionist-approved recipe ebook which is designed to support your baby from introducing foods all the way through to school lunchboxes (not kidding, I still use these recipes to give me 3 and 5 year olds!).
The ultimate baby food recipe ebook! And it now includes weekly meal plans!
Categorised into age ranges so you know exactly what you can introduce to your baby, safely each step of the way. Age ranges are 5-8 months, 8-10 months, 10-12 months and 12-18 months.
Take the stress out of preparing food for your baby, it’s all in here.
Options include: gluten free, dairy free, vegan, egg free, grain free, nightshade free.
The best part? All recipes are easily adaptable to cater to your diet, no matter what the restriction is.
Weekly Meal Plans - 4 weeks per age category, to make life EVEN EASIER, mama.
This is a digital download product.
What are the best first foods for baby led weaning?
The best foods to start your baby on with baby led weaning include what I recommend in my Top 12 First Foods list. You really need to keep it simple, and remember your baby should not be having added salt or honey.
The best recipes to introduce to your baby are usually things that you can eat as a family too! Which means, all you need to do is add extra portions so your baby can eat what you eat.
As part of Fearless Foodies, I recommend sharing meals with your baby, because eating is a social process, and they are more eager to try new foods when they see their caregiver eating the same thing.
Some easy Baby Led Weaning recipes include:
Roasted sweet potato chips - large enough for little fingers to grasp
You can add herbs to this
You could also add some duck fat / ghee / olive oil for flavouring the sweet potato
For my favourite sweet potato for baby recipe click here.
Banana pancakes - which you can find in my recipe ebook sneak peek (sign up form below - yahoo!)
Be careful with banana raw as it can be slippery so you need to watch your baby carefully if you introduce banana on it’s own
Roasted lamb cutlets, with the bone so they can chew away at it
Often babies won’t bite meat off and swallow it, but they will gnaw at the meat and bone, and get all the fat and juices off (YUM)
Green Finger Food Salad with Tahini Dressing
A quick and easy toddler recipe. A bowl of green veggies doesn’t have to be a bland affair. With its textures and flavours, this recipe makes salad fun! Best introduced to your baby from 12 months of age. Grab the recipe here.
The Fearless Foodies approach to baby food introduction
As the creator of Fearless Foodies, an online hub for baby food introduction, I wanted to share with you the approach I take with all my patients and clients.
It’s important that you follow your baby. Not the calendar. I don’t really care what anyone else’s opinion is, YOU NEED TO DO THE RIGHT THING FOR YOUR BABY. By following their signs, you will know whether they are ready or not. And by trusting your mother’s intuition, you will also know whether they are ready to eat food or not.
It can be hard to hold onto your own intuition when you have loads of opinions. And I totally, wholeheartedly get that.
Which is why I write all these blogs, and created the Fearless Foodies course, and honestly, it’s why I do everything I do. My mission is to simplify things for you, BUT ALSO, to give you the knowledge and power so that you know deep down you’re doing the absolute best for your baby.
No more second guessing yourself, no more mum guilt. Just pure FUN and confidence while introducing food to your baby.
So I don’t subscribe to one specific method of food introduction. Baby led weaning is great. I also think giving your baby some purees is great (I mean, as adults we all eat soup so what’s the difference?). I create my recipe considering not which “camp” we are in for food introduction, but with your baby’s whole health in mind.
Blood sugar, hormones, gut health, brain health, body health, vagus nerve tone, oral development… These are all considered with the Fearless Foodies products and I wish more mothers knew, it’s less about the METHOD, and more about all these other things.
So if that sounds like your kind of philosophy, come join me in the Fearless Foodies facebook group!
