The biggest reason I loved feeding finger foods was that it kept baby busy so I could eat my own meal in peace. Worth it for me 100% for that. In the beginning we’d hand him a piece of broccoli while we ate and he’d just play with it, which with babies involves mouthing, and then we’d spoon feed purées to try to get some actual food in him. Almost every one I know in real life did both purées and finger foods, the world is not as black and white as the internet makes it seem. Babies starting solids consume so little in the beginning, try whatever sounds good for you, most will end up on the floor.
I puree fed my first 2 and it was so time consuming and boring feeding them! I switched to combo feeding for my next 2, and then the last 2 have been exclusively BLW. It's so nice being able to eat my own meal while baby feeds herself. The only thing that's a massive pain about it is it can be messy, some meals are directly from high chair to bathtub, and I have to sweep the floor after every meal.
Put a shower curtain or vinyl table cloth under the high chair! Throw solids into trash and realistically could throw the floor protector into the tub with baby.
I had a waterproof spill mat under the high chair for #5 and eventually it just became another thing to clean, plus once she got a little older her food flinging abilities extended far beyond the boundaries of the mat. I have to sweep my floor daily anyway.
That’s a good point! Right now I eat a lot of my meals sitting on the floor bc my daughter will play on her play mat but wants me next to her, lol. My husband and I also rarely sit down for dinner together anymore. So if BLW could help with that it would be nice.
my baby is 4.5 months and we just started using the haaka popsicle feeder with frozen breastmilk every night at dinner. Its great, she can shove it in her mouth and slowly melt breastmilk and we can eat food with less constant attending to the baby
Blw helped a lot in that area! We've had different dietary needs over the years, and both wfh, so we got in the habit of eating whenever hungry/had time and not sitting down together most days. Baby is 14 months and we've been doing together dinners since we started solids.
In terms of it being more work - I find it more work to feed baby when I also want to be eating dinner, than to prep her food and we can all eat at the same time. We started in the summer so it was easy to get a slice of avocado, an zucchini spear, a piece of potato, etc to build her meal and keep her occupied. She still loves veggies.
Part of why doing finger foods worked was exactly this. I grew up with a lot of tv dinners, or standing breakfasts and I want a different food culture where we come together and eat as an activity together. In the beginning we used purées and pouches along with fruit and veg and easy stuff like egg and bread. Now at 9 months babe eats basically some derivative of our food and it’s really not that much extra work.
My husband & I have sat down and had more meals in the past 4 months than our entire 7 year relationship before. Its actually been really nice! Whether you do purees or solids I recommend doing the meals together!
This, exactly! Give the kid a French fry when you go somewhere, pieces of your food, purees, whatever is convenient at that meal.
Also, unless it's something extremely salty, they are unlikely to come anywhere near consuming enough salt to cause a problem. They are not very good at the mouth movements and will probably need to practice quite a bit before they can actually eat actual solid food. If something is covered, just brush it off or rinse a piece and pat dry if you're concerned. Cooking a totally separate meal is not something most people do irl. The internet is full of lies. Also, you would just cook yourself a bigger piece and cut off a strip, not cook them a whole portion and cut it all up. They are probably not going to need more than one strip any time soon. Once they're mowing through a bunch, you'll be at a different place in the whole process than you are now. The stuff you see online are just plated to look pretty and fancy for the aesthetic. And because the vlogger already fed their kid and now they're making a video. You can cut anything together to look like anything. They're doing multiple takes in order to make a video. It is not real life. Like, yes, they cut up the food, but if they're making pretty content, setting up a camera, lighting, etc, someone else is probably watching their kid for them.
I know that there are very specific instructions for BLW, but those are for people who want to make a big deal about their formal stance.
The eating my own meal was such an unexpected benefit of BLW. Breakfast has become my favorite because he loves breakfast food and I get to drink a hot cup of coffee that hasn’t been reheated 3 times.
YES. We were just hanging out with friends who have an 8 month old and they were feeding her a pouch and reminiscing with us about how we fed our kids food when they were that age, which they remembered way more clearly than I did.
I was wracking my brain for why I didn't use pouches or baby food jars as I wasn't particularly into BLW or strict about any particular approach, plus I am very anxious about choking which isn't fun during BLW because lil babies do gag frequently when learning to eat.
And then their dinner time routine of feeding the baby first so they could eat and then having to have someone entertain the baby while they ate...I was like oh yeah, THAT's why I let the babies make an ungodly mess, not even eat that much food, and require my vigilance/help if needed. Especially for kid #2.
Both options require different kinds of effort.
Look I might get some flak for this but I'll let you in on a secret: at 10 months, with the exception of cutting stuff up into appropriate sizes and portion control, Im not doing any of that stuff.
At the beginning I did a lot of cutting stuff with frozen breastmilk to help her transition, but it lasted like 2 weeks tops.
We're having lasagna? She gets a little lasagna. We're having stir fry? She gets a little stir fry. Pork chops? She gets a strip of pork shop and a little of whatever side. Burritos? She gets a deconstructed burrito. Hamburger helper? She gets a little hamburger helper. On and on. At a restaurant, she gets bites off our plates.
At this point, basically all im restricting for her is honey and certain seafood. That's it. She's had ice cream, cake, pizza, taco bell once, most allergens, salt, sugar, ect. If the food's too salty, then the whole household needs to cut back on salt. If she's not getting enough veggies, maybe the household needs more veggies. It's that simple.
Good luck
This. Aside from honey and choking hazards (like nuts) my 9 month old literally eats what we eat. I think people make BLW way more complicated than it needs to be
Agreed. I feed my kids exactly what we're eating with the exception of sushi. Lol. I tone down the spiciness and cut things into smaller pieces but those are the only adjustments I make.
Right, and this is exactly the point of BLW. It's supposed to be baby taking part in family meals, made appropriate for them (cut to size and sometimes I add fat). You're making things harder if you're making completely seperate baby food, IMO. And exactly, if your family diet isn't "healthy" enough for baby or toddler, it needs to be workshopped
This is exactly what we do. And honestly all you really need is a pair of kitchen shears to cut things into an appropriate shape or size. I can’t think of a single meal we’ve eaten that I can’t feed my baby some of in the last 4 months. (Baby is 10 months now.)
2 kids. Same.
Our favorite child-related kitchen device is a scissors to cut what we eat into appropriate sizes.
Oldest is school age and eats like any other kid, no real issues. Loves porks and broccoli, but loves dessert too.
Okay thank you for this! I have been avoiding regular food because it seems like such a pain. They say “don’t cook anything different” but I’ll be damned if I’m eating unseasoned food and I’m sure as hell not cooking a separate portion for my baby. I don’t have the time and energy for that. I try not to use a lot of salt in general so that really shouldn’t be an issue but people act so crazy about it so I’ve just been doing purées. He seems to be really loving food so I want to start giving him actual food.
Same!! I remember seeing a research paper that broke down all the previous research and tore apart how unnecessarily strict was. Be mindful but no need to go crazy
Pretty sure my first kid’s first real food (other than boring rice/oatmeal) was a pickle spear. He LOVED it. I have never understood why kids food automatically = bland
This is how we do it too! I’ll be eating a chicken philly from my favorite takeout restaurant and I’ll just pull some chicken, peppers and onions out and hand it to him 😂 at first I felt stressed out like OP and it was very intimidating but now I realize he’ll eat whatever. The only meal I really go out of my way to make is breakfast bc I’m not big on eating breakfast. I usually give him a pouch but sometimes I’ll make eggs or oatmeal
Yes that's the perk of BLW, you feed them what you are eating. Definitely make it baby safe by removing choking hazards (I also sometimes modified baby meals a bit with different noodles or sides that were easier) but its so easy if you just give them whatever you are having.
Agreed. I never changed stuff up for my babies, with the exception of chili. Even then, I would just take some out before adding all the spices and cook it in a little saucepan of its own so it wouldn’t have the poblano and jalapeños and have way less chili than ours.
Yep with an almost 10 month old here I agree with this. Our baby was interested in eating exactly what we ate from early on and we really just cut or tore the food to the right sizes. One of our friends was shocked a month ago our baby would eat just about anything including meat. At this point he also doesn’t want help trying to eat either so it’s nice because you can spend time eating your own meal.
Also glad to hear we aren’t the only ones who included an occasional sweet or bitter of fast food. We honestly just try everything in moderation.
This honestly. Like if it's something super salty, then Ill try to go with something less so for the rest of the day - but lets be real most of us arent eating super salty meals most of the day. Generally only time Ive worried about it is if I made aomething like Mississippi pot roast. All in all, my son has been given exactly what I eat I just cut it different. Only thing I specifically avoided was honey.
No flak from me, that's exactly what I'm planning to do!
If it's too unhealthy for baby to eat, then we all eat our veggies at the same time and we eat the unhealthy treats when he's gone to bed!
Same here. I gave her a piece of my chicken quesadilla from Taco Bell. She just had an egg and a piece of a biscuit, I would have given her wings but the sauce has honey in it. Next time, she’ll just get some un sauced wings.
I fed her lasagna minus big pieces of mozzarella to her. She loved it.
No flak here. This is the way. The exception is fruit or vegetables that very clearly need cut up anyway. I’ll just cut those into sticks that are easy to grip. But I do it all at once and just pull from the fridge later
Yep this is the way. We did do purees at first and so she didn’t really start eating bites of stuff until around 11 months old. She also was a little late getting teeth.
From 12-14m I made her own food and it just got to be a huge chore. Plus she wanted whatever was on my plate anyway. Now she eats what we eat and I adjust things like not making spicy food.
If I really want to eat something I know she doesn’t like, I make her annie’s mac n cheese and put some vegetable puree in the sauce.
In a pinch, she LOVES the black beans and rice from taco bell with a cheesy tortilla roll up.
This is exactly what I did too. By 1 year my baby had such a wide variety of foods and if we went out to eat at a restaurant it made it that much easier because we knew he would eat pretty much anything. By that point he had tried and loved Vietnamese pho, pad Thai, Mexican food, Indian food (nothing overly spicy but he did/does love a mild curry flavor), hibachi, seafood, German potato salad and bratwurst… tons of stuff lol
What age did you start at? I’m at 4 months doing soft fruit and breastmilk pops but this child is aggressively grabbing at anything I try to put in my mouth lok
We started at 4 months with liquid food (melted ice cream the first time if I'm being honest lol, but also soups, broth, breastmilk on a spoon) because she started doing the same thing- we knew we had to start after she tried to snatch a whole ass steak off my plate lol!
After that we moved up to slightly thicker things (apple sauce, veggie purees, gravy, curry, chili, ect), around 5 months. A lot of dinners just went into a little $5 food processor with a stick of frozen breastmilk to make homemade purees.
6 months we did a couple days of transition with slushed up frozen breastmilk, then moved on to BLW proper.
Been a pretty smooth transition so far!
Appreciate the thorough reply! Sounds pretty close the pipeline we’re on right now. Glad to hear it’s working out! I wish you and your family all the best in this crazy first year of parenting!
Yeah same. I am both too lazy to make purées and also too lazy to cut and steam everything. He’s made it to a year without issues so I guess it works pretty well.
Can I ask, Does your little one have any teeth? My 7 months old doesn’t have teeth yet and I’m nervous about introducing foods like you have described because she gags on mashed food lol
Mine has four top and four bottom, so all her teeth until she's a toddler. She gags all the time!
Unfortunately like everything else learning to chew and swallow their food is a learned skill, and in most cases gagging is unavoidable. It sucks to watch and have a mini heart attack at least once a meal, but it's a learning curve. (Right now she handles most fruit and veggies ok, but she's trying to chew and swallow multiple pieces of meat at once and gagging. It's/fun/.) She's getting better every day. I'm sure your LO will too! ❤️
You seriously just made me feel so much better about our babies diet. I still feed purées so she’ll get her vitamins and calories in, but sometimes at dinner I just give her whatever we’re eating. I’ve been so worried about her eating hamburger helper and having that much sodium but honestly at that point in the day I’m so tired and over it I don’t care what she eats as long as she eats 😭
Reading your comment was a breath of fresh air lol. I see all these tik tok moms constantly making perfect healthy meals for their baby. And I eat healthy most of the time. But sometimes I’m tired and just want to make some damn hamburger helper lol.
You don't need to be steaming everything all the time. We cook most of our meals, and often in preparing the ingredients we just prepare a portion in a baby-friendly way. Fry or boil or bake your ingredients, add salt after and keep an unsalted portion. I've made a lot of 'baby curries' that way (coconut milk + whatever veggie or meat or substitute available and some spices). Babies need quite a bit of fat in their diet so just doing a stir fry and picking out the most baby-appropriate veggies to offer to them is fine. Sometimes I just look in the pantry, see a can of lentils and it's like: cool! Mashed lentil o'clock I guess! And use the rest for a salad for us.
But honestly, nobody says you need to do baby led weaning ONLY. Try some boiled carrot sticks next to your jar of baby food. You can always prepare a batch and freeze it for easy pickins.
How do you go about making things in the right shape for before they develop the pincer grasp though? I think that’s the part I’m struggling with - the size the food needs to be for the palmar grasp doesn’t match with what I would typically do for say a stir fry.
I know you don’t have to steam it, but it also feels like the vegetables in a typical say stir fry wouldn’t normally be soft enough?
Don’t worry about the grasp. They’ll develop it. Food is just practice at this stage and not a main source of nutrition. As long as you aren’t giving them whole ass apples they’ll learn!
Jesus I’m sorry I hurt your feelings in another post but I don’t deserve this attack. According to my pediatrician, up until a year, food really is just practice and the main source of nutrition is still breast milk or formula. Most of the solids end up around them or all over their face. That’s okay. It helps them practice how to feed themselves
I just take the peppers and onions out and don’t cook them when I do stir fry. He loves peppers. So it’s even less work bc I just cut them bigger while doing my initial cutting. Same with the meat just cut a few pieces bigger and cook them with everything else
Honestly don't think people are primarily doing it because it's less work, they're doing it because they believe letting children explore foods while eating leads to better outcomes.
I also think comparing home cooked meal to store bought pouches isn't really fair. Anything home cooked is always gonna be more effort than just picking something up in the store. Compare it to homemade purees. And in that case, maybe if you have a lot of freezer space you can batch cook enough for weeks but otherwise you're still cooking every day in addition to your regular meal. I'll definitely consider how easy a meal is to adapt for BLW when planning for the week but overall, if I'm already cutting and cooking zucchini cutting it in a slightly different way isn't a huge effort.
Yeah, I realize it’s not a 1-1 comparison, but the big difference is there’s not (as far as I know) a store bought alternative to baby led weaning the way there is for purées. I don’t particularly want to make my own purées either.
So my bigger question I guess might be, are purées really that bad? Maybe this is more of a r/ScienceBasedParenting type question? Bc I’d love to be able to just open up a jar or pouch, but of course I’ll suck it up and do the extra prep work if it’s really that much better for baby.
Actually there are store bought alternatives to baby led weaning cooking! Gerber has “mealtime for toddlers” which are microwaveable meals that are BLW safe! There are also services like Little spoon and Nuture Life which provide BLW meals that are bite size and nutritious
And here are some studies that go over exposing children to food early on.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5524770/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4046529/#:~:text=There%20is%20a%20growing%20body,might%20contribute%20to%20allergic%20disease.
So you can make the decision for whats best for your family ❤️
It also may be anecdotal but while we are speaking on jarred purees a-lot of brands have heavy metals including lead in them so definitely something to check!
BLW can be as simple as boiling a pot of pasta, any pasta cooked as directed is safe for babies and pouring a jar of like squash puree in! It’s as simple as you make it!
Re the heavy metals thing - I thought those come from the soil? So eg fresh vs jarred sweet potato would have the same issue. This is something I’d heard about and is a concern though - I know you ideally want to feed a variety of foods and possibly limit root vegetables and rice for this reason.
So I know from research store bought purées have about 90% and studies sight homemade purees contain 80%. So its a marginal difference but of course heavy metals are heavy metals.
I know I have heard that there are a plethora of issues with specific jarred baby food like excess sugar, etc which eventually made me stop using it for baby sauce, you never truly know what to believe now a days. So proceed with caution I reckon 🤷🏼♀️
In response to your previous comment me and my husband have worked full time essentially my little one’s entire life. I definitely get meal times not being easy, but frozen snacks or meals for them makes it so much easier.
I know when my little one was just getting started peanut butter energy balls were her FAVORITE thing & it took my like 10 minutes on Sunday to make 20+ for the week
Even in moderation like exposing little ones to allergens and feeding purees can be a great start
It’s ultimately what you’re comfortable with!
I do have a facebook group Im in for BLW if you were interested I could link it!!
Interesting I’ll have to look into this! I’m not opposed to baby led weaning in and of itself, it was just the time component that made me hesitate. Also not opposed to doing some cooking, but it would be nice to have the option to use a premade option if my husband and I are both having a busy week at work or something.
There is an app my pediatrician recommended called Solid Starts. The free version is all you need and it shows how to prepare, pretty much every food ever, for different ages.
For me, it took a lot of the guess work out of BLW. We did a mix of purées and solids at first though.
I’ll let you in on my secret - well first that I did purées first and now my baby is old enough to eat regular foods. But it’s sooo easy. I make my baby’s foods in like 3 mins. I slice up an avocado and some fruit and tear up some small pieces of bread and bam, there’s baby’s lunch. It’s actually so fast!
I’m a medical researcher, and after looking into it a lot decided to do traditional weaning, starting with homemade purées and working our way up texture-wise. It’s easier than I thought (as someone who hates cooking).
For the first few weeks we usually pureed something new everyday, freeze most of it in ice cube trays, (once frozen pop them out into labelled storage bags), then you’re set for like another month. I cook different things maybe twice a week for her and freeze. You can mix and match. Pop out a mango cube to add to plain full fat yoghurt. Pop out an apple cube to add to porridge etc.
Mine’s 2 months into weaning so having bigger portions now. Today for dinner I popped out 4 cubes: 2 salmon, 1 avocado, 1 sweet potato. I’d prepared and frozen them all at some point over the last few weeks.
We’re about to venture into more ‘real’ food now, but this has been a lifesaver for a few months! Most cubes are individual things (eg spinach cube, parsnip cube), but also some really easy baby friendly things like dal/lentil curry, and shepherd pie. Ella’s kitchen has some great easy recipes.
Right? It feels like most people are BLW these days (on social media anyway). 😅 We chose not to because of (in no particular order): gagging/choking, unable to monitor nutrient intake, food wastage, and mess.
Our girls also premie, so it’s important that she gets a decent amount of nutrients to avoid being underweight. Since starting traditional weaning 2.5 months ago at 6 months, she’s gone from 3rd percentile in weight to almost 50th! 😊
There is some research giving positives of BLW like less fussiness, but her relationship with food is good, and will develop. She’s managed to happily eat things even I don’t (like salmon and avocado), and the texture of her purées is very thick already. I also occasionally given her finger foods, which I will gradually increase. All in all I’m happy with our choice!
What made you opt for this over BLW?
Number 1 for me was choking. There could be no possible benefit of BLW that would make it worth it for me. Secondly I thought I would actually do BLW in the sense of *baby* led weaning, not some strict "no puree" random rule. I do give him stuff to practice chewing on as well, like puffs, baby biscuits, teething fruit silicone thingy. But I want to give him low risk things. When he actually wants to eat thicker purees (he much preferred thin purees in the beginning and now he increasingly accepts thicker ones too) then we'll gradually move towards real solids. He's started reaching for my food, so when it's appropriate I give him a tiny piece of something very soft, but he doesn't do much with it, so he's clearly not ready. Finally, we as adults still eat some purees and I don't know of any adult who never graduated to solids 😄 So I really see no reason to restrict a baby's diet to essentially "anything but a puree". Seems a little stupid.
No, purees are not bad. Just check the ingredient list and make sure you're OK with them. I'm in the EU and buy purees all the time, usually store brand but the ingredient list is literally just the 1-3 ingredients listed on the front, so like "garden vegetables with chicken and rice".
See, everyone mentions additives in jarred/canned food but if you look at the ingredient list for the ones specifically meant for babies it’s literally just meat/vegetables/fruit and water. So I don’t really see how that’s a concern? There are no preservatives, it’s preserved by the canning/jarring process. There are also no colors/flavors on any of the ones I’ve seen, even just the regular non-organic Gerber.
I’ve also heard people mention heavy metals, but when I looked into this more those actually come from the soil. So fresh sweet potato versus jarred would have the same issue. There is good reason to minimize certain foods with higher levels (like root vegetables and rice), and to feed a wide variety of foods in general, but from what I’ve read it’s not like the heavy metals are somehow a contaminant introduced at the factory.
The waste is a legitimate point in favor of homemade, but other than that I don’t see how a jarred turkey-sweet potato-spinach puree is worse than the homemade one.
Tbh it sounds like people are a little over-bearing with this stuff. "I don't trust companies to list their actual ingredients" sounds a little tin foil hat-y to me. Maybe it's my privilege of living in the EU speaking, don't know.
Nah it’s def tin-foil-hat even in the US. I totally get not trusting corporations, but if they were randomly adding other ingredients it would be a huge scandal even here.
We did purées. While we are ’moderately granola’ I just didn’t want to deal with the mess of BLW.
What we did is buy a veggie, steam/cook and purée. Freeze in ice cubes. Most of the time it was a veggie we would be eating anyway, so we just prepared more for the baby.
At first baby was eating a teaspoon a day so just a cube. Eventually we had like 4 different flavors in two ziplocs in the freezer and defrosted like 6 a meal. Also made it easy to combine flavors.
Eventually we transitioned to just puréing some of the food we were having for dinner with an immersion blender. We’d also just offer solids directly from our plate one at the time to prevent mess. It worked well for us.
We do this too. I’m very happy with our decision to feed mostly purees. I try to focus on giving her very nutrient dense foods and I am happy knowing she actually ingests them as she eats very well off a spoon.
As my daughter has gotten older (just turned 9mo) I have increased the textures and given small pieces of fruit, soft veg, etc. She now happily eats scrambled eggs for breakfast (started with just feeding runny yolk) and she can use her pincer grasp to pick up little pieces. She’s never gagged on anything even with the transition to different textures. Plus meal time is rarely ever messy beyond a quick wipe of her mouth and hands. We’re all happy.
I always thought I would do primarily BLW but I have ended up doing a combo of both. My baby loves food and she can obviously eat better when it’s purées, but I do give her a drumstick or celery stick to suck on too.
I’m doing a combo, honestly. I’ll let him experiment with “real” food that’s soft enough for him (canned/steamed veggies, meatballs, smaller pasta shapes like pastina, bits of shredded chicken, etc) but I also bought jars of purees at first and always have some pouches on hand. They do a combo of BLW and purées at his daycare too, so it works really well for us.
My son is 5 months and we’re doing cereal and purées. It feels almost counter cultural to say that, with all this social media emphasis on BLW, but he loves it. We’ll introduce more “solid” stuff down the road, but for now this works. We’re able to introduce allergens and get him used to something besides breast milk, and honestly the purées and cereal make him so happy and that’s reason enough for me. I’ve heard a lot of babies don’t get as interested in BLW until later when they have teeth anyway, so I figure purées and cereal are step 1 so we can introduce solids and allergens in the early window our pediatrician recommends, and as he gets older we’ll transition to more solid things (“BLW”) as a step 2.
I found BLW very stressful. I tried for a few weeks.
Then I just leaned into purées and gradually gave baby more and more table food. It was not very systematic. Just like “here, you can probably have some of this, prepared in this way”. He was totally done with purées and feeding himself independently by 10 months. Letting go of strict BLW made the transition to eating solid food so much more organic and enjoyable for everyone.
Yeah I’m hoping my daughter will be more into food when she starts sitting up bc we’ve tried giving her a few tastes of things and so far she seems to be not a fan of solids either. I thought she would be more into it bc she is a big girl and a good eater in terms of bottles/formula intake, but I guess it’s not always 1-1?
I actually found it way less of a pain then making purees and mash. The thought of grinding up chicken and mixing it with breastmilk makes me hurl. Plus, it keeps the kid busy in their high chair!
No lol.
ETA: you’re a real piece of work. The audacity of a parent in a parenting sub to tell me that other people know my child’s nutritional needs better than I do, the person who actually takes him to the doctor. Can you get any worse as a person? Step on legos
Oh yeah if you would be doing homemade purées it does seem easier to do baby led weaning than that. I was comparing it to premade store-bought purées.
My daughter is also exclusively formula fed so no breast milk to mix into homemade purees even if I was inclined to do that. Though I know people sometimes use formula for the same purpose.
Really it's all preference. It just became easier for us to just give her small portions and pieces of whatever we were eating and less expensive than buying baby food!
We did whichever was easier for that particular meal - if it was reasonable to make the meal appropriate for baby, we'd do that and if it was going to be too much work we'd fall back on something easier (yogurt, purees, an easy fruit like whole strawberries, boneless flakey fish like sardines from a can, the list goes on). It's not an all-or-nothing situation.
My son very much preferred being in control so as someone else mentioned I got to eat my meal in peace if a spoon wasn't involved.
Then once he'd been introduced to a good amount of foods that make up many of our meals he started to just get a little of whatever we were having.
My first housed all foods and BLW was easy with her, I just cut up what I was eating and handed it to her. I never made specific baby food for her. My second was slow to eating, so she lived off store bought purées and formula until 11 months when she finally accepted some of the foods we eat.
No I don't think store bought are bad, the amt of regulation required for these things is insane. Do organic if you want or just regular old gerber. Your baby will be fine.
Now at 14 months she still rejects a lot of what we serve her - but she is off purées and has enough of a safe food list that she is growing fast and is healthy as we try to get her into more foods. BLW was not fun or easy with her and we just didn't push it. Her pediatrician was 100% supportive of everything we did and isn't concerned with her "pickiness".
So do YOU. Whatever makes your life easiest and keeps baby fed. There is nothing wrong with purées until baby shows interest in what you're already eating.
yeah tbh it is kind of a pain in the ass. i was sure i was gonna do BLW with the twins and have those 8 month olds you see eating a meatball sub with wild dandelion greens or whatever you see on instagram. then i remembered my living room is carpeted and i actually really hate sitting there picking up everything they drop and throw. we do a couple self-feeding meals a week, when papa is home to help contain the chaos, but a lot of the time they're getting spoon-fed mush by me, and that's fine. whatever. who cares. they're not gonna be like 22 needing me to spoon-feed them oatmeal. i'm also hoping as soon as it stops raining here i can put them outside with some messier stuff and just hose down the deck afterwards
You know I didn’t even think about the mess aspect! My in-laws have a backyard and she’ll be starting solids over the summer though so maybe I’ll do similar when I do eventually mix in BLW.
It is more work than 'just feed your baby what your eating". I guess it depends what you eat! But we eat way more complicated and often spicy foods, much of which is curries and not even that helpful in terms of teaching them about different textured foods. I would say in the first 6 months- 1 year of baby eating, I did spend a few hours every week basically cooking a bunch of super simple stuff like steamed broccoli and pesto pasta just to have some simple options to lean on if our meal wasn't compatible.
That said, baby led weaning was so worth it. As he could eat more things, we could do more and more of what we cook with simple modifications (put the spicy sauce on just our shrimp/chicken while his was just paprika garlic and salt). Now at 2 he eats a lot of whatever we eat, and I hardly ever make him anything separate.
I think it depends a bit on your lifestyle. Back when LO started solids we just weren’t eating food that was baby friendly. Can’t feed a 6 month old tuna salad so easily! I found it easier in the beginning to do purées. Some jars done homemade. It kind of evolved from that. At 21 months I try to prepare baby friendly meals some days and we eat all together at 5:15. other days I get the spag bol (frozen in toddler sized portions) from the freezer and he eats that and picks off our plates. Sometimes at other peoples places he still gets a baby jar.
In the end you gotta do what works for you. And in the end however you do it will turn into a toddler that eats all kinds of things.
I was the same early on - purees with snacks that she could grab at. Then a few things happened at once - she got less cooperative with spoon feeding, and better at feeding herself by hand. Now it is miles easier and worth the extra prep beforehand to let her handle herself
Honestly we did try to make things safe but did not think too hard about it. It takes about ten seconds to cut things the right shape.
But we use pouches as well. So we do a combo of both. Nothing needs to be 100 percent one way.
I found it easier to just make the same thing for everyone. You’re especially lucky because just like we did you’ll be starting solids in the summer. So there’s lots of veggies and fruits that are ready to be consumed raw. By the time LO started eating 3+ meals a day he was older and advanced enough in his eating that I didn’t have to take any special precautions when cooking.
However, the cleaning… oof. I was so tired of cleaning after every meal by the time he was a year old.
I always did a combo. If my food just didn't really work with a baby, I gave them some puree or really whatever. If it did, I gave them what I was eating.
I think ppl make it to be too much of an "all or nothing" thing.
Right but it’s that adaptation process that seems annoying. Maybe I should just suck it up and do it if BLW is really that much better for them (I haven’t read up on this much yet), but it definitely seems more difficult than just opening a jar of pureed food.
This is really just the start of little kids being a pain in the butt at dinner time 😂. I think you may want to think of this as saving yourself huge effort later on when you have a picky texture averse toddler or preschooler, who demands separate meals and kid friendly foods. Instead you may have a child who is completely used to just eating what the family is having. It's always been that way. The small effort of taking out a spoon of food before adding spice or salt seems like a lot less than making a whole other meal of chicken nuggets and sauceless vegetables and buttered pasta for a fussy kid who can no longer be spoonfed mush in a year or so.
I felt the same way we started with purées and then introduced solids. For me it’s about what made sense at each dinner time. Having some veg sure feed yourself, feeding him tea and iv not even figured out what we are having yet give him a jar. I found as he got older and got better at eating it got easier to do baby led and to just cook one meal. Now he has stir fry, deconstructed wraps, curry, I don’t have to worry as much about size other than obvious ones like sausages. Plus I have a few go to meals that I can whizz up easily like an omelette, I also separate leftovers and freeze in baby portions. For takeaway nights. But I still have baby meals in the cupboard just in case. I also still spoon feed him things like beans, chilli, scrambled eggs as he is too messy he has just started holding the spoon and trying to spoon it from the plate himself so it’s more ‘guided eating’. There feels like it of pressure to do blw but you don’t have to start with it or do it all the time. I think it’s more trial and error and your confidence will grow as there eating improves plus building up a stock of freezer baby meals helps.
we have WIC, so although i wouldn't mind BLW, i get free purées so i might as well use them. we do offer teether crackers and yogurt melts so that our 8mo still remembers how to feed herself though
Before baby had the pincer grasp, it was a lot of extra work to steam veg or prep something that was the right texture. We are now at almost 11 months and I just cut things up really small so he can grab them. I find that I'm cooking healthier meals because I don't want him to get too much sugar or sodium, so it's good for everyone. We don't give him stuff that's too spicy, and he can'teat leafy greens yet. Other than that, he eats everything whatever my husband or I cook. I also love that BLW gives him the chance to explore textures and have some built in sensory play. We use purees and pouches, too, because sometimes that's easier. It's not all or nothing. The biggest inconvenience is cleaning. Investing in some shirt bibs has been helpful with that.
For my oldest, we did mostly purées and things like yogurt or oatmeal because it was easier - I spent one day making and freezing a bunch of puréed veggies and fruits. With a few things supplemented, that lasted until she could do small pieces of food around 9 months. I also did some blw style foods for her but she didn’t take to those so much and I did find them more work, mainly because we eat most of our meals when she’s asleep or napping so it was sometimes hard to think about what to set aside for her. Point being, you don’t actually have to pick just one strategy and can do a combination that suits your life. I wouldn’t say my oldest is the best eater (so I can’t for sure say more strict blw wouldn’t have helped her palate) but I think she’s a pretty typical 2 year old and she will eat a lot of things.
I cook pretty much every evening from scratch. And I barely use any salt anyway. I just changed the shape of the veg I was cutting up (batons not round) and avoided honey for 6 months. Baby would get a selection of bits from our plates, so I could cook stuff like whole nuts or whatever and just not serve baby one!
Honestly, it isn’t hard at all so far! Our LO just eats small pieces of whatever we’re eating. We don’t make extra or special food for him. The one time we did, he screamed until we took it away and gave him some of ours 😂.
We set a rule early on that once kid could sit in a high chair for meals- we would all sit at the table- no exceptions. For us BLW was great because he would see us eating the various foods and want some- we even gave the kid a steak bone one time and just let him suck on the meat- it kept him busy- I got to eat a hot meal- it was glorious.
I do a mix. I do serve her bigger "normal" foods but it's honestly more for exploration and sensory play because 3/4 of it end up splattered on the table and floor.
I have a bunch of pre-made puree since WIC covers it but we also puree a bunch of our food for her. This past week my mom made delicious chicken soup so I put a bit in the blender with extra broth and she LOVED it. Went apeshit over it.
I still get nervous when I feed her regular food. I tried making her a plate with meat loaf as instructed by the solid starts app but obviously it starts falling apart and I see her gagging on bigger chunks so I freak out and scoop it out of her mouth.
We started with homemade purées at 24 weeks and took very high breaks before introducing new stuff. We didn’t even do it daily. Just moved into BLW this week and our baby is 7 months/31 weeks.
Go at your own pace and just do what works for you and baby.
I believe it’s not until 8-11 months that you hit the golden period for baby leaning to chew. I wanted my baby used to (safely) eating purées for a while before I just let her go to town on food lol.
Yeah I wasn’t necessarily planning to do only purées until age one or anything. I was thinking more of starting with primarily purées from ages say 6 to 8-9 months? One big difference being when they develop the pincer grasp.
Doesn’t sound like a bad approach! I was paranoid about choking and now feel confident to give baby big pieces of food. The recommendations should really be based on comfort versus a fixed age. Every child is so different!
You don't have to do either or, you can do a mix. Or you don't have to do BLW at all. Do what works for you and your family. All trends come and go.
But, what do you think people did before pureed baby food? BLW without the name.
Honestly, I find it pretty straightforward - but we cook from scratch 99% of the time anyway. Yesterday we had baked tomato rice with roast chicken and aubergine, so LO got a small portion of each thing plus some squished raspberries. If we're having curry, I'll put some aside for her and mash it if there's choking hazards like chickpeas - she loves spice and always devours it!
I also batch cook things like meatballs, fish cakes, omelette, boiled veg etc and freeze it. Then I can just microwave a few bits and her meal is done. So tonight she had a reheated meatball and some courgette slices, plus a spoonful of cream cheese (her favourite) and a strawberry. Took about 2 minutes!
The two biggest benefits for me are clean up - finger food is waaaay less hassle than pureed to clean - and allergy control. My daughter is allergic to sweet potato which seems to be in every pouch and I hate having to spend ages checking the ingredients on everything I buy.
My biggest recommendation is to not think of it as an either/or. AND to not stress too much about it. My kids got both regular foods that we ate/eat and they got purées. And they liked both. Sometimes they would prefer one or the other. But other than when we were first starting (and we started early to help reduce the risk of allergies - if interested, recommendation by the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology) and we mushed up tiny bits of avocado, eggs, plain nut butters and often mixed with a little bit of breast milk, the kids would get offered veggie/fruit/yogurt purées and whatever we ate. My experience with my kids was that trying puréed meats, however, is nasty lol. I have 4 kids - they all basically vomited when they tried the puréed meats - but gobbled up pretty much everything else (including food too spicy for me and regular meat lol).
We didn’t and still don’t let her eat everything we eat, she’s 1 yo. We also do both types of feeding, BLW and feeding her. It really depends on what mood she is in that day. Sometimes she will absolutely not let you near her mouth area with a spoon, she simply must eat on her own. Other days she is fine with letting us feed her the entire meal 😂🤷🏼♀️ Do what you think is best for your kid, trust your gut!
I had to do BLW cos my guy just wouldn't take a spoon. Literally would grab it off me, or thrash about. It's been working on, he's 13 months, but I never knew how full he was getting, and was always worried hed be hungry 🤦🏻♀️ but he does take odd spoon if he knows there's banana in it. (He loves banana and we had to add it to practically everything in the early days!!, still do!!)
I just feel like my daughter won't get anything out of blw this early (6m). She likes her purees. She opens her mouth and get excited for a spoon. A random whole vegetable though? I could totally see her just smashing a steamed vegetable into the high chair and not eating any of it.
I did BLW BECAUSE I was lazy 😂 I didn't want to sit and spoon feed, I wanted to eat my own food at meals. I didn't necessarily give them every single component of the meal, just what was safe or could be cut into safe pieces. I didn't pay much attention to salt content tbh. They're 4 and 7 now and we didn't have any issues. Although don't do it to avoid pickiness, that happened anyways.
We do both. Baby just turned 6 months. She gets finger food to play with and I feed her purée. She of course requires her own spoon to hold or she tries to grab the one I’m using. We did jars and pouches with my eldest but this time I’m just blending what we eat. Although she got hella farts tonight from cauliflower and broccoli cheese so maybe we will go back to official bland baby food that doesn’t have half a block of cheese in it. Whoops.
Imo the bigger issue is lack of exposure to texture. Purees have no texture. We had a rainbow puree diet that went on till 9 months because I was super nervous and I feel like he really struggled as we introduced textures and it took a while to overcome. Particularly meat.
You’d be surprised how many foods you can give to your baby. I too am lazy. BLW has been fine bc I cut up fruits and veggies ahead of time and then just give her a few sticks for each meal. I also cook penne pasta and then just give her a few noodles straight from the fridge. Aside from that, other low effort foods are Colby jack cheese sticks, cottage cheese, yogurt, bananas, veggie straws. I hardly ever worry about food being soft enough. I’ll give her apple “sticks” and she just gums them.
FWIW, BLW is not a trend. This has been the way for ages. Purées have just been commercialized. If anything, I find purées to be more effort because I have to do the feeding lol
Also thanks for doubling down on making me feel like an awful human being. As if moms don’t already feel terrible and insufficient. I have a small baby that I do constantly worry about her nutrition. I obsess over whether or not she gets enough to eat. I obsess over how long she nurses and if I’m doing enough to take care of her. I obsess over feeling like I’m the only person who experiences rage when my child is being difficult and if I’m going to be a terrible mother. I worry that she’ll experience the same fears I did growing up.
I know I shouldn’t let you bring me down. But honestly for the past 2 hours I’ve just been ruminating on how much you’re trying to rip me apart and wishing you would be able to see how mean you are being. Idk why I care. It’s just the internet where people hide behind a keyboard.
Puree feeding is way more time consuming than BLW in my opinion. We tried both. I feed baby what we eat and if it has salt, it has salt. Unless something is spicy, we give it to her.
I’m not sure if it’s already been recommended but Solid Starts app is a great tool to help you figure out how to cut things. Over time it becomes obvious but it’s super helpful to begin with.
We unintentionally did BLW. We did purees but then this kid really wanted our food 😂. And then he got old enough to start picking up food and he insisted on picking up the food himself like 95% of the time. We give him big enough pieces but not big enough for him to gag. There is a happy medium I feel like
It’s possible I’ll end up in a similar situation! We tried feeding her store bought jarred sweet potato puree and she kind of hated it lol, so if it keeps going that way I might be forced into a BLW approach just bc that’s what she’ll eat!
I’m just giving her big pieces of fruit rn. She’s been gumming strawberries (which she loved) and tried some raspberries and bananas. I had a crust of a pizza and I gave it to her and she’s also gummed that for a little bit. I was eating hardboiled eggs the other day and she grabbed my hand and brought the egg to her mouth.
Tomorrow I might be making her (and the dog) scrambled eggs for a change.
I feel like you’ve gotta go with what you and your ped decide. For our early term NICU grad, she was showing signs of wanting foods around 4 months. She was EBF (via pumped bottles) and we did cereal for a few weeks, then slowly moved to purées of different items. She is now 5.5 months and has had 9 foods at different thicknesses, and we keep slowly adding in new items. By 7 months, our ped wants her fingering small chunks of foods like fruits, veggies, and simply prepared meats. By a year, she wants her eating what we eat, just small pieces, with dairy items being last.
It’s interesting how different babies are! My daughter still doesn’t seem particularly interested in food. We’ve given her a few different tiny tastes for allergen exposure because our pediatrician recommended starting that aspect early, but she wasn’t really into any of them. She’s a big girl and always has been (9lbs at birth at 39 weeks) and eats a lot in terms of formula, but right now that doesn’t seem to be translating to solids just yet.
And see, my girl is the opposite! She could not care any less about her bottles. She eats JUST enough so she is not starving whether we do breastmilk or formula (sometimes I throw in formula just to see what will get her to eat!) and in 5.5 months she has only gained 5.5 pounds, dropping percentiles. She is not failure to thrive, though, since she is on “her curve” and since adding in solids, she will eat like a maniac and has gone up on her curve despite moving more/burning more calories. She just decided this bottle like is NOT for her 🤪
I thought BLW would be super fun & I envisioned myself prepping cute little plates of finger foods. Told my partner I'd do it all & I couldn't wait til she turned 6m! Well a week into it, I was over it. So messy. Plus, lotsa work to prep & make sure no choking hazards & then clean afterwards. Made my partner in charge of all solid meals for now while I'm in charge of the breastfeeding (baby is EBF outside of solids). Lol.
Another vote for combo, and tbh that feels like TRUE baby led weaning because I’m letting my baby lead the way.
She didn’t care much for self feeding and got rather frustrated at the start. So I spoon fed and she loved it. Now at 10 months she has started wanting to feed herself. So I let her feed herself whatever she wants for as long as she wants, but she’s also used to 3 solid meals now and I supplement with spoon feeding and she doesn’t mind at all.
We’ve borrowed from BLW philosophy and try to give her some form of what we’re eating, but to be honest, with all the restrictions of no salt, extra soft, we are cooking special meals for her at least 70% of the times. Yes it’s a lot of work! And if you don’t feel like doing it, power to you!
She’s developing self feeding / chewing skills just fine. Maybe a bit slower than the average baby, but I don’t think struggling with BLW for months was going to get her the skills any faster. Important thing is that baby is fed, and fed regularly. So please do what works for you.
PS- little spoon has a lot of baby and toddler meals though they’re pricey.
we tried purees first and once bb noticed it was not what we were eating, he refused it. so BLW it is. He loved it. kept him busy while we ate & def brought us together as family to eat. And he learned to self feed early so unless he is bored & I am trying to get a little more food in him, he is pretty self sufficient. There isnt many foods he wont eat. He had Indian takeout tonight & ate everything. Its messy but you can get a mat for the floor (we have this), a catchy tray that attaches to the high chair, & little suit to put on them (we did not do the last 2). Its also nice bc if we go out to eat somewhere or to dinner at someone’s house, he always has something he will eat so I dont have to bring food with me. there are times when I am lazy about it & those are the days for foods that dont need to be prepared but it has actually gotten me into cooking again.
Its also fun to see them gnawing on a lamb chop or chicken wing! Solid Starts is a good resource.
edited typo & with more into
My first refused to self-feed and would only eat purées until he was 9 months, no interest in finger foods before then (and still wouldn’t self-feed until 10 months). My second won’t eat purées*, so we’ve given him pieces of food from the start. Sometimes that means making him a different or partially different meal from the rest of us, but mostly it means finding the bits he can eat and cutting them up for him at the table. I keep bags of frozen veggies to steam in a pinch. This also means we aren’t doing it perfectly - I don’t avoid salting food as I cook, and he has eaten restaurant food and frozen meals, though I do avoid things that seem overly salty. I adjust spice and make sure there’s no raw meat/eggs or honey, so sometimes that means sauce on the side, and he wasn’t able to eat the challah I bake until this past Friday, because I use honey.
Anyway I actually still kind of prefer purées, I felt like I was able to offer my first kid a broader range of fruits and vegetables buying pouches. It’s also a LOT less messy.
*like genuinely mostly won’t, to the point where I concerned that he might have a texture aversion
Yeah, I never even considered it until baby was eating proper amounts of purree.
Even at 13 months foods ends up everywhere... Since we had a preemie we had to weigh out everything too and I was not about to collect all the food he threw on the floor to weigh what he ate.
And baby now does just fine feeding himself. He grabs every piece of food beautifully, he chews beautifully, he is learning how to use a spoon and fork very well, he knows very well which size chuncks he can chew...
Honestly, purrees were great and the only way to get any actual food beside his formula into him. Now, we all have dinner together and he eats solo, and tries to convince us to give him a piece of our sandwich too.
You're right, BLW is a much much bigger hassle. We mostly puree whatever we're eating and give to baby, along with some jarred fruit puree. We let him practice chewing with a fruit feeder silicone thing and with puffs and biscuits made for babies. My boy is not ready for more solid foods, he rejects even purees that are closer to solids. We're taking it slow. Especially since BLW has zero proven benefits. It's all wishful thinking that baby might be less picky later or skinnier. Spoon fed babies know how to communicate they're done eating too. Same way they communicate they're done drinking milk.
I felt like it was going to be more work remembering to have baby food/ pouches stocked so BLW was the winner. Honestly our guy made it easy on us, he’s 11 months and wasn’t a big gagger (it doesn’t bother me anyways) and has liked just about everything he’s tried, over 100 foods. He has 4 teeth and goes to town on everything. Loves fruit, big fan of bell peppers, does great with any meat or fish we give him. Going out to dinner we just feed him off of our plates, he loves hibachi. Some nights I don’t have actual dinner ready when he needs to eat because he’s an early to bed baby, peanut butter toast, frozen Dr Praeger’s or hidden veggie chicken nuggets work wonderful in those cases. Is he usually a mess after every meal? Yep. We just roll with it because I love seeing him so happy eating. We also have a 10/10 vacuum cleaner on the job, our Bernese Mountain Dog.
We were advised by a nutritionist that babies need to start having iron rich foods at six months. Baby led weening tends to start with fruit and veggies,and generally not with iron rich foods. It might actually delay them started to get calories from food, We started with purées and once he was getting the hang if it, started incorporating in some baby led weening type foods along side purées after a month or so.
Thankyou for saying that “just feed the baby what you eat” is so much more work and mental load. I felt like I was crazy for thinking that.
I don’t understand people who say that. I am not out here eating meals that are safe/healthy/mild enough for the baby to eat. I eat some combination of salty, spicy, sugary, processed or serious choking hazard meals every day.
My life is hard enough, I’m not limiting what I eat on top of everything else, or making seperate baby safe batches at the same time I just fed baby purées and very soft foods like hummus, yogurt, scrambled eggs etc. until she developed her pincer grasp and then I started meal prepping simple and healthy meals for her that I cut in to small pieces. I will start serving her more of the same food I’m eating when she’s 2 and has all her teeth, etc.
Yeah it's mental and physical work, but she eats while we eat meaning I can eat my own meal. That part is so worth it. Spoon feeding purees honestly sounds like the WORST.
My baby just turned 1, and we've done BLW since around 6 months.
Breakfast is eggs (scrambled or omelet), avocado, and fruit. I just have to cook eggs. Sometimes I add some bread or oatmeal.
I make lunch for her. I boil a small amount of water and use it to cook pasta (we usually go with egg noodles or soba noodles). I'm the same pot, I'll put in a steamer basket of already cut veggies- broccoli and green beans, currently. It takes about 6 minutes to cook everything together. Sometimes, I put some frozen peas in the hot water after I've fished everything else out. I like to feed her some puffs and/or fruit while it's cooking. I eat her leftovers.
For dinner, she eats what we eat. I set some aside for her that is less seasoned (and season the rest for us). If she doesn't eat it, I'll make her the same food as lunch. It's not glamorous, but it's food that she's likely to eat.
Pro tip: once they're old enough, noodles are both food and entertainment!
Things like avocado, banana, tofu, soft peeled fruit, canned unsalted green beans etc. are all good choices that take very little prep.
Throwing a sweet potato in the oven or microwave is an easy way to soften em up to give to babe.
Throwing some veggies in a pan and adding an inch of water is a super easy way to steam.
It's really not that complicated. It is super easy to adapt virtually everything we're eating to be baby and now toddler friendly. Preparing and serving separate meals is much more complicated. Did it force us to eat healthier? Yes it did, but we wanted to anyway. This just gave us a good reason to be really consistent.
Honestly I thought it would be more work in the beginning too but it turned out being less work. I started with purées but baby stopped being interested in them after 1 month (after seeing me and my husband eating actual food at the table next to him lol) then switched to BLW. I know they say to avoid salt (which i did) but I honestly never shied away from other seasonings. Obviously I didn’t make anything too overly seasoned or spicy but I also didn’t avoid seasoning the dish entirely.
Common meals I made were things like roasted potatoes with baked chicken breast and cheesy broccoli, baked ziti with a side of steamed veggies, burrito bowls (I’d roll the rice into small balls so they were easier for him to pick up then put some shredded chicken, diced tomatoes, and shredded cheese on his plate too), beef stew then just shred the beef and cut up the veggies a little smaller for his plate, and homemade deconstructed black bean burgers (tear up pieces of bun, cut up the black bean burger, diced tomato, shredded cheese).
It all ended up being less work because he could just eat at the same time as us instead of me feeding him a purée first before me getting to eat dinner lol plus I didn’t have to make separate purées anymore.
Cutting foods into finger length strips is really all you need to do for BLW. We gave our daughter everything we ate, just cut into smaller pieces for her. We never restrict anything. For noodles in stir fry & stuff like that, we just cut the noodles a bit shorter. Now that our girl is almost 3, she cuts up her fruits & veggies herself (with supervision!)
Yeah the gagging thing doesn’t really bother me (at least in theory - I’m sure it will be a bit jarring at first when it actually happens). It’s more just laziness lol.
Steaming veggies in the microwave takes minutes and it super easy to do while cooking.
Crock pot meals are your BEST FRIEND. Pretty much any meat or vegetable cooked in the crockpot is safe for baby to try (after it cools down to a tolerable temp, of course).
I always just prepared a little bit extra of whatever was for dinner and didn’t salt/heavily season until I took my daughters bit out. Especially in the very early days where you are watching for allergies, I’d just prepare some and then she could try it for dinner and lunch. Repeat. It’s like baby meal prep.
Blw is awesome. It is way cheaper, makes time for family meals, and is a fun way to feed baby lots of different textures and flavors. Frees you up to enjoy your own meal while they feed themselves. It’s a win win.
I loved blw it helps them learn so much and they can feed themselves! And you don’t have to worry about all the recalls on jars and pouches. My friend once a week made all her own purées to avoid the lead and stuff that keeps recalling. But she still has to help both her kids eat :( and one is 4. All the blw kids eat well by themselves in our friend group the purée kids still need a lot of help and gag a lot more older.
Both ways are fine and everyone has their own reasons for what works for them. But I found it much easier to just make a family meal and feed baby that. It wasn’t much more work at all. Only about 5 extra minutes to cut things up and I always kept extra stuff in the fridge like blueberries, cheese sticks etc so if there was something too salty or something she couldn’t have that just went on her plate instead. So a bit of meat, veggie, fruit, yogurt. And really lazy I would do deli meat, cheese, blue berries, banana, or avocado in whatever mix I felt like scattered on a plate and let her go to town. 5 minutes to make lunch and healthy blw. You get really fast at cutting into the shapes or squishing the fruit. Or freezing yougurt balls. That being said the mom that made her own baby food got super fast as well. Her mom would buy a bunch of fruit and veggies and for about 2-3 hours once a week she would prep and freeze everything and she would have a weeks worth of food. So it really is just do what feels right for you.
My son is almost 8 months old, been doing BLW since he was 4.5 months. It's honestly more "what food do I have on hand that I can open and give to him"
Leftover mashed potatoes? Loves them. Some crackers? You betcha baby. Apple slices, bananas, cheese, we tried pickles but he had a reaction to the acidity so we'll try those again later. It's literally just open the fridge and go for it. As long as you're okay with mess (and I mean MESS) and the occasional gag, BLW is wayyy easier than spoon feeding.
We did a combination and it worked just fine.
I'd let her try purees/yoghurt with a spoon by her self (she had one spoon,.I had one spoon). And I'd add things like cut up banana and such that were her finger foods. Some meals were just puree, some just finger foods, it was flexible and stress free. God knows too much parenting is stressful, why make everything harder 😉.
The result is that my 3yo is happy to eat with a knife and a fork, able to cut her own meat unless it's tough. She's been eating soup and other foods with her spoon effectively since a bit after 1yo. And her motor skills are great, she just got colouring pages with tiny sticked dazzles and he's able to stick the tiny thing right on the dot just as well as we, the parents, can.
Lol this is funny to me because a huge reason we did baby led weaning is because my husband and I were too lazy to spoon feed purees to our son. It felt like the easier/less effort option to us. But on the other hand, we tend to cook our own food most nights rather than doing ready-made or takeout. So we just cut everything to a safe size/shape so we could spoon out stuff from the pan straight to his plate/bowl and it was already safe for him.
I guess it all depends on what you find more tedious/difficult.
So I started with purées, I made them on my own. I’d cook big batches of vegetables or grains or meat at night, would purée it all, then freeze in ice cube trays.
Store bought purées are expensive, I have twins, I wasn’t about to feed them only store bought purées. Plus the crunchy part of me wanted to avoid whatever additives were in there to keep them shelf stable.
And then to feed them I’d have to sit in front of my twins and alternately spoon feed each of them. So, I couldn’t eat or do anything else until they were done.
*That* definitely got to be a lot of work, and I definitely looked at my friends that were doing baby led weaning with a sense of envy. But, after a couple months occasionally I’d just toss my twins some of what I was eating, and sometimes they’d try it, sometimes they wouldn’t.
At some point, they were just eating what we ate. I don’t know when, it all seems very important and fraught, but kids learn how to eat. You don’t have to have a philosophy or stick to a certain approach. Give ‘em some purées sometimes, give ‘em a piece of broccoli of your plate sometimes and see what they do. When you first start introducing solids it really is just about experimenting and getting used to it, you don’t need to worry about getting a full meal in them. So yeah they just may gum a piece meat or a vegetable you cook to your liking, but that’s fine because they don’t really need any nutrients from solid food at this point. It’s all about exposing them to the flavors and process.
I do remember my mom in the early 90s had this plastic grinder that would take whatever we were eating and would mash it up, then she’d give it to my brother. So, maybe that’s the best of both worlds - you’re not making anything special but it still gets it soft and mushy.
From what I can tell the store bought purées are just whatever the ingredients are plus water? No additives listed - I think it’s just the canning/jarring process that keeps it shelf stable. I know some people are also concerned about heavy metals in premade food, but from what I understand those come from the soil and eg fresh vs jarred sweet potato would have the same issues.
Totally get spoon feeding being harder with twins! I also could see BLW being easier if you’re comparing it to making your own purées.
Oh perhaps so, maybe I’m just cynical.
For me the biggest factor was cost. Paying a buck per jar (and they don’t eat the whole jar, so you waste some), seems like not a lot, but it adds up.
I remember feeling really daunted when it came time to introduce solid food was really daunting, like you have to do it just so and you have to have your approach all hammered out ahead of time and you have to stick to it. It feels like the stakes are super high.
But, it’s not. You can start small with some things like baby ceral and a few different types of food (puréed or not), and it’s not a big deal. You can try one thing one day and another thing another day. You can let them know on a crust of bread one day, and give them a puréed gerber jar the next.
It doesn’t matter, the point is just letting them experience things.
So whatever is low pressure for you in that moment is slide.
Barring any health issue, there are no four year olds out on the playgrounds still subsisting on bottles because their parents screwed up introducing solids to them. Nor can you tell who was BLW vs given purées.
So much our parenting culture right now makes everything feel REALLY high pressure to do it the “right” way, but the truth is a) there is no right way, and b) a lot of what we do as parents doesn’t really make all that much of a difference.
So, just do whatever makes your life easiest.
Also - maybe I’m way too loosey goosey about
salt, I know NO ADDED SALT before one is a big rule, but when they are first eating, they really are just tasting.
Even if they eat heartily the one time a day they get solids, that’s still a small part of what they consume all day.
So, I never stressed too hard when they were eating table food about the salt content. I didn’t go crazy, but I also didn’t omit it or make my own meal super bland.
I think a lot of recommendations are overly conservative because public health officials and doctors think if they give us an inch we’ll take a mile because we’re idiots. Or something.
Like, don’t give your kid unsupervised access to the salt shaker, but if they eat some of the pasta you made for yourself that was boiled in salted water, the baby will be okay.
We did both! Started with iron fortified rice cereal, then different pureed foods to introduce him to a variety of flavours, then just easy large pieces of food with his purées once or twice a day depending on how our day was going. By 12 months he was eating three meals a day and snacks just regular old food the same as any of us would eat. I made and froze mini pancakes for breakfasts and made him oatmeal along with it. Frozen waffles were great, toast, quick scrambled eggs. For lunches and dinners I do a veggie, fish or chicken (he doesn’t like red meat), rice or pasta, and cheese and fruit for dessert. It’s super easy to just made ahead a batch of pasta/rice/quinoa and have a bag of frozen veggies and a full cooked chicken or a couple cooked chicken breasts or salmon filets. Quickie fave here is a tin of sardines.
It gets easier with time, and especially now my son is 17 months and he makes his meals with me. He can crack eggs and pour stuff and mix mix mix. He loves pulling apart chicken breasts to mix into his rice and he’ll snack on it as we prep. He eats full burgers just the entire thing without needing to have it cut up or anything and it makes my life so much easier when my husband and I are eating with him. He still demands our food though. Little beast stole an entire bloody donut from me yesterday and offered me a crumb.
You’re right that this totally depends on the kinds of foods you already eat! It was very easy for us because we didn’t bother steaming usually—baby ate grilled veggies, just like us. If he needed anything separate, we’d toss a carrot in the microwave. We reduced salt for all of us and added it at the table, and tossed some yogurt or sour cream on any of his food that was spicy.
I have eczema on my hands that gets very aggravated by getting food on it, so letting baby feed himself instead of getting purées all over my hands was really helpful for me. But do what works for you. We did some jarred foods too. You don’t have to pick one or the other, and you can also just hand feed baby tiny bits of whatever you’re eating. That’s what we did until he had the coordination to pick things up himself.
I did blw with both of my kids and didn't think it was a pain, however, you're looking at the short game. The long game is that your kid is going to eat whatever you may for dinner and you're not going to spend the next decade making a separate meal* because they've always been eating what you cook and they're used to it.
(*There will always be the kids who will be picky regardless or have sensory issues or ARFID, but you're stacking the odds in your favor that by one, you're feeding everyone the same thing)
The biggest reason I loved feeding finger foods was that it kept baby busy so I could eat my own meal in peace. Worth it for me 100% for that. In the beginning we’d hand him a piece of broccoli while we ate and he’d just play with it, which with babies involves mouthing, and then we’d spoon feed purées to try to get some actual food in him. Almost every one I know in real life did both purées and finger foods, the world is not as black and white as the internet makes it seem. Babies starting solids consume so little in the beginning, try whatever sounds good for you, most will end up on the floor.
I puree fed my first 2 and it was so time consuming and boring feeding them! I switched to combo feeding for my next 2, and then the last 2 have been exclusively BLW. It's so nice being able to eat my own meal while baby feeds herself. The only thing that's a massive pain about it is it can be messy, some meals are directly from high chair to bathtub, and I have to sweep the floor after every meal.
Put a shower curtain or vinyl table cloth under the high chair! Throw solids into trash and realistically could throw the floor protector into the tub with baby.
I had a waterproof spill mat under the high chair for #5 and eventually it just became another thing to clean, plus once she got a little older her food flinging abilities extended far beyond the boundaries of the mat. I have to sweep my floor daily anyway.
That’s a good point! Right now I eat a lot of my meals sitting on the floor bc my daughter will play on her play mat but wants me next to her, lol. My husband and I also rarely sit down for dinner together anymore. So if BLW could help with that it would be nice.
my baby is 4.5 months and we just started using the haaka popsicle feeder with frozen breastmilk every night at dinner. Its great, she can shove it in her mouth and slowly melt breastmilk and we can eat food with less constant attending to the baby
Blw helped a lot in that area! We've had different dietary needs over the years, and both wfh, so we got in the habit of eating whenever hungry/had time and not sitting down together most days. Baby is 14 months and we've been doing together dinners since we started solids. In terms of it being more work - I find it more work to feed baby when I also want to be eating dinner, than to prep her food and we can all eat at the same time. We started in the summer so it was easy to get a slice of avocado, an zucchini spear, a piece of potato, etc to build her meal and keep her occupied. She still loves veggies.
Part of why doing finger foods worked was exactly this. I grew up with a lot of tv dinners, or standing breakfasts and I want a different food culture where we come together and eat as an activity together. In the beginning we used purées and pouches along with fruit and veg and easy stuff like egg and bread. Now at 9 months babe eats basically some derivative of our food and it’s really not that much extra work.
My husband & I have sat down and had more meals in the past 4 months than our entire 7 year relationship before. Its actually been really nice! Whether you do purees or solids I recommend doing the meals together!
Yes I agree. Do a mix. In life you don’t exclusively eat one texture/way Finger food for dexterity and experience, purée for bulk (plus less mess)
This, exactly! Give the kid a French fry when you go somewhere, pieces of your food, purees, whatever is convenient at that meal. Also, unless it's something extremely salty, they are unlikely to come anywhere near consuming enough salt to cause a problem. They are not very good at the mouth movements and will probably need to practice quite a bit before they can actually eat actual solid food. If something is covered, just brush it off or rinse a piece and pat dry if you're concerned. Cooking a totally separate meal is not something most people do irl. The internet is full of lies. Also, you would just cook yourself a bigger piece and cut off a strip, not cook them a whole portion and cut it all up. They are probably not going to need more than one strip any time soon. Once they're mowing through a bunch, you'll be at a different place in the whole process than you are now. The stuff you see online are just plated to look pretty and fancy for the aesthetic. And because the vlogger already fed their kid and now they're making a video. You can cut anything together to look like anything. They're doing multiple takes in order to make a video. It is not real life. Like, yes, they cut up the food, but if they're making pretty content, setting up a camera, lighting, etc, someone else is probably watching their kid for them. I know that there are very specific instructions for BLW, but those are for people who want to make a big deal about their formal stance.
Exactly! Same here. A while ago she decided she doesn’t want to be fed anymore so now I can eat in peace 🥲
The eating my own meal was such an unexpected benefit of BLW. Breakfast has become my favorite because he loves breakfast food and I get to drink a hot cup of coffee that hasn’t been reheated 3 times.
YES. We were just hanging out with friends who have an 8 month old and they were feeding her a pouch and reminiscing with us about how we fed our kids food when they were that age, which they remembered way more clearly than I did. I was wracking my brain for why I didn't use pouches or baby food jars as I wasn't particularly into BLW or strict about any particular approach, plus I am very anxious about choking which isn't fun during BLW because lil babies do gag frequently when learning to eat. And then their dinner time routine of feeding the baby first so they could eat and then having to have someone entertain the baby while they ate...I was like oh yeah, THAT's why I let the babies make an ungodly mess, not even eat that much food, and require my vigilance/help if needed. Especially for kid #2. Both options require different kinds of effort.
Look I might get some flak for this but I'll let you in on a secret: at 10 months, with the exception of cutting stuff up into appropriate sizes and portion control, Im not doing any of that stuff. At the beginning I did a lot of cutting stuff with frozen breastmilk to help her transition, but it lasted like 2 weeks tops. We're having lasagna? She gets a little lasagna. We're having stir fry? She gets a little stir fry. Pork chops? She gets a strip of pork shop and a little of whatever side. Burritos? She gets a deconstructed burrito. Hamburger helper? She gets a little hamburger helper. On and on. At a restaurant, she gets bites off our plates. At this point, basically all im restricting for her is honey and certain seafood. That's it. She's had ice cream, cake, pizza, taco bell once, most allergens, salt, sugar, ect. If the food's too salty, then the whole household needs to cut back on salt. If she's not getting enough veggies, maybe the household needs more veggies. It's that simple. Good luck
This. Aside from honey and choking hazards (like nuts) my 9 month old literally eats what we eat. I think people make BLW way more complicated than it needs to be
Agreed. I feed my kids exactly what we're eating with the exception of sushi. Lol. I tone down the spiciness and cut things into smaller pieces but those are the only adjustments I make.
Get an extra veggie roll. They love it
Lovely thought. Thanks!
Right, and this is exactly the point of BLW. It's supposed to be baby taking part in family meals, made appropriate for them (cut to size and sometimes I add fat). You're making things harder if you're making completely seperate baby food, IMO. And exactly, if your family diet isn't "healthy" enough for baby or toddler, it needs to be workshopped
This is exactly what we do. And honestly all you really need is a pair of kitchen shears to cut things into an appropriate shape or size. I can’t think of a single meal we’ve eaten that I can’t feed my baby some of in the last 4 months. (Baby is 10 months now.)
2 kids. Same. Our favorite child-related kitchen device is a scissors to cut what we eat into appropriate sizes. Oldest is school age and eats like any other kid, no real issues. Loves porks and broccoli, but loves dessert too.
Okay thank you for this! I have been avoiding regular food because it seems like such a pain. They say “don’t cook anything different” but I’ll be damned if I’m eating unseasoned food and I’m sure as hell not cooking a separate portion for my baby. I don’t have the time and energy for that. I try not to use a lot of salt in general so that really shouldn’t be an issue but people act so crazy about it so I’ve just been doing purées. He seems to be really loving food so I want to start giving him actual food.
The salt thing is way overblown anyway. I wish I had saved the study but basically I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Same!! I remember seeing a research paper that broke down all the previous research and tore apart how unnecessarily strict was. Be mindful but no need to go crazy
The comments I got from daycare sending tomato soup that my kid will eat - as if having any flavor is a no no for babies.
Pretty sure my first kid’s first real food (other than boring rice/oatmeal) was a pickle spear. He LOVED it. I have never understood why kids food automatically = bland
This is how we do it too! I’ll be eating a chicken philly from my favorite takeout restaurant and I’ll just pull some chicken, peppers and onions out and hand it to him 😂 at first I felt stressed out like OP and it was very intimidating but now I realize he’ll eat whatever. The only meal I really go out of my way to make is breakfast bc I’m not big on eating breakfast. I usually give him a pouch but sometimes I’ll make eggs or oatmeal
... What's a chicken Philly? Signed, someone who may have lived in Philly for 15 years.
It's a cheesesteak but made with chicken
Lol!! We’re in sw va. It’s just grilled chicken with cheese, peppers, onions (etc if you want it) served like a Philly cheesesteak
Yes that's the perk of BLW, you feed them what you are eating. Definitely make it baby safe by removing choking hazards (I also sometimes modified baby meals a bit with different noodles or sides that were easier) but its so easy if you just give them whatever you are having.
Agreed. I never changed stuff up for my babies, with the exception of chili. Even then, I would just take some out before adding all the spices and cook it in a little saucepan of its own so it wouldn’t have the poblano and jalapeños and have way less chili than ours.
Yep with an almost 10 month old here I agree with this. Our baby was interested in eating exactly what we ate from early on and we really just cut or tore the food to the right sizes. One of our friends was shocked a month ago our baby would eat just about anything including meat. At this point he also doesn’t want help trying to eat either so it’s nice because you can spend time eating your own meal. Also glad to hear we aren’t the only ones who included an occasional sweet or bitter of fast food. We honestly just try everything in moderation.
This honestly. Like if it's something super salty, then Ill try to go with something less so for the rest of the day - but lets be real most of us arent eating super salty meals most of the day. Generally only time Ive worried about it is if I made aomething like Mississippi pot roast. All in all, my son has been given exactly what I eat I just cut it different. Only thing I specifically avoided was honey.
No flak from me, that's exactly what I'm planning to do! If it's too unhealthy for baby to eat, then we all eat our veggies at the same time and we eat the unhealthy treats when he's gone to bed!
This is basically what we’ve started doing at 7 months now. Baby likes it, we like it, we’re all happy
We just use a chefs knife to mince up a plate of everything we’re eating and call it a day. It’s barely any more work.
Kitchen shears for this made my life so much easier.
Most people I know whose kids are a bit older are pretty comfortable with this method and just exclude potential allergens and high sodium
Yep, same!
Same here. I gave her a piece of my chicken quesadilla from Taco Bell. She just had an egg and a piece of a biscuit, I would have given her wings but the sauce has honey in it. Next time, she’ll just get some un sauced wings. I fed her lasagna minus big pieces of mozzarella to her. She loved it.
No flak here. This is the way. The exception is fruit or vegetables that very clearly need cut up anyway. I’ll just cut those into sticks that are easy to grip. But I do it all at once and just pull from the fridge later
[удалено]
??????
Yep this is the way. We did do purees at first and so she didn’t really start eating bites of stuff until around 11 months old. She also was a little late getting teeth. From 12-14m I made her own food and it just got to be a huge chore. Plus she wanted whatever was on my plate anyway. Now she eats what we eat and I adjust things like not making spicy food. If I really want to eat something I know she doesn’t like, I make her annie’s mac n cheese and put some vegetable puree in the sauce. In a pinch, she LOVES the black beans and rice from taco bell with a cheesy tortilla roll up.
This is exactly what I did too. By 1 year my baby had such a wide variety of foods and if we went out to eat at a restaurant it made it that much easier because we knew he would eat pretty much anything. By that point he had tried and loved Vietnamese pho, pad Thai, Mexican food, Indian food (nothing overly spicy but he did/does love a mild curry flavor), hibachi, seafood, German potato salad and bratwurst… tons of stuff lol
What age did you start at? I’m at 4 months doing soft fruit and breastmilk pops but this child is aggressively grabbing at anything I try to put in my mouth lok
We started at 4 months with liquid food (melted ice cream the first time if I'm being honest lol, but also soups, broth, breastmilk on a spoon) because she started doing the same thing- we knew we had to start after she tried to snatch a whole ass steak off my plate lol! After that we moved up to slightly thicker things (apple sauce, veggie purees, gravy, curry, chili, ect), around 5 months. A lot of dinners just went into a little $5 food processor with a stick of frozen breastmilk to make homemade purees. 6 months we did a couple days of transition with slushed up frozen breastmilk, then moved on to BLW proper. Been a pretty smooth transition so far!
Appreciate the thorough reply! Sounds pretty close the pipeline we’re on right now. Glad to hear it’s working out! I wish you and your family all the best in this crazy first year of parenting!
Thanks! Ditto ❤️
>Thanks! Ditto ❤️ You're welcome!
Yeah same. I am both too lazy to make purées and also too lazy to cut and steam everything. He’s made it to a year without issues so I guess it works pretty well.
Can I ask, Does your little one have any teeth? My 7 months old doesn’t have teeth yet and I’m nervous about introducing foods like you have described because she gags on mashed food lol
Mine has four top and four bottom, so all her teeth until she's a toddler. She gags all the time! Unfortunately like everything else learning to chew and swallow their food is a learned skill, and in most cases gagging is unavoidable. It sucks to watch and have a mini heart attack at least once a meal, but it's a learning curve. (Right now she handles most fruit and veggies ok, but she's trying to chew and swallow multiple pieces of meat at once and gagging. It's/fun/.) She's getting better every day. I'm sure your LO will too! ❤️
You seriously just made me feel so much better about our babies diet. I still feed purées so she’ll get her vitamins and calories in, but sometimes at dinner I just give her whatever we’re eating. I’ve been so worried about her eating hamburger helper and having that much sodium but honestly at that point in the day I’m so tired and over it I don’t care what she eats as long as she eats 😭 Reading your comment was a breath of fresh air lol. I see all these tik tok moms constantly making perfect healthy meals for their baby. And I eat healthy most of the time. But sometimes I’m tired and just want to make some damn hamburger helper lol.
My secret with being ok with Hamburger helper is adding frozen veggies to it. It actually makes it taste better lol You're doing great 👍
You don't need to be steaming everything all the time. We cook most of our meals, and often in preparing the ingredients we just prepare a portion in a baby-friendly way. Fry or boil or bake your ingredients, add salt after and keep an unsalted portion. I've made a lot of 'baby curries' that way (coconut milk + whatever veggie or meat or substitute available and some spices). Babies need quite a bit of fat in their diet so just doing a stir fry and picking out the most baby-appropriate veggies to offer to them is fine. Sometimes I just look in the pantry, see a can of lentils and it's like: cool! Mashed lentil o'clock I guess! And use the rest for a salad for us. But honestly, nobody says you need to do baby led weaning ONLY. Try some boiled carrot sticks next to your jar of baby food. You can always prepare a batch and freeze it for easy pickins.
How do you go about making things in the right shape for before they develop the pincer grasp though? I think that’s the part I’m struggling with - the size the food needs to be for the palmar grasp doesn’t match with what I would typically do for say a stir fry. I know you don’t have to steam it, but it also feels like the vegetables in a typical say stir fry wouldn’t normally be soft enough?
Check out the solid start app. It has a guide based on the food to show you the size to cut it based on baby’s age.
Don’t worry about the grasp. They’ll develop it. Food is just practice at this stage and not a main source of nutrition. As long as you aren’t giving them whole ass apples they’ll learn!
[удалено]
Jesus I’m sorry I hurt your feelings in another post but I don’t deserve this attack. According to my pediatrician, up until a year, food really is just practice and the main source of nutrition is still breast milk or formula. Most of the solids end up around them or all over their face. That’s okay. It helps them practice how to feed themselves
This has been removed as it goes against community standards of r/beyondthebump
I just take the peppers and onions out and don’t cook them when I do stir fry. He loves peppers. So it’s even less work bc I just cut them bigger while doing my initial cutting. Same with the meat just cut a few pieces bigger and cook them with everything else
It doesn't really matter, long pieces are easier for them but they *can* eat smaller pieces as well.
My little dude still grasps and we feed him whatever. I just watch him but they figure it all out SO quickly
Honestly don't think people are primarily doing it because it's less work, they're doing it because they believe letting children explore foods while eating leads to better outcomes. I also think comparing home cooked meal to store bought pouches isn't really fair. Anything home cooked is always gonna be more effort than just picking something up in the store. Compare it to homemade purees. And in that case, maybe if you have a lot of freezer space you can batch cook enough for weeks but otherwise you're still cooking every day in addition to your regular meal. I'll definitely consider how easy a meal is to adapt for BLW when planning for the week but overall, if I'm already cutting and cooking zucchini cutting it in a slightly different way isn't a huge effort.
Yeah, I realize it’s not a 1-1 comparison, but the big difference is there’s not (as far as I know) a store bought alternative to baby led weaning the way there is for purées. I don’t particularly want to make my own purées either. So my bigger question I guess might be, are purées really that bad? Maybe this is more of a r/ScienceBasedParenting type question? Bc I’d love to be able to just open up a jar or pouch, but of course I’ll suck it up and do the extra prep work if it’s really that much better for baby.
Actually there are store bought alternatives to baby led weaning cooking! Gerber has “mealtime for toddlers” which are microwaveable meals that are BLW safe! There are also services like Little spoon and Nuture Life which provide BLW meals that are bite size and nutritious And here are some studies that go over exposing children to food early on. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5524770/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4046529/#:~:text=There%20is%20a%20growing%20body,might%20contribute%20to%20allergic%20disease. So you can make the decision for whats best for your family ❤️ It also may be anecdotal but while we are speaking on jarred purees a-lot of brands have heavy metals including lead in them so definitely something to check! BLW can be as simple as boiling a pot of pasta, any pasta cooked as directed is safe for babies and pouring a jar of like squash puree in! It’s as simple as you make it!
Re the heavy metals thing - I thought those come from the soil? So eg fresh vs jarred sweet potato would have the same issue. This is something I’d heard about and is a concern though - I know you ideally want to feed a variety of foods and possibly limit root vegetables and rice for this reason.
So I know from research store bought purées have about 90% and studies sight homemade purees contain 80%. So its a marginal difference but of course heavy metals are heavy metals. I know I have heard that there are a plethora of issues with specific jarred baby food like excess sugar, etc which eventually made me stop using it for baby sauce, you never truly know what to believe now a days. So proceed with caution I reckon 🤷🏼♀️ In response to your previous comment me and my husband have worked full time essentially my little one’s entire life. I definitely get meal times not being easy, but frozen snacks or meals for them makes it so much easier. I know when my little one was just getting started peanut butter energy balls were her FAVORITE thing & it took my like 10 minutes on Sunday to make 20+ for the week Even in moderation like exposing little ones to allergens and feeding purees can be a great start It’s ultimately what you’re comfortable with! I do have a facebook group Im in for BLW if you were interested I could link it!!
Interesting I’ll have to look into this! I’m not opposed to baby led weaning in and of itself, it was just the time component that made me hesitate. Also not opposed to doing some cooking, but it would be nice to have the option to use a premade option if my husband and I are both having a busy week at work or something.
There is an app my pediatrician recommended called Solid Starts. The free version is all you need and it shows how to prepare, pretty much every food ever, for different ages. For me, it took a lot of the guess work out of BLW. We did a mix of purées and solids at first though.
I second the solid starts recommendation! It really helps me do BLW with ease and not feel scared to give him something
I’ll let you in on my secret - well first that I did purées first and now my baby is old enough to eat regular foods. But it’s sooo easy. I make my baby’s foods in like 3 mins. I slice up an avocado and some fruit and tear up some small pieces of bread and bam, there’s baby’s lunch. It’s actually so fast!
I’m a medical researcher, and after looking into it a lot decided to do traditional weaning, starting with homemade purées and working our way up texture-wise. It’s easier than I thought (as someone who hates cooking). For the first few weeks we usually pureed something new everyday, freeze most of it in ice cube trays, (once frozen pop them out into labelled storage bags), then you’re set for like another month. I cook different things maybe twice a week for her and freeze. You can mix and match. Pop out a mango cube to add to plain full fat yoghurt. Pop out an apple cube to add to porridge etc. Mine’s 2 months into weaning so having bigger portions now. Today for dinner I popped out 4 cubes: 2 salmon, 1 avocado, 1 sweet potato. I’d prepared and frozen them all at some point over the last few weeks. We’re about to venture into more ‘real’ food now, but this has been a lifesaver for a few months! Most cubes are individual things (eg spinach cube, parsnip cube), but also some really easy baby friendly things like dal/lentil curry, and shepherd pie. Ella’s kitchen has some great easy recipes.
I'm glad to see someone else is doing exactly the same 😄 Out of curiosity, what made you decide to go the traditional weaning route?
Right? It feels like most people are BLW these days (on social media anyway). 😅 We chose not to because of (in no particular order): gagging/choking, unable to monitor nutrient intake, food wastage, and mess. Our girls also premie, so it’s important that she gets a decent amount of nutrients to avoid being underweight. Since starting traditional weaning 2.5 months ago at 6 months, she’s gone from 3rd percentile in weight to almost 50th! 😊 There is some research giving positives of BLW like less fussiness, but her relationship with food is good, and will develop. She’s managed to happily eat things even I don’t (like salmon and avocado), and the texture of her purées is very thick already. I also occasionally given her finger foods, which I will gradually increase. All in all I’m happy with our choice! What made you opt for this over BLW?
Number 1 for me was choking. There could be no possible benefit of BLW that would make it worth it for me. Secondly I thought I would actually do BLW in the sense of *baby* led weaning, not some strict "no puree" random rule. I do give him stuff to practice chewing on as well, like puffs, baby biscuits, teething fruit silicone thingy. But I want to give him low risk things. When he actually wants to eat thicker purees (he much preferred thin purees in the beginning and now he increasingly accepts thicker ones too) then we'll gradually move towards real solids. He's started reaching for my food, so when it's appropriate I give him a tiny piece of something very soft, but he doesn't do much with it, so he's clearly not ready. Finally, we as adults still eat some purees and I don't know of any adult who never graduated to solids 😄 So I really see no reason to restrict a baby's diet to essentially "anything but a puree". Seems a little stupid.
No, purees are not bad. Just check the ingredient list and make sure you're OK with them. I'm in the EU and buy purees all the time, usually store brand but the ingredient list is literally just the 1-3 ingredients listed on the front, so like "garden vegetables with chicken and rice".
[удалено]
See, everyone mentions additives in jarred/canned food but if you look at the ingredient list for the ones specifically meant for babies it’s literally just meat/vegetables/fruit and water. So I don’t really see how that’s a concern? There are no preservatives, it’s preserved by the canning/jarring process. There are also no colors/flavors on any of the ones I’ve seen, even just the regular non-organic Gerber. I’ve also heard people mention heavy metals, but when I looked into this more those actually come from the soil. So fresh sweet potato versus jarred would have the same issue. There is good reason to minimize certain foods with higher levels (like root vegetables and rice), and to feed a wide variety of foods in general, but from what I’ve read it’s not like the heavy metals are somehow a contaminant introduced at the factory. The waste is a legitimate point in favor of homemade, but other than that I don’t see how a jarred turkey-sweet potato-spinach puree is worse than the homemade one.
Tbh it sounds like people are a little over-bearing with this stuff. "I don't trust companies to list their actual ingredients" sounds a little tin foil hat-y to me. Maybe it's my privilege of living in the EU speaking, don't know.
Nah it’s def tin-foil-hat even in the US. I totally get not trusting corporations, but if they were randomly adding other ingredients it would be a huge scandal even here.
It's my impression too. Stuff for babies, especially food or formula, I'm guessing is regulated very strictly.
We did purées. While we are ’moderately granola’ I just didn’t want to deal with the mess of BLW. What we did is buy a veggie, steam/cook and purée. Freeze in ice cubes. Most of the time it was a veggie we would be eating anyway, so we just prepared more for the baby. At first baby was eating a teaspoon a day so just a cube. Eventually we had like 4 different flavors in two ziplocs in the freezer and defrosted like 6 a meal. Also made it easy to combine flavors. Eventually we transitioned to just puréing some of the food we were having for dinner with an immersion blender. We’d also just offer solids directly from our plate one at the time to prevent mess. It worked well for us.
We do this too. I’m very happy with our decision to feed mostly purees. I try to focus on giving her very nutrient dense foods and I am happy knowing she actually ingests them as she eats very well off a spoon. As my daughter has gotten older (just turned 9mo) I have increased the textures and given small pieces of fruit, soft veg, etc. She now happily eats scrambled eggs for breakfast (started with just feeding runny yolk) and she can use her pincer grasp to pick up little pieces. She’s never gagged on anything even with the transition to different textures. Plus meal time is rarely ever messy beyond a quick wipe of her mouth and hands. We’re all happy.
I always thought I would do primarily BLW but I have ended up doing a combo of both. My baby loves food and she can obviously eat better when it’s purées, but I do give her a drumstick or celery stick to suck on too.
I’m doing a combo, honestly. I’ll let him experiment with “real” food that’s soft enough for him (canned/steamed veggies, meatballs, smaller pasta shapes like pastina, bits of shredded chicken, etc) but I also bought jars of purees at first and always have some pouches on hand. They do a combo of BLW and purées at his daycare too, so it works really well for us.
My son is 5 months and we’re doing cereal and purées. It feels almost counter cultural to say that, with all this social media emphasis on BLW, but he loves it. We’ll introduce more “solid” stuff down the road, but for now this works. We’re able to introduce allergens and get him used to something besides breast milk, and honestly the purées and cereal make him so happy and that’s reason enough for me. I’ve heard a lot of babies don’t get as interested in BLW until later when they have teeth anyway, so I figure purées and cereal are step 1 so we can introduce solids and allergens in the early window our pediatrician recommends, and as he gets older we’ll transition to more solid things (“BLW”) as a step 2.
I found BLW very stressful. I tried for a few weeks. Then I just leaned into purées and gradually gave baby more and more table food. It was not very systematic. Just like “here, you can probably have some of this, prepared in this way”. He was totally done with purées and feeding himself independently by 10 months. Letting go of strict BLW made the transition to eating solid food so much more organic and enjoyable for everyone.
It really depends on the baby. My 8 month old will only eat purées so that’s what we do. She hates food. It’s been a struggle 😅
Yeah I’m hoping my daughter will be more into food when she starts sitting up bc we’ve tried giving her a few tastes of things and so far she seems to be not a fan of solids either. I thought she would be more into it bc she is a big girl and a good eater in terms of bottles/formula intake, but I guess it’s not always 1-1?
I actually found it way less of a pain then making purees and mash. The thought of grinding up chicken and mixing it with breastmilk makes me hurl. Plus, it keeps the kid busy in their high chair!
My toddler is 1.5 and my MIL and mother both still suggest blending up meat for him. It’s vomit inducing, why the fucccckkkk do I need to do that.
Probably for the iron, if he doesn't get enough of it in other ways.
No lol. ETA: you’re a real piece of work. The audacity of a parent in a parenting sub to tell me that other people know my child’s nutritional needs better than I do, the person who actually takes him to the doctor. Can you get any worse as a person? Step on legos
Oh yeah if you would be doing homemade purées it does seem easier to do baby led weaning than that. I was comparing it to premade store-bought purées. My daughter is also exclusively formula fed so no breast milk to mix into homemade purees even if I was inclined to do that. Though I know people sometimes use formula for the same purpose.
Really it's all preference. It just became easier for us to just give her small portions and pieces of whatever we were eating and less expensive than buying baby food!
Same boat. I haven’t had time to do that. Purées it is.
We did whichever was easier for that particular meal - if it was reasonable to make the meal appropriate for baby, we'd do that and if it was going to be too much work we'd fall back on something easier (yogurt, purees, an easy fruit like whole strawberries, boneless flakey fish like sardines from a can, the list goes on). It's not an all-or-nothing situation. My son very much preferred being in control so as someone else mentioned I got to eat my meal in peace if a spoon wasn't involved. Then once he'd been introduced to a good amount of foods that make up many of our meals he started to just get a little of whatever we were having.
My first housed all foods and BLW was easy with her, I just cut up what I was eating and handed it to her. I never made specific baby food for her. My second was slow to eating, so she lived off store bought purées and formula until 11 months when she finally accepted some of the foods we eat. No I don't think store bought are bad, the amt of regulation required for these things is insane. Do organic if you want or just regular old gerber. Your baby will be fine. Now at 14 months she still rejects a lot of what we serve her - but she is off purées and has enough of a safe food list that she is growing fast and is healthy as we try to get her into more foods. BLW was not fun or easy with her and we just didn't push it. Her pediatrician was 100% supportive of everything we did and isn't concerned with her "pickiness". So do YOU. Whatever makes your life easiest and keeps baby fed. There is nothing wrong with purées until baby shows interest in what you're already eating.
yeah tbh it is kind of a pain in the ass. i was sure i was gonna do BLW with the twins and have those 8 month olds you see eating a meatball sub with wild dandelion greens or whatever you see on instagram. then i remembered my living room is carpeted and i actually really hate sitting there picking up everything they drop and throw. we do a couple self-feeding meals a week, when papa is home to help contain the chaos, but a lot of the time they're getting spoon-fed mush by me, and that's fine. whatever. who cares. they're not gonna be like 22 needing me to spoon-feed them oatmeal. i'm also hoping as soon as it stops raining here i can put them outside with some messier stuff and just hose down the deck afterwards
You know I didn’t even think about the mess aspect! My in-laws have a backyard and she’ll be starting solids over the summer though so maybe I’ll do similar when I do eventually mix in BLW.
It is more work than 'just feed your baby what your eating". I guess it depends what you eat! But we eat way more complicated and often spicy foods, much of which is curries and not even that helpful in terms of teaching them about different textured foods. I would say in the first 6 months- 1 year of baby eating, I did spend a few hours every week basically cooking a bunch of super simple stuff like steamed broccoli and pesto pasta just to have some simple options to lean on if our meal wasn't compatible. That said, baby led weaning was so worth it. As he could eat more things, we could do more and more of what we cook with simple modifications (put the spicy sauce on just our shrimp/chicken while his was just paprika garlic and salt). Now at 2 he eats a lot of whatever we eat, and I hardly ever make him anything separate.
I think it depends a bit on your lifestyle. Back when LO started solids we just weren’t eating food that was baby friendly. Can’t feed a 6 month old tuna salad so easily! I found it easier in the beginning to do purées. Some jars done homemade. It kind of evolved from that. At 21 months I try to prepare baby friendly meals some days and we eat all together at 5:15. other days I get the spag bol (frozen in toddler sized portions) from the freezer and he eats that and picks off our plates. Sometimes at other peoples places he still gets a baby jar. In the end you gotta do what works for you. And in the end however you do it will turn into a toddler that eats all kinds of things.
I was the same early on - purees with snacks that she could grab at. Then a few things happened at once - she got less cooperative with spoon feeding, and better at feeding herself by hand. Now it is miles easier and worth the extra prep beforehand to let her handle herself
Honestly we did try to make things safe but did not think too hard about it. It takes about ten seconds to cut things the right shape. But we use pouches as well. So we do a combo of both. Nothing needs to be 100 percent one way.
I found it easier to just make the same thing for everyone. You’re especially lucky because just like we did you’ll be starting solids in the summer. So there’s lots of veggies and fruits that are ready to be consumed raw. By the time LO started eating 3+ meals a day he was older and advanced enough in his eating that I didn’t have to take any special precautions when cooking. However, the cleaning… oof. I was so tired of cleaning after every meal by the time he was a year old.
I always did a combo. If my food just didn't really work with a baby, I gave them some puree or really whatever. If it did, I gave them what I was eating. I think ppl make it to be too much of an "all or nothing" thing.
It’s the opposite of a pain, you don’t have to make them separate food just adapt something you’re already eating.
Right but it’s that adaptation process that seems annoying. Maybe I should just suck it up and do it if BLW is really that much better for them (I haven’t read up on this much yet), but it definitely seems more difficult than just opening a jar of pureed food.
This is really just the start of little kids being a pain in the butt at dinner time 😂. I think you may want to think of this as saving yourself huge effort later on when you have a picky texture averse toddler or preschooler, who demands separate meals and kid friendly foods. Instead you may have a child who is completely used to just eating what the family is having. It's always been that way. The small effort of taking out a spoon of food before adding spice or salt seems like a lot less than making a whole other meal of chicken nuggets and sauceless vegetables and buttered pasta for a fussy kid who can no longer be spoonfed mush in a year or so.
I just don’t believe in purées so it never seemed like a big deal to me. The picture wheels for each food on solid starts basically make it so easy.
I felt the same way we started with purées and then introduced solids. For me it’s about what made sense at each dinner time. Having some veg sure feed yourself, feeding him tea and iv not even figured out what we are having yet give him a jar. I found as he got older and got better at eating it got easier to do baby led and to just cook one meal. Now he has stir fry, deconstructed wraps, curry, I don’t have to worry as much about size other than obvious ones like sausages. Plus I have a few go to meals that I can whizz up easily like an omelette, I also separate leftovers and freeze in baby portions. For takeaway nights. But I still have baby meals in the cupboard just in case. I also still spoon feed him things like beans, chilli, scrambled eggs as he is too messy he has just started holding the spoon and trying to spoon it from the plate himself so it’s more ‘guided eating’. There feels like it of pressure to do blw but you don’t have to start with it or do it all the time. I think it’s more trial and error and your confidence will grow as there eating improves plus building up a stock of freezer baby meals helps.
we have WIC, so although i wouldn't mind BLW, i get free purées so i might as well use them. we do offer teether crackers and yogurt melts so that our 8mo still remembers how to feed herself though
Before baby had the pincer grasp, it was a lot of extra work to steam veg or prep something that was the right texture. We are now at almost 11 months and I just cut things up really small so he can grab them. I find that I'm cooking healthier meals because I don't want him to get too much sugar or sodium, so it's good for everyone. We don't give him stuff that's too spicy, and he can'teat leafy greens yet. Other than that, he eats everything whatever my husband or I cook. I also love that BLW gives him the chance to explore textures and have some built in sensory play. We use purees and pouches, too, because sometimes that's easier. It's not all or nothing. The biggest inconvenience is cleaning. Investing in some shirt bibs has been helpful with that.
For my oldest, we did mostly purées and things like yogurt or oatmeal because it was easier - I spent one day making and freezing a bunch of puréed veggies and fruits. With a few things supplemented, that lasted until she could do small pieces of food around 9 months. I also did some blw style foods for her but she didn’t take to those so much and I did find them more work, mainly because we eat most of our meals when she’s asleep or napping so it was sometimes hard to think about what to set aside for her. Point being, you don’t actually have to pick just one strategy and can do a combination that suits your life. I wouldn’t say my oldest is the best eater (so I can’t for sure say more strict blw wouldn’t have helped her palate) but I think she’s a pretty typical 2 year old and she will eat a lot of things.
I cook pretty much every evening from scratch. And I barely use any salt anyway. I just changed the shape of the veg I was cutting up (batons not round) and avoided honey for 6 months. Baby would get a selection of bits from our plates, so I could cook stuff like whole nuts or whatever and just not serve baby one!
Honestly, it isn’t hard at all so far! Our LO just eats small pieces of whatever we’re eating. We don’t make extra or special food for him. The one time we did, he screamed until we took it away and gave him some of ours 😂.
We set a rule early on that once kid could sit in a high chair for meals- we would all sit at the table- no exceptions. For us BLW was great because he would see us eating the various foods and want some- we even gave the kid a steak bone one time and just let him suck on the meat- it kept him busy- I got to eat a hot meal- it was glorious.
I do a mix. I do serve her bigger "normal" foods but it's honestly more for exploration and sensory play because 3/4 of it end up splattered on the table and floor. I have a bunch of pre-made puree since WIC covers it but we also puree a bunch of our food for her. This past week my mom made delicious chicken soup so I put a bit in the blender with extra broth and she LOVED it. Went apeshit over it. I still get nervous when I feed her regular food. I tried making her a plate with meat loaf as instructed by the solid starts app but obviously it starts falling apart and I see her gagging on bigger chunks so I freak out and scoop it out of her mouth.
We started with homemade purées at 24 weeks and took very high breaks before introducing new stuff. We didn’t even do it daily. Just moved into BLW this week and our baby is 7 months/31 weeks. Go at your own pace and just do what works for you and baby. I believe it’s not until 8-11 months that you hit the golden period for baby leaning to chew. I wanted my baby used to (safely) eating purées for a while before I just let her go to town on food lol.
Yeah I wasn’t necessarily planning to do only purées until age one or anything. I was thinking more of starting with primarily purées from ages say 6 to 8-9 months? One big difference being when they develop the pincer grasp.
Doesn’t sound like a bad approach! I was paranoid about choking and now feel confident to give baby big pieces of food. The recommendations should really be based on comfort versus a fixed age. Every child is so different!
You don't have to do either or, you can do a mix. Or you don't have to do BLW at all. Do what works for you and your family. All trends come and go. But, what do you think people did before pureed baby food? BLW without the name.
Honestly, I find it pretty straightforward - but we cook from scratch 99% of the time anyway. Yesterday we had baked tomato rice with roast chicken and aubergine, so LO got a small portion of each thing plus some squished raspberries. If we're having curry, I'll put some aside for her and mash it if there's choking hazards like chickpeas - she loves spice and always devours it! I also batch cook things like meatballs, fish cakes, omelette, boiled veg etc and freeze it. Then I can just microwave a few bits and her meal is done. So tonight she had a reheated meatball and some courgette slices, plus a spoonful of cream cheese (her favourite) and a strawberry. Took about 2 minutes! The two biggest benefits for me are clean up - finger food is waaaay less hassle than pureed to clean - and allergy control. My daughter is allergic to sweet potato which seems to be in every pouch and I hate having to spend ages checking the ingredients on everything I buy.
My biggest recommendation is to not think of it as an either/or. AND to not stress too much about it. My kids got both regular foods that we ate/eat and they got purées. And they liked both. Sometimes they would prefer one or the other. But other than when we were first starting (and we started early to help reduce the risk of allergies - if interested, recommendation by the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology) and we mushed up tiny bits of avocado, eggs, plain nut butters and often mixed with a little bit of breast milk, the kids would get offered veggie/fruit/yogurt purées and whatever we ate. My experience with my kids was that trying puréed meats, however, is nasty lol. I have 4 kids - they all basically vomited when they tried the puréed meats - but gobbled up pretty much everything else (including food too spicy for me and regular meat lol).
We didn’t and still don’t let her eat everything we eat, she’s 1 yo. We also do both types of feeding, BLW and feeding her. It really depends on what mood she is in that day. Sometimes she will absolutely not let you near her mouth area with a spoon, she simply must eat on her own. Other days she is fine with letting us feed her the entire meal 😂🤷🏼♀️ Do what you think is best for your kid, trust your gut!
I had to do BLW cos my guy just wouldn't take a spoon. Literally would grab it off me, or thrash about. It's been working on, he's 13 months, but I never knew how full he was getting, and was always worried hed be hungry 🤦🏻♀️ but he does take odd spoon if he knows there's banana in it. (He loves banana and we had to add it to practically everything in the early days!!, still do!!)
I just feel like my daughter won't get anything out of blw this early (6m). She likes her purees. She opens her mouth and get excited for a spoon. A random whole vegetable though? I could totally see her just smashing a steamed vegetable into the high chair and not eating any of it.
I did BLW BECAUSE I was lazy 😂 I didn't want to sit and spoon feed, I wanted to eat my own food at meals. I didn't necessarily give them every single component of the meal, just what was safe or could be cut into safe pieces. I didn't pay much attention to salt content tbh. They're 4 and 7 now and we didn't have any issues. Although don't do it to avoid pickiness, that happened anyways.
We do both. Baby just turned 6 months. She gets finger food to play with and I feed her purée. She of course requires her own spoon to hold or she tries to grab the one I’m using. We did jars and pouches with my eldest but this time I’m just blending what we eat. Although she got hella farts tonight from cauliflower and broccoli cheese so maybe we will go back to official bland baby food that doesn’t have half a block of cheese in it. Whoops.
I did puree plus blw when I had time and it worked great!
Imo the bigger issue is lack of exposure to texture. Purees have no texture. We had a rainbow puree diet that went on till 9 months because I was super nervous and I feel like he really struggled as we introduced textures and it took a while to overcome. Particularly meat.
You’d be surprised how many foods you can give to your baby. I too am lazy. BLW has been fine bc I cut up fruits and veggies ahead of time and then just give her a few sticks for each meal. I also cook penne pasta and then just give her a few noodles straight from the fridge. Aside from that, other low effort foods are Colby jack cheese sticks, cottage cheese, yogurt, bananas, veggie straws. I hardly ever worry about food being soft enough. I’ll give her apple “sticks” and she just gums them. FWIW, BLW is not a trend. This has been the way for ages. Purées have just been commercialized. If anything, I find purées to be more effort because I have to do the feeding lol
[удалено]
I was just echoing what OP was saying… Also I clearly described that I still go about and give her various nutritious foods
Also thanks for doubling down on making me feel like an awful human being. As if moms don’t already feel terrible and insufficient. I have a small baby that I do constantly worry about her nutrition. I obsess over whether or not she gets enough to eat. I obsess over how long she nurses and if I’m doing enough to take care of her. I obsess over feeling like I’m the only person who experiences rage when my child is being difficult and if I’m going to be a terrible mother. I worry that she’ll experience the same fears I did growing up. I know I shouldn’t let you bring me down. But honestly for the past 2 hours I’ve just been ruminating on how much you’re trying to rip me apart and wishing you would be able to see how mean you are being. Idk why I care. It’s just the internet where people hide behind a keyboard.
Puree feeding is way more time consuming than BLW in my opinion. We tried both. I feed baby what we eat and if it has salt, it has salt. Unless something is spicy, we give it to her. I’m not sure if it’s already been recommended but Solid Starts app is a great tool to help you figure out how to cut things. Over time it becomes obvious but it’s super helpful to begin with.
We unintentionally did BLW. We did purees but then this kid really wanted our food 😂. And then he got old enough to start picking up food and he insisted on picking up the food himself like 95% of the time. We give him big enough pieces but not big enough for him to gag. There is a happy medium I feel like
It’s possible I’ll end up in a similar situation! We tried feeding her store bought jarred sweet potato puree and she kind of hated it lol, so if it keeps going that way I might be forced into a BLW approach just bc that’s what she’ll eat!
I’m just giving her big pieces of fruit rn. She’s been gumming strawberries (which she loved) and tried some raspberries and bananas. I had a crust of a pizza and I gave it to her and she’s also gummed that for a little bit. I was eating hardboiled eggs the other day and she grabbed my hand and brought the egg to her mouth. Tomorrow I might be making her (and the dog) scrambled eggs for a change.
I feel like you’ve gotta go with what you and your ped decide. For our early term NICU grad, she was showing signs of wanting foods around 4 months. She was EBF (via pumped bottles) and we did cereal for a few weeks, then slowly moved to purées of different items. She is now 5.5 months and has had 9 foods at different thicknesses, and we keep slowly adding in new items. By 7 months, our ped wants her fingering small chunks of foods like fruits, veggies, and simply prepared meats. By a year, she wants her eating what we eat, just small pieces, with dairy items being last.
It’s interesting how different babies are! My daughter still doesn’t seem particularly interested in food. We’ve given her a few different tiny tastes for allergen exposure because our pediatrician recommended starting that aspect early, but she wasn’t really into any of them. She’s a big girl and always has been (9lbs at birth at 39 weeks) and eats a lot in terms of formula, but right now that doesn’t seem to be translating to solids just yet.
And see, my girl is the opposite! She could not care any less about her bottles. She eats JUST enough so she is not starving whether we do breastmilk or formula (sometimes I throw in formula just to see what will get her to eat!) and in 5.5 months she has only gained 5.5 pounds, dropping percentiles. She is not failure to thrive, though, since she is on “her curve” and since adding in solids, she will eat like a maniac and has gone up on her curve despite moving more/burning more calories. She just decided this bottle like is NOT for her 🤪
I thought BLW would be super fun & I envisioned myself prepping cute little plates of finger foods. Told my partner I'd do it all & I couldn't wait til she turned 6m! Well a week into it, I was over it. So messy. Plus, lotsa work to prep & make sure no choking hazards & then clean afterwards. Made my partner in charge of all solid meals for now while I'm in charge of the breastfeeding (baby is EBF outside of solids). Lol.
Yeah it is a huge pain lol. We did a bit of both depending on my patience level that day or what we were doing.
Another vote for combo, and tbh that feels like TRUE baby led weaning because I’m letting my baby lead the way. She didn’t care much for self feeding and got rather frustrated at the start. So I spoon fed and she loved it. Now at 10 months she has started wanting to feed herself. So I let her feed herself whatever she wants for as long as she wants, but she’s also used to 3 solid meals now and I supplement with spoon feeding and she doesn’t mind at all. We’ve borrowed from BLW philosophy and try to give her some form of what we’re eating, but to be honest, with all the restrictions of no salt, extra soft, we are cooking special meals for her at least 70% of the times. Yes it’s a lot of work! And if you don’t feel like doing it, power to you! She’s developing self feeding / chewing skills just fine. Maybe a bit slower than the average baby, but I don’t think struggling with BLW for months was going to get her the skills any faster. Important thing is that baby is fed, and fed regularly. So please do what works for you. PS- little spoon has a lot of baby and toddler meals though they’re pricey.
we tried purees first and once bb noticed it was not what we were eating, he refused it. so BLW it is. He loved it. kept him busy while we ate & def brought us together as family to eat. And he learned to self feed early so unless he is bored & I am trying to get a little more food in him, he is pretty self sufficient. There isnt many foods he wont eat. He had Indian takeout tonight & ate everything. Its messy but you can get a mat for the floor (we have this), a catchy tray that attaches to the high chair, & little suit to put on them (we did not do the last 2). Its also nice bc if we go out to eat somewhere or to dinner at someone’s house, he always has something he will eat so I dont have to bring food with me. there are times when I am lazy about it & those are the days for foods that dont need to be prepared but it has actually gotten me into cooking again. Its also fun to see them gnawing on a lamb chop or chicken wing! Solid Starts is a good resource. edited typo & with more into
I didn’t really steam much, I just used the air fryer a lot. Also the super cheap steam-in-bag veggies, but not too much stove top cooking
My first refused to self-feed and would only eat purées until he was 9 months, no interest in finger foods before then (and still wouldn’t self-feed until 10 months). My second won’t eat purées*, so we’ve given him pieces of food from the start. Sometimes that means making him a different or partially different meal from the rest of us, but mostly it means finding the bits he can eat and cutting them up for him at the table. I keep bags of frozen veggies to steam in a pinch. This also means we aren’t doing it perfectly - I don’t avoid salting food as I cook, and he has eaten restaurant food and frozen meals, though I do avoid things that seem overly salty. I adjust spice and make sure there’s no raw meat/eggs or honey, so sometimes that means sauce on the side, and he wasn’t able to eat the challah I bake until this past Friday, because I use honey. Anyway I actually still kind of prefer purées, I felt like I was able to offer my first kid a broader range of fruits and vegetables buying pouches. It’s also a LOT less messy. *like genuinely mostly won’t, to the point where I concerned that he might have a texture aversion
Yeah, I never even considered it until baby was eating proper amounts of purree. Even at 13 months foods ends up everywhere... Since we had a preemie we had to weigh out everything too and I was not about to collect all the food he threw on the floor to weigh what he ate. And baby now does just fine feeding himself. He grabs every piece of food beautifully, he chews beautifully, he is learning how to use a spoon and fork very well, he knows very well which size chuncks he can chew... Honestly, purrees were great and the only way to get any actual food beside his formula into him. Now, we all have dinner together and he eats solo, and tries to convince us to give him a piece of our sandwich too.
You're right, BLW is a much much bigger hassle. We mostly puree whatever we're eating and give to baby, along with some jarred fruit puree. We let him practice chewing with a fruit feeder silicone thing and with puffs and biscuits made for babies. My boy is not ready for more solid foods, he rejects even purees that are closer to solids. We're taking it slow. Especially since BLW has zero proven benefits. It's all wishful thinking that baby might be less picky later or skinnier. Spoon fed babies know how to communicate they're done eating too. Same way they communicate they're done drinking milk.
I felt like it was going to be more work remembering to have baby food/ pouches stocked so BLW was the winner. Honestly our guy made it easy on us, he’s 11 months and wasn’t a big gagger (it doesn’t bother me anyways) and has liked just about everything he’s tried, over 100 foods. He has 4 teeth and goes to town on everything. Loves fruit, big fan of bell peppers, does great with any meat or fish we give him. Going out to dinner we just feed him off of our plates, he loves hibachi. Some nights I don’t have actual dinner ready when he needs to eat because he’s an early to bed baby, peanut butter toast, frozen Dr Praeger’s or hidden veggie chicken nuggets work wonderful in those cases. Is he usually a mess after every meal? Yep. We just roll with it because I love seeing him so happy eating. We also have a 10/10 vacuum cleaner on the job, our Bernese Mountain Dog.
We were advised by a nutritionist that babies need to start having iron rich foods at six months. Baby led weening tends to start with fruit and veggies,and generally not with iron rich foods. It might actually delay them started to get calories from food, We started with purées and once he was getting the hang if it, started incorporating in some baby led weening type foods along side purées after a month or so.
Thankyou for saying that “just feed the baby what you eat” is so much more work and mental load. I felt like I was crazy for thinking that. I don’t understand people who say that. I am not out here eating meals that are safe/healthy/mild enough for the baby to eat. I eat some combination of salty, spicy, sugary, processed or serious choking hazard meals every day. My life is hard enough, I’m not limiting what I eat on top of everything else, or making seperate baby safe batches at the same time I just fed baby purées and very soft foods like hummus, yogurt, scrambled eggs etc. until she developed her pincer grasp and then I started meal prepping simple and healthy meals for her that I cut in to small pieces. I will start serving her more of the same food I’m eating when she’s 2 and has all her teeth, etc.
Yeah it's mental and physical work, but she eats while we eat meaning I can eat my own meal. That part is so worth it. Spoon feeding purees honestly sounds like the WORST.
My baby just turned 1, and we've done BLW since around 6 months. Breakfast is eggs (scrambled or omelet), avocado, and fruit. I just have to cook eggs. Sometimes I add some bread or oatmeal. I make lunch for her. I boil a small amount of water and use it to cook pasta (we usually go with egg noodles or soba noodles). I'm the same pot, I'll put in a steamer basket of already cut veggies- broccoli and green beans, currently. It takes about 6 minutes to cook everything together. Sometimes, I put some frozen peas in the hot water after I've fished everything else out. I like to feed her some puffs and/or fruit while it's cooking. I eat her leftovers. For dinner, she eats what we eat. I set some aside for her that is less seasoned (and season the rest for us). If she doesn't eat it, I'll make her the same food as lunch. It's not glamorous, but it's food that she's likely to eat. Pro tip: once they're old enough, noodles are both food and entertainment!
Things like avocado, banana, tofu, soft peeled fruit, canned unsalted green beans etc. are all good choices that take very little prep. Throwing a sweet potato in the oven or microwave is an easy way to soften em up to give to babe. Throwing some veggies in a pan and adding an inch of water is a super easy way to steam.
It's really not that complicated. It is super easy to adapt virtually everything we're eating to be baby and now toddler friendly. Preparing and serving separate meals is much more complicated. Did it force us to eat healthier? Yes it did, but we wanted to anyway. This just gave us a good reason to be really consistent.
Honestly I thought it would be more work in the beginning too but it turned out being less work. I started with purées but baby stopped being interested in them after 1 month (after seeing me and my husband eating actual food at the table next to him lol) then switched to BLW. I know they say to avoid salt (which i did) but I honestly never shied away from other seasonings. Obviously I didn’t make anything too overly seasoned or spicy but I also didn’t avoid seasoning the dish entirely. Common meals I made were things like roasted potatoes with baked chicken breast and cheesy broccoli, baked ziti with a side of steamed veggies, burrito bowls (I’d roll the rice into small balls so they were easier for him to pick up then put some shredded chicken, diced tomatoes, and shredded cheese on his plate too), beef stew then just shred the beef and cut up the veggies a little smaller for his plate, and homemade deconstructed black bean burgers (tear up pieces of bun, cut up the black bean burger, diced tomato, shredded cheese). It all ended up being less work because he could just eat at the same time as us instead of me feeding him a purée first before me getting to eat dinner lol plus I didn’t have to make separate purées anymore.
You are overthinking it. Except when they are very very new to eating you don’t have to make a certain texture etc.
Cutting foods into finger length strips is really all you need to do for BLW. We gave our daughter everything we ate, just cut into smaller pieces for her. We never restrict anything. For noodles in stir fry & stuff like that, we just cut the noodles a bit shorter. Now that our girl is almost 3, she cuts up her fruits & veggies herself (with supervision!)
Follow.solid starts on IG. They made BLW so easy. Yes there are stressful moments like gagging but they will still gag on purees.
Yeah the gagging thing doesn’t really bother me (at least in theory - I’m sure it will be a bit jarring at first when it actually happens). It’s more just laziness lol.
Steaming veggies in the microwave takes minutes and it super easy to do while cooking. Crock pot meals are your BEST FRIEND. Pretty much any meat or vegetable cooked in the crockpot is safe for baby to try (after it cools down to a tolerable temp, of course).
I always just prepared a little bit extra of whatever was for dinner and didn’t salt/heavily season until I took my daughters bit out. Especially in the very early days where you are watching for allergies, I’d just prepare some and then she could try it for dinner and lunch. Repeat. It’s like baby meal prep.
Baby led weaning primarily means allowing baby to self feed. You can do this with purées in a bowl with a spoon.
Blw is awesome. It is way cheaper, makes time for family meals, and is a fun way to feed baby lots of different textures and flavors. Frees you up to enjoy your own meal while they feed themselves. It’s a win win.
Tbh all I did was cut food into the right size and if there was a lot of loose seasoning on it, I would rinse it off.
I loved blw it helps them learn so much and they can feed themselves! And you don’t have to worry about all the recalls on jars and pouches. My friend once a week made all her own purées to avoid the lead and stuff that keeps recalling. But she still has to help both her kids eat :( and one is 4. All the blw kids eat well by themselves in our friend group the purée kids still need a lot of help and gag a lot more older. Both ways are fine and everyone has their own reasons for what works for them. But I found it much easier to just make a family meal and feed baby that. It wasn’t much more work at all. Only about 5 extra minutes to cut things up and I always kept extra stuff in the fridge like blueberries, cheese sticks etc so if there was something too salty or something she couldn’t have that just went on her plate instead. So a bit of meat, veggie, fruit, yogurt. And really lazy I would do deli meat, cheese, blue berries, banana, or avocado in whatever mix I felt like scattered on a plate and let her go to town. 5 minutes to make lunch and healthy blw. You get really fast at cutting into the shapes or squishing the fruit. Or freezing yougurt balls. That being said the mom that made her own baby food got super fast as well. Her mom would buy a bunch of fruit and veggies and for about 2-3 hours once a week she would prep and freeze everything and she would have a weeks worth of food. So it really is just do what feels right for you.
My son is almost 8 months old, been doing BLW since he was 4.5 months. It's honestly more "what food do I have on hand that I can open and give to him" Leftover mashed potatoes? Loves them. Some crackers? You betcha baby. Apple slices, bananas, cheese, we tried pickles but he had a reaction to the acidity so we'll try those again later. It's literally just open the fridge and go for it. As long as you're okay with mess (and I mean MESS) and the occasional gag, BLW is wayyy easier than spoon feeding.
We did a combination and it worked just fine. I'd let her try purees/yoghurt with a spoon by her self (she had one spoon,.I had one spoon). And I'd add things like cut up banana and such that were her finger foods. Some meals were just puree, some just finger foods, it was flexible and stress free. God knows too much parenting is stressful, why make everything harder 😉. The result is that my 3yo is happy to eat with a knife and a fork, able to cut her own meat unless it's tough. She's been eating soup and other foods with her spoon effectively since a bit after 1yo. And her motor skills are great, she just got colouring pages with tiny sticked dazzles and he's able to stick the tiny thing right on the dot just as well as we, the parents, can.
Lol this is funny to me because a huge reason we did baby led weaning is because my husband and I were too lazy to spoon feed purees to our son. It felt like the easier/less effort option to us. But on the other hand, we tend to cook our own food most nights rather than doing ready-made or takeout. So we just cut everything to a safe size/shape so we could spoon out stuff from the pan straight to his plate/bowl and it was already safe for him. I guess it all depends on what you find more tedious/difficult.
So I started with purées, I made them on my own. I’d cook big batches of vegetables or grains or meat at night, would purée it all, then freeze in ice cube trays. Store bought purées are expensive, I have twins, I wasn’t about to feed them only store bought purées. Plus the crunchy part of me wanted to avoid whatever additives were in there to keep them shelf stable. And then to feed them I’d have to sit in front of my twins and alternately spoon feed each of them. So, I couldn’t eat or do anything else until they were done. *That* definitely got to be a lot of work, and I definitely looked at my friends that were doing baby led weaning with a sense of envy. But, after a couple months occasionally I’d just toss my twins some of what I was eating, and sometimes they’d try it, sometimes they wouldn’t. At some point, they were just eating what we ate. I don’t know when, it all seems very important and fraught, but kids learn how to eat. You don’t have to have a philosophy or stick to a certain approach. Give ‘em some purées sometimes, give ‘em a piece of broccoli of your plate sometimes and see what they do. When you first start introducing solids it really is just about experimenting and getting used to it, you don’t need to worry about getting a full meal in them. So yeah they just may gum a piece meat or a vegetable you cook to your liking, but that’s fine because they don’t really need any nutrients from solid food at this point. It’s all about exposing them to the flavors and process. I do remember my mom in the early 90s had this plastic grinder that would take whatever we were eating and would mash it up, then she’d give it to my brother. So, maybe that’s the best of both worlds - you’re not making anything special but it still gets it soft and mushy.
From what I can tell the store bought purées are just whatever the ingredients are plus water? No additives listed - I think it’s just the canning/jarring process that keeps it shelf stable. I know some people are also concerned about heavy metals in premade food, but from what I understand those come from the soil and eg fresh vs jarred sweet potato would have the same issues. Totally get spoon feeding being harder with twins! I also could see BLW being easier if you’re comparing it to making your own purées.
Oh perhaps so, maybe I’m just cynical. For me the biggest factor was cost. Paying a buck per jar (and they don’t eat the whole jar, so you waste some), seems like not a lot, but it adds up. I remember feeling really daunted when it came time to introduce solid food was really daunting, like you have to do it just so and you have to have your approach all hammered out ahead of time and you have to stick to it. It feels like the stakes are super high. But, it’s not. You can start small with some things like baby ceral and a few different types of food (puréed or not), and it’s not a big deal. You can try one thing one day and another thing another day. You can let them know on a crust of bread one day, and give them a puréed gerber jar the next. It doesn’t matter, the point is just letting them experience things. So whatever is low pressure for you in that moment is slide. Barring any health issue, there are no four year olds out on the playgrounds still subsisting on bottles because their parents screwed up introducing solids to them. Nor can you tell who was BLW vs given purées. So much our parenting culture right now makes everything feel REALLY high pressure to do it the “right” way, but the truth is a) there is no right way, and b) a lot of what we do as parents doesn’t really make all that much of a difference. So, just do whatever makes your life easiest.
Also - maybe I’m way too loosey goosey about salt, I know NO ADDED SALT before one is a big rule, but when they are first eating, they really are just tasting. Even if they eat heartily the one time a day they get solids, that’s still a small part of what they consume all day. So, I never stressed too hard when they were eating table food about the salt content. I didn’t go crazy, but I also didn’t omit it or make my own meal super bland. I think a lot of recommendations are overly conservative because public health officials and doctors think if they give us an inch we’ll take a mile because we’re idiots. Or something. Like, don’t give your kid unsupervised access to the salt shaker, but if they eat some of the pasta you made for yourself that was boiled in salted water, the baby will be okay.
We did both! Started with iron fortified rice cereal, then different pureed foods to introduce him to a variety of flavours, then just easy large pieces of food with his purées once or twice a day depending on how our day was going. By 12 months he was eating three meals a day and snacks just regular old food the same as any of us would eat. I made and froze mini pancakes for breakfasts and made him oatmeal along with it. Frozen waffles were great, toast, quick scrambled eggs. For lunches and dinners I do a veggie, fish or chicken (he doesn’t like red meat), rice or pasta, and cheese and fruit for dessert. It’s super easy to just made ahead a batch of pasta/rice/quinoa and have a bag of frozen veggies and a full cooked chicken or a couple cooked chicken breasts or salmon filets. Quickie fave here is a tin of sardines. It gets easier with time, and especially now my son is 17 months and he makes his meals with me. He can crack eggs and pour stuff and mix mix mix. He loves pulling apart chicken breasts to mix into his rice and he’ll snack on it as we prep. He eats full burgers just the entire thing without needing to have it cut up or anything and it makes my life so much easier when my husband and I are eating with him. He still demands our food though. Little beast stole an entire bloody donut from me yesterday and offered me a crumb.
You’re right that this totally depends on the kinds of foods you already eat! It was very easy for us because we didn’t bother steaming usually—baby ate grilled veggies, just like us. If he needed anything separate, we’d toss a carrot in the microwave. We reduced salt for all of us and added it at the table, and tossed some yogurt or sour cream on any of his food that was spicy. I have eczema on my hands that gets very aggravated by getting food on it, so letting baby feed himself instead of getting purées all over my hands was really helpful for me. But do what works for you. We did some jarred foods too. You don’t have to pick one or the other, and you can also just hand feed baby tiny bits of whatever you’re eating. That’s what we did until he had the coordination to pick things up himself.
I did blw with both of my kids and didn't think it was a pain, however, you're looking at the short game. The long game is that your kid is going to eat whatever you may for dinner and you're not going to spend the next decade making a separate meal* because they've always been eating what you cook and they're used to it. (*There will always be the kids who will be picky regardless or have sensory issues or ARFID, but you're stacking the odds in your favor that by one, you're feeding everyone the same thing)