Baby Led Weaning

After Adalyn was born, I was so excited to feed her solids. I love to cook and am obsessed with food so I knew that it would be a blast feeding her. Thankfully, she is an amazing eater and will literally eat anything and everything, so we give her everything.


We started with purees at 1 week prior to 5 months old. I had planned on waiting to start feeding her solids until 6 months but she had different ideas. Some of her first foods were pureed carrots, sweet potatoes, green beans, kale and peas. She took to eating like she had been doing it her whole life.

About a month or so later, we tried her on some food with texture such as bread and she did very well. Since then, Adalyn has been eating pieces of everything which is also known as baby led weaning.


Baby led weaning pretty much means when you give baby whole pieces of food instead of purees. We started this at about 6 months old. We still give Adalyn a bit of pureed food here and there such as applesauce, spinach and yogurts.


When we are eating a meal, most of  the time, Adalyn gets some of what we are eating. She eats way more than I ever knew a baby could. She will eat for 45 minutes to an hour straight each time. I am so proud of her that she is a good eater because good nutrition is so important.

Here are some of the foods that Adalyn eats:
*Note: she is 9 months old now, we started baby led weaning at about 6 months

Vegetables
-Raw: tomatoes, cucumber
-Steamed: zucchini, carrots, bell peppers, green beans, peas, turnip, eggplant, sweet potato, regular potato, asparagus
-Pureed: kale, spinach

Fruit- anything and everything!
-Peaches, plums, nectarines
-Grapes, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries
-Kiwi, mango, cantaloupe, watermelon
-Applesauce

Protein
-Peanut butter, almond butter
-Beans (black beans are one of her very favorite foods)
-Eggs
-Chicken, venison, pork, beef
-Dairy (cheese, plain Greek yogurt)

Grains
-Waffles, bread
-Whole wheat pasta
-Iron fortified baby oatmeal (to ensure she doesn't get a deficiency)
-Cheerios- she loves to pick these up and feed herself.

There are a ton more foods that I am forgetting but these are a good representation of some of the foods that she eats. I know that a big concern with baby led weaning is the potential for choking. You should always watch your child when they eat and never leave the room. A few times. Adalyn has had issues but was able to cough everything up okay. I think it is all part of learning.
When we are on the go, we bring cereal and Gerber’s 3rd Foods® Lil Bits™ Recipes. Gerber’s 3rd Foods® Lil Bits™ Recipes are great because they are soft pieces of fruits and veggies. When we are out, it is hard to find vegetables that are soft enough unless we bring cooked veggies from home which we usually do not have time to steam these up.


This way, Adalyn can get enough nutrition in even away from home. Also, when we go out to eat, there is too much salt and sugar in the food and these have no added salt or sugar (they do have juice concentrate in them). She tried the sweet potato apple carrot and cinnamon and loved it! I could not feed it to her fast enough. Therefore, she took it into her own hands (literally) and fed herself. this was the first time that she fed herself something like this with a spoon. Except for being messy, it actually went quite well. She liked the little bits in it too.