Family Recipes for Baby Led Weaning (2024)

FAQs

How many meals should I start with baby-led weaning? ›

To start BLW, ensure readiness and begin with one solid meal a day during family mealtime. Use a highchair in a safe setting, allow exploration and play with food, offer age-appropriate soft foods in manageable sized pieces, and let the baby lead the feeding process.

By age 1, babies should be eating the same foods as the rest of the family. It is good to start feeding your toddler modified versions of family meals beginning around 6 months of age. For example, if you are having roasted carrots at dinner, shred them for your young toddler and puree them for your baby.

Some parents worry that baby-led weaning is more likely to cause their baby to choke than spoon-feeding. Emerging evidence suggests that baby-led weaning may result in more gagging as babies get used to swallowing but no increased likelihood of choking . Baby-led weaning can be messier than spoon-feeding.

Baby-led weaning (BLW) involves skipping the spoon-fed purées and letting babies feed themselves finger foods when starting solids.

When your baby is around six months old you can start to introduce family foods. If you would like to attend a face-to-face or a virtual 'Introducing family foods workshop', please speak to your Health Visiting team or contact the Surrey-wide 0-19 Advice Line on 01883 340 922.

Stage 3 (typically 10-12 months old, but may occur sooner): At this stage, you can slowly replace purees with soft, chewable chunks of food, and offer your baby more finger foods that they can pick up and feed themselves.

Homemade Baby Food Benefit #1: Making baby food is affordable. While it does take more time to prepare homemade baby food than to pop open a jar, it's often cheaper to make your own. For instance, a 4-ounce jar of banana baby food costs roughly $1.00, whereas a 4-ounce banana costs $0.19.

Beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and lamb all offer exceptional nutrition for babies including protein, fat, iron, zinc, and other essential nutrients. If your baby is on a diet of only breastmilk (or formula), fruits, grains, and veggies, she might miss out on brain-boosting nutrients.

Why do pediatricians not like baby-led weaning? ›

Indeed, one of the main reasons healthcare providers are reluctant to fully endorse BLW is the perceived risk of choking. About 35% of babies choke while starting foods, most often because they were offered food that was a hazard.

Studies have found that families practicing baby-led weaning tend to eat more often together. They also find mealtimes calmer and less stressful. Meanwhile, mothers who do BLW say they feel less pressure and worry around weaning than those who traditionally wean.

It is speculated BLW babies may be at increased risk by missing out on iron-fortified baby cereal – the recommended “first food” for spoon-feeders. But by the same token, because BLW babies join in family mealtimes they are more likely to enjoy the iron benefits of foods like egg yolk, liver and cooked meat.

To start with, your baby only needs a small amount of solid food, once a day, at a time that suits you both. You can start weaning with single vegetables and fruits – try blended, mashed, or soft cooked sticks of parsnip, broccoli, potato, yam, sweet potato, carrot, apple or pear.

At 6 months of age, solids are added as well. Babies six to eight months old typically eat two to three meals (of solid foods) per day. From nine months onward, your baby may take three to four meals per day along with one or two additional snacks.

Let your child try one single-ingredient food at a time at first. This helps you see if your child has any problems with that food, such as food allergies. Wait 3 to 5 days between each new food. Before you know it, your child will be on his or her way to eating and enjoying lots of new foods.

Tablespoons: Since your baby is still drinking breast milk or formula as their primary nutrition, slowly incorporate approximately 1-3 tablespoons of food for 1-2 meals a day. As your baby starts to eat more solids, the Mini Mat can help you keep track of portion sizes.