Baby Led Weaning

Well, we just got back from a week long vacation that included visits with lots of family members.  One of our stops was to Justin's sister's (Sarissa) home in Minneapolis, where we learned about "Baby Led Weaning" since she has chosen this method for her son Gavin.

Claire & Gavin

Basically, in this sense, the term weaning means "adding complimentary foods" and letting the baby, starting at 6 months, feed themselves appropriate sized foods...no more mush!  We loved the idea right away, since healthy eating/natural eating is very important to us.  With Ethan, if I didn't make the baby food myself, then we were buying the all-natural, organic stuff...which is expensive.  With this new method, Claire gets to eat what we eat.  While we were visiting Sarissa, we let Claire eat avocado, kiwi, watermelon, bread, lettuce, pulled pork and since then, she's had sweet potato and more.  Basically we cut everything into "sticks" that look like a french fry.  This way she can hold them all by herself and either eat or just suck on the food.  I wish we'd discovered this with Ethan!  We love being able to feed her fresh fruits and veggies straight from our garden, and there's a sense of relief in knowing what she's actually eating.  

eating kiwi

eating sourdough bread

eating sweet potato

                                               

Sarissa told us that her 8 month old has already had pears, with the skin on (apparently they will work off the skin and spit it out), tomato, onion, sweet potato, peppers, steak, etc.  The research on it says that a baby's gag reflex is up higher in the mouth than a normal child or adult, so if there is a problem, they will gag and spit the food out well before a child or adult would.   Here are some great links for more information on it....

http://www.babyledweaning.com/

http://community.babycenter.com/groups/a351935/baby-led_weaning