Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you buy through my link, I may receive compensation at no extra cost to you. For more information, see my disclosure page here.

It seems to be a generally accepted idea that once babies are old enough, we are supposed to first feed them rice cereal and then move onto purees. Some people take the initiative to make their own purees, which I considered. But none of that seemed like how I wanted to feed my child. So instead, after some research, I decided on baby led weaning.

Baby led weaning means that baby feeds themselves their solid foods with your encouragement. Some people are scared off by the word “weaning” thinking that it means to stop giving breast milk or formula, but it simply means that you are introducing solid foods.

Now, when I was starting Mac on solid foods, I was a little nervous to begin with. Food is such a huge aspect of life and I didn’t want to somehow mess it up (Typical Mom Guilt!) But I feel like I struck a happy medium and now I want to talk about the process we went through in case anyone else is thinking of trying baby led weaning.

A lot of baby led weaning advocates advise to start with large chunks of some kind of mushy food. While I see the wisdom of giving a large piece of food now, I just wasn’t quite ready to jump right in and give Mac a big slice of banana or avocado. I was too nervous. Instead, I gave it to her in a mesh feeder like a Munchkin Fresh Food Feeder. She was still in control of her eating and was getting fresh food. Then, when I felt ready, we moved onto finger foods.

The first solid food we gave Mac was avocado. I did a lot of reading and I wanted to pick something that was different from sweet breast milk. We are biologically inclined to like sweet foods. In order to switch things up and make food more interesting for Mac, I picked avocado because it is squishy and it isn’t sweet. Avocados are also high in fat, which is an important nutrient for growing babies.

After we moved on from the mesh feeder, we started giving her whatever we were having for dinner, within reason. We would steam vegetables as a side dish and give her some to eat. Vegetables and fruits were what we started with and eventually we moved on and added things like grains, dairy, meat, and meat substitutes. I would say by the time she was 10 months old, she was eating what we ate for dinner.

So very briefly, here are a few of the benefits of baby led weaning that I have personally seen:

1. Understanding How to Eat: Working with toddlers, I see a lot of methods of eating. I feel like baby led weaning has prevented a lot of the frustrating behaviors. For example, she doesn’t stuff her mouth full of food. Instead she knows how to take a bite of something.
2. No Packing Extra Food: Whenever we go out, we don’t have to pack her a dinner. Instead, we just give her what we eat. (Although now we have to order the little foodie her own meal because she loves to eat.)
3. Tasty and Healthy Food: Occasionally we had someone give us things like baby oatmeal. I tried to give Mac some one time and she absolutely refused, which was weird because she loves food. I gave it a taste and it was gross! No wonder she didn’t like it! Fresh fruits and vegetables are tasty and so healthy for baby.
4. Foodie Baby: Now, there are babies out there who will have texture issues or will be picky eaters, no matter how or what they eat. But Mac eats everything. She goes through phases of preferring some foods over others, but we have yet to come across things she actually doesn’t like. She eats tofu, chia seeds, mango, black beans, etc. I’m not sure she would eat quite so widely if she had only been introduced to simple purees.
5. Cheap Eating: Andrew and I shop the deals each week to try to eat healthily on a budget. Instead of having to buy a bunch of baby food jars and having to pay more for our groceries each week, we simply bought an extra vegetable or fruit here and there to feed her. Even as she has grown, we haven’t had to add much to the budget. Babies don’t need special food.

How did you introduce solid foods to your baby? Has anyone else tried baby led weaning?

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you buy through my link, I may receive compensation at no extra cost to you. For more information, see my disclosure page here.