Our Baby Led Weaning Journey

Your baby is just 6.5 months. You should not make him eat solid food, give him semi-solid or mashed food. Solid foods can cause choking. He is too small to learn how to chew and eat food. These are some of the pieces of advice I had to hear from people when I started BABY-LED WEANING with my son. 

Here in this blog, I will share how I started this baby-led weaning journey with my son. My son is going to be 10 months on 13th June, and he already eats like a pro. I do not feed him from my hand. We have our breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. He has his small chair with a table, he sits on it, and we sit with him on the floor and enjoy our meals. Moreover, the baby also learns how to chew. Surprised? 

When my family members, friends see him eating, they just can’t believe it. I feel proud that my husband and I did a good job.

What is BABY-LED WEANING?

In simple words, It’s a journey in which a baby learns to eat by himself/herself slowly and steadily. Baby picks up the food from the table and eats it instead of making him spoon feed. Babies get to learn at a very early age to stop eating when they are full.  INTERESTING???

Pre-conditions:- 

• Baby has completed 6 months
• Baby can sit on a chair comfortably and can handle his/her neck.

There are rules when you start baby-led weaning:-

RULES:-

1. Not to interfere when baby is eating
2. Let him learn to pick up food 
3. If the baby has stopped eating, don’t try to spoon-feed him. Later on, a mother can feed a baby. 
4. No force-feeding 
5. Ready for the mess
6. Have Patience. Each baby is different.

MY SON’S BABY-LED WEANING JOURNEY

I came across baby-led weaning when my son was 6.5 months old. I thought of giving it a try. For me, it was also unbelievable that a 6.5 months baby could eat by himself. But, when I saw videos of how babies are eating by themselves, it really inspired me.

I was fearful, anxious but also excited. I started giving him soft finger foods of different textures- boiled carrot, potato, sweet potato, capsicum stir-fried in ghee or butter, and banana. In the beginning, he did not know what to do with the food on his table. I used to show him how to pick the food, keep it in his mouth, and how to chew. He used to copy and eat it. In the beginning, he swallowed some, but I was happy with the progress. 

After 3-4 days, I did not have to show him how to eat. He was eating by himself. I continued this for 15 days. Later, I started to give him small dar rice balls. When he used to hold it, it used to break. I used to put another rice ball, and again it used to break, but I did not give up. My backup of finger foods used to be ready, so I used to give that.

After trying for 3-4 days, he did it. He knew how to pick up the soft things.  In this process, he was also learning how to chew with his gums. Babies’ gums are very hard. If you put your finger between their gums, it will hurt a lot. These gums help babies to chew.

And the process continued; I trained him to hold the food with different kinds of texture-idli, pancakes, mango, upma balls, and many others. 

It is a beautiful process. Now my family calls me just to see him eating. He is now in the habit of not talking and playing while eating. 

After 8 months, I observed that he was ready to eat what we eat minus salt and chilly. Now he eats what we eat. I do not cook different meals for him.

If I have poha, he will also have poha. If I am paratha, he will also have paratha. His plate looks the same as ours. The benefit of doing this is that my son eats palak, methi, beetroot, raw papaya, bottle gourd( lauki), Bitter gourd ( karela). He has now become an expert in observing how we eat. He will not take a single bite extra if his tummy is full. He will leave the food on the table.

As a working mom, It is a blessing. We 3 eat together. No separate time to feed him. 

Here is the beautiful article which tells how to move your little ones from milk to solids

Mommies, If you would like to know more about baby-led weaning, do ping me on my Instagram- @anshimakolatkar

Anshima Kolatkar is a passionate content writer and heads her firm "Writingwalkthrough". She pursued engineering in Electronics and telecom and PGDMA in embedded systems. In the year 2017, she quit her job to follow her passion of being a content writer. She is now a successful mompreneur. As a mom in working, she wants to share her journey into parenthood. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

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