Why Choose Baby Led Weaning?

In this post learn why I decided to choose baby led weaning when starting solids with my baby. Then, you can hear from other mamas as well. 

Welcome to the first question in this baby led weaning series, why choose baby led weaning?

First, I will give you a little background about my baby led weaning experience and why I decided to choose baby led weaning with my son.

Then, I will leave the responses to a few other mamas who did baby led weaning with their babies!

Did you do baby led weaning? If so, let us know your experience in the comments below!

My experience with baby led weaning

My 21-month-old son is a great eater…

I kid you not; he prefers vegetables and fruit over fried food and sweets any day.

For the most part, I credit baby led weaning for Lennox being such a fantastic eater.

As soon as he was showing signs of readiness at six months, he got to play around with all foods and textures and learn that food comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and textures. Now if I would have blended all of those foods into purees, Lennox would have never been able to differentiate the blended foods.

I hypothesize…

that Lennox would have preferred the consistency of purees and would have been more hesitant to try real food if we would have done traditional weaning.

Baby Led Weaning allowed Lennox to explore solid foods types. However, I credit Carlos (DH) and myself for always diversifying his palate.

The older Lennox got, and the more confident we felt in his eating abilities, there was no limit on what we fed him, except foods that were choking hazards and foods not recommended for babies under 1, for example, honey. Go to my introductory post to see which foods are big NO NOs and post chocking hazards.

I remember when Lennox was nine-months-old…

I took him to where Carlos and I work, Seasons 52, and our coworkers were astonished that Lennox was inhaling Caramelized Sea Scallops. 

At that moment, I was a very proud mama.

One of my biggest goals as a first-time mama was to have a non-picky child.

Working in the restaurant industry was one of my biggest motivations because more often than not, I see families come into our workplace, and I see the parents get nervous because it is not that kid-oriented. There are four items on the kid’s menu, none of which are breaded or fried. Sometimes we go out of our way to go to a near restaurant and provide chicken nuggets and French fries for unhappy children.

One thing that baffles me the most is when the parent orders their kids pasta which is around $5.00, and they don’t want anything but butter on it. Listen, I am NOT shaming whatsoever; I simply cannot imagine paying $5.00 for a little bowl of buttered pasta when a whole box of pasta at the grocery store costs $2.00>. Consider me frugal, but at that point, I would just bring my own buttered pasta in.

To finally answer the question…

I decided to do BLW because I didn’t want a picky eater. I also wanted a healthy, well-rounded eater. Thanks to BLW I have just that, and thanks to all the Mamas in my June 2017 mama group who recommended BLW to me. If it weren’t for their recommendations, I would have had no idea about it. I hope other mamas read this post and feel encouraged to give BLW a try, but don’t forget to read my BLW introductory post to know how to do it correctly. You can find that here!

Let’s hear from these mamas:

More baby led weaning posts:

• Baby Led Weaning Must Have Products
• Baby Led Weaning First Food Ideas
• What to Know About Purees and Baby Led Weaning

Why Did You Decide to do Baby Led Weaning?

Kassandra at Adelaideandi

I thought it was the most appropriate way of feeding my daughter – getting her used to real food from the start instead of having to teach her to eat purées and then chunky food and then whole foods 

Taylor at Mindful.mom_ents 

It made the most sense to me. Food before one is just for fun, so they should be learning rather than having bland food crammed down their throats. Babies learn texture and flavor, and how to make chewing motions. Babies who have food blended up and fed to them are more likely to choke once other food is introduced since they are used to just swallowing everything.

Jessica at HeyMamaJess

My son showed a huge interest in table food.

Emily at This Crazy Maze