Baby Led Chewing
by Nov 27th, 2010 // Baby Feeding
Baby Led Chewing
Baby Led Carrots from Cooking With My Kid on Vimeo.
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I’ve been trying a new feeding technique called Baby Led Weaning. Actually, it’s not really new it’s likely as old as man, but it’s not something I did with my first kid. As a quick refresher, Baby Led Weaning encourages babies to explore foods on their own. By presenting the baby with large chunks she can gnaw on the baby is able to feed herself and can skip purees all together. When we last left off, I had experimented with this notion by giving the baby blanched broccoli. At 6 months she gnawed on it like a pro. Recently we moved on to carrots and as the book suggests, we cut the carrots into sticks and then cooked them al dente. The carrot sticks were a big hit – she’s actually moved on from gnawing to chewing. I’m still kind of in shock about how natural this feels. If you can stomach my weird-o talking-cute-to-a-baby voice, take a look at how easy she makes it look after just a few weeks of gnawing. I’m really starting to like this concept!
this is so interesting! i am going to have to check this book out. My son Asher is 20 months and he started eating 'people food' super early simply because we went by his cues and he was interested really early on and now I have baby Jude who is 4 months and im really interested in this concept! love your site btw- i check it out every single day and Jude just watched the carrot video with me and I caught him chekin out your little cutie. we like in orange county so its not to far, we could make it work… a long distance baby relationship, i hear those always go really well
Looove baby-led weaning! We did a hybrid with my now-4yo, mostly because his ped was concerned he wasn't gaining fast enough so he didn't want us to do this exclusively–which I realize in retrospect made no sense since babies this young aren't supposed to be gaining weight from food anyway. I really wish we'd been able to do it 100%.
We did BLW and it boggles my mind that people would a) do anything else and b) waste so much time and money on purees! Glad you are enjoying it!!