Baby-led weaning (often also referred to as BLW) is a method of gradually weaning a baby from a milk diet onto solid foods. It allows a baby to control his or her solid food intake by self-feeding from the very beginning of the weaning process.

Contrary to the popular method of introducing solids to children by feeding them purees and rice cereals, baby led weaning, allows the child to decide when they are ready to chew, and swallow “real food”.

The basic idea is to offer breastfeeds as the main source of nutrition, and offer finger foods at “meal times” no spoons!

According to the world health organisation guidelines, this process shouldn’t start any earlier than 6 months – as  the baby’s digestive tract simply isn’t up to the task of breaking down anything other than breastmilk efficiently.

To initiate baby-led weaning with your child, when they’re old enough to sit up, and support their head, offer them some finger foods, ideally, lightly steamed vegies, such as carrot, or squishy fruit such as banana! If they like it, they’ll eat it – if not they won’t – and you can offer it again later down the track.

Quite often the first time something touches your childs throat, they’ll gag – THIS IS A NORMAL reflex, and babies are amazingly capable of NOT CHOKING! (Do a first Aid course – learn the differnce between the gagging reflex and choking)

Choking, is the restriction of air into the lungs. Gagging, is the process by which babies remove food from their throats – before choking, and believe me, they’re fantastic at it! (again, first aid course, and LEARN!!)

There are several anecdotal benefits of Baby Led Weaning, such as faster pincer grip control, inreased senseory and motor development, better control of the gag reflex…

There is a great guide for baby led weaning called Baby Book Of Weaning.