Our Adventures in Baby Led Weaning

We started our BLW  journey when Kaiden was just 5 1/2 months old!  So far, we are loving it!! The first food he had was toast and it was quite messy! haha! Actually...doing blw, all you have are messes!!! But I would definitely recommend it!
What is baby led weaning?! It's where you give your child solid food and skip the purees!  Why?  Because food before 1 is just for fun!!!  He is still taking momma's milk every 3 hours, so he is getting all of the nutrients he needs from that.  We started off with just small amounts and just one "meal" per day.  He eats what we eat!  So if we are having sausage and eggs for breakfast, guess what he's having?! Sausage and eggs ;)  It can be frightening to start at first because you think...well what if he chokes?!  That's exactly why you need to wait until your baby is 6 months before introducing baby led weaning!  They have a better developed gag reflex at 6 months, so I urge you to wait until then before starting.  We make sure all of his food are easy to handle.  His veggies are in thick strips, so is his toast and pretty much everything else...except for meats.  We chop meat up small for him :)  It's important to not intervene when they are gagging, this just makes that reflex even better!! The only time you want to help them is if there is choking.  We have yet to experience any choking here!!

Here he is exploring :)

Then he got his two bottom teeth so we decided to get more adventurous!! 

Eating waffles!!

Mmmm! Baked apples & sausage!!!

Cornbread & ground bologna sandwich...clearly you can tell this was a massive mess! Ha!

Bananas & graham crackers

Scrambled eggs, graham crackers & 2 spoonfuls of applesauce 

Pasta & sweet potato fries!! 

French toast & yogurt melts

Meatloaf & roasted carrots

It's never ending!! And so much fun!  Now that we are closer to 7 months, he is getting 3 meals a day and also offered water with those meals.  Our main goal is to get him excited about food and it's working :)