Starting Baby Led Weaning

Ever since I was pregnant I knew that when it came time for weaning I wanted to go down the baby led weaning (BLW) route. I had seen Instagram accounts filled with cute star shaped vegetables, with wholemeal pasta and home made sauces, all presented  on cute Bamboobamboo plates. It looked fun, healthy and super easy!

But when we finally reached 6 months (Or well 1 week before) and started weaning, I soon realised it looks nothing like those fancy super mum insta accounts! It may resemble something similar at some point… but certainly not at the start.

Me and Ricky aren’t great eaters, especially Ricky. He doesn’t eat any veg, fruit, salad or pasta, as well as many other things. We both agreed we didn’t want Zac to end up like that, we wanted him to be adventurous and enjoy healthy foods. So after some research we decided to take, the single veg only approach to begin with. The title is pretty self explanatory, you start with only savoury vegetables, and you introduce one flavour at a time. The idea is that they get used to the savoury taste first before any sweet fruits.  By introducing one vegetable at a time, this allows you to monitor for any allergies.

Weaning Day 1

We decided to start with long stem broccoli as we thought this was really savory, packed full of goodness and easy to hold. So I steamed his broccoli, put it in his cute Bamboobamboo bowl and placed it in front of him in his highchair. Zac puts literally EVERYTHING in his mouth, so I thought this will be easy. He will pick up the broccoli and just put it straight in his mouth, OK he may not eat it but he will get a taste. How wrong was I? Apparently the only thing in the whole world that Zac will not put in his mouth is broccoli – typical aye! He held it in disgust, flapped it around a bit and then just dropped it. The bamboobamboo bowl was also quickly abandoned and the broccoli was just tipped on the tray in front of him. Think we will save our pretty bowl for when he is actually eating the food! Tip 1- Make sure the veg is completely dry. Zac was not impressed when he shook the broccoli and flicked water in his face. 

We continued with the broccoli for a few days, I tried encouraging him to put it in his mouth, but anytime it went near his face he would close his eye’s, pull strange faces and cry. So we decided to move onto carrot and see if that was any better!

Weaning Day 3

So day 3 we started with carrot, he picked this up much more than the broccoli and didn’t seem as disgusted by the smell. However he still refused to put it in his mouth. I cut tiny bits of the carrot off and put it in his mouth (Ok I know this isn’t ‘perfect’ BLW), he was fine with this and chewed and swallowed the carrot (Not that any chewing was required).

By this point I was really struggling to see how this was going to work, it felt like Zac would never eat a proper meal. So I gave in and bought a couple of the single veg Ella’s Kitchen pouches. I put a little bit on a spoon and he happily chewed the spoon, sucking the puree off – he even took the spoon and put it in his mouth himself. I then put some of the carrot puree onto his carrot batons – I know it sounds silly. But my thinking was if he likes the flavour of the pureed carrot, it may help him to understand that this is what the carrot batons taste like. And it worked! Sort of… he still wouldn’t put the carrot in his mouth himself, but he let me hold the carrot in his mouth while he sucked the puree off. This was progress at least !

Weaning Day 6

This is when I noticed the biggest improvement. Zac barely ever had any of the puree, probably not even half a pouch over the 3 days, but it really did help! Zac was now picking the carrot up himself, putting it in mouth and chewing bits off! Ok he didn’t really swallow hardly any, the bits he was chewing off were quite big and he would eventually spit them back out. But he was definitely getting the hang of it, and he must have eaten some as there was evidence of the carrot in his nappy!

Week 1 of Weaning

So we are now at the end of week 1 and I can finally see this leading to Zac eventually eating meals. I don’t think it will be any time soon but that’s ok as like they say – food before 1 is just for fun.

So now at the end of week 1 we have tried, broccoli, carrot and peas. Carrot is still the firm favourite, although we did manage to eat a tiny bit of broccoli the other day – winning!

My advice for starting baby led weaning?

• Don’t give up & keep persevering
• Protect their cloths – did you know carrot stains?!
  • We found Dolly & Beau baprons the best things to use, and bonus: they come in some gorgeous designs! (ZAC10 will get you 10% off)
  • Make sure you remember to roll up their sleeves.
  • Put the Bib/bapron over the high chair straps to protect them – they aren’t easy to clean!
• Eat with them, we found it encouraged Zac to eat if he could see us doing the same.
• Have fun and enjoy it! They are still getting all their nutrients from their milk, this is just exploring and practicing for now.

I hope you found this post helpful, if you did I would love to hear your thoughts, so comment down below! You can also subscribe to our blog so you are notified when new posts are published >>>

Bye for now,

Dolly & Beau ‘Bapron’ – https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/DollyandBeau

Bamboobamboo bowl: https://www.bamboobamboo.co/

High chair: Joie Multiply: https://www.preciouslittleone.com/product-information/62/58467/joie-multiply-highchair-petite-city/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw_vfcBRDJARIsAJafEnFCyTQggDu5pDcVYYgnuBzuYQFchkd2gHwVjYTVwnhayVeJiLQnEgoaAjTAEALw_wcB