Baby led win

You might remember that we had a lot of trouble getting Carina to eat enough early on. She started out chunky but when I first returned to work back in May of 2011, she went on a bottle strike, thinned out, and never recovered. She still probably doesn't eat as much as she should.

I'm sure you can imagine that we want to do our best to avoid a food battle with Aurelia, so we were a little disheartened when we gave her her first bite -- roasted sweet potato puree -- and she gagged and drooled and spit it all out. She either didn't like it, or didn't appreciate being spoon fed...or both.

So, we tried something else. Many of my friends have been successful with baby led weaning so I did a little reading and figured it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. Baby Led Weaning simply means letting your child feed him/herself from the beginning. No spoon-feeding purees or rice cereal. "Weaning" in this sense doesn't mean stopping breastfeeding, it is referring to the British word which means "adding complementary foods". You give baby small pieces of food and let them have at it. We were a little nervous at first that she would choke, but she's done unbelievably well.

Aurelia at just over 7 Months is already eating better, and more foods, than Carina was at 1. She's had toast, sweet potato, avocado, rigatoni, pastina (re: last two, we're Italian, so they're two separate categories), cucumber, banana, applesauce, apples, yogurt (which she feeds herself), cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese, American cheese (can you tell we like cheese?), pancakes, mango, hot dog (the fancy nitrate-free kind), and puffs. And I just might have let her try her first {very tiny} taste of cupcake today ;)

Sure, it's messy, but she loves feeding herself and it let's us eat our own meals while she eats hers. I wish we had gone this route with Carina. No stress. No fuss. Just happy well-fed baby.

Since returning to work, she has rebelled against the bottle just like Carina did, but after a suggestion from a reader (thanks!) we tried sippy cups and it's actually working pretty well! I guess we'll just skip the bottles altogether. And with how great of an eater she is? I'm not worried at all :)

Has anyone else tried baby led weaning? How did it go for you?