Baby-Led-Weaning

Baby-Lead-Weaning is a concept that suggest babies (from 6 months onwards) should be allowed to feed themselves. You therefore provide them with appropriate food selections - usually whatever it is you are having for breakfast, lunch or dinner- cut into finger portions and let them decide for themselves what they want to eat and how much.

It is a scary concept, as I was scared Little Em might choke but babies have a natural gag-reflex that prevents the food from reaching too far back. This reflex apparently slowly recedes to the back of the throat as they grow older, so it is better to start early. Babies following this method also learn to chew their food first then later learn to swallow (preventing chocking as well) whereas spoon-fed babies learn to swallow first then chew. Little Em was brought up as spoon-fed up to about 7 or 8 months and I moved her over to a partial spoon-fed and partial baby-led method. So far it has been going great. Lunch is spoon-fed at school. Snacks are these lunch boxes and dinner is finger-foods.

I always include yoghurt for calcium, protein and diary. I added toddler sausages (no skin, no salt etc) and some leftovers from dinner: steak slice, veggies and kiwi fruit. I also added some prune puree for fibre.