AAAVoCAADOO!!

Next up, since our friends had started with (and had success with) Avocado, we figured it should go better.  A softer, smushier food naturally, it seemed like it might be less of a choking hazard.

While it was certainly a bit of a chase to hold onto the slippery fruit as time went on, she seemed to enjoy it and go back for more.  There were a few small gags when she got chunks in her mouth, as she tried to figure out what to do with it, but overall the 3 days of Avocado were pretty successful.

Recommendation
Avocado: Cut into ~1inch slices that baby can grab.  Have 2-3 slices for her to play with.  Make sure it is very ripe and smushy.  The second avocado we used wasnt quite as ripe and was harder for her to grab and mash.  While more messy, the more perfectly ripe, the better!

First up - Carrots!

So our little girl seemed to be ready a bit early for food... she was reaching for our food and enamored with watching us eat, so we figured we'd give it a shot a little early.  Try as I might, I couldnt find any definitive "here is the first food you should give your kid for BLW, and here is HOW to cook it".  So we took a guess!!

We decided to start with carrots.  I grabbed some baby carrots and steamed them for probably close to 20 minutes.  They were somewhat soft but had some texture.  I was a little nervous... what would her little gums do with them??  No matter what I did, they didnt seem soft enough, but from what I read, supposedly they needed to be able to pick them up with their hands, so they couldnt be too soft right?

We sat her down at her highchair, grandparents ready to film the whole thing, and we just put the steamed baby carrot in front of her.  She was curious, and put it straight to her mouth.  At first she didnt seem to know what to do with it.  She finally bit off a small chunk and it ended up coming out in a huge thing of drool.  Lots more drool, and then she got off a big chunk and started coughing.  From everything I read, they told us to expect gagging.  I didnt panic yet, she seemed like she was going to get it out... welllllll she got it out... and the entire contents of her stomach came up with it!! Yuck!  We cleaned her up, and put the tray back with a carrot I had somewhat mashed with a fork.  Not much more happened.

The next two trials of carrot, I was nervous, so I just gave her raw carrot sticks, knowing she couldn't actually get any of that down, she enjoyed chomping on the carrot, but didn't get anything from it... choking avoided, but no nutrition or negative nutrition!!

I think if I were to do carrot again I would either get it super steamed and mushy, or just give it to her pureed... or maybe it was mostly because it was her first food...

Welcome!

So a few weeks before our little girl turned 6 months old, I started looking in detail into what we wanted to do for starting solids.  A few of our friends had done the whole "Baby Led Weaning" (BLW) thing and seemed to have a lot of success with it.

We decided to give it a shot.  We love food, and it was important that we could share it with our daughter, so why not give her every chance at liking lots of different foods??  I decided that we should probably combine the whole BLW thing with some purees... mostly for fun, but this was also reinforced when our pediatrician wasn't a huge fan of the BLW thing, and said she needed to start getting some nutrition from solids.  True BLW purists go by the "food is for fun until one" concept... but Im inclined to go with our pediatrician, especially as I am weaning her off of breastfeeding at 6-7months (mostly due to low supply), so rather than her getting all of her nutrition from processed formula powder, why not get it from healthy foods?

Along the way we found out that there were just some very simple things that no one tells you, but every parent trying it wants to know, so I figured it was worth sharing!

Here is our little eater trying out her new highchair on July 14th!