Finger foods first!

I first heard of Baby-Led Weaning (BLW) 2 years ago, on a forum that I frequent. At first, i thought it sounded a little out there, and continued to feed our first son Josh by spoon, struggling as he got older to get him to swallow lumps without gagging, and generally just having a hard time getting him to eat. It was a lot of work making the purees, cleaning up the mess made in the kitchen, and then being disappointed when he didn't want to eat the resulting sludge! Now that i think back, who can blame him? I don't think I would want to eat a funny coloured combination of meat, vegetables and sauce! 

After having our second son Ethan, I decided to do a bit more research into BLW. I started by reading blogs and websites on the subject, and was quite amazed by what I was reading, so I ordered the book Baby-Led Weaning by Gill Rapley and Tracey Murkett. It arrived in the post just after Christmas, and as I started to read it, I was sitting there nodding my head agreeing with almost everything it said! 

Ethan was almost 5.5 months old, and I thought he was showing some of the signs mentioned in the book that signal readiness to begin solids. So that night, I prepared some extra pieces of broccoli with extra long stalks just for him! I sat him in his high chair, tray on, and showed him his first piece of broccoli! He straight away took it out of my hand and put it straight to his mouth and licked it. The look of shock on his face was priceless! Still getting the hang of holding onto things for a length of time, he did keep dropping it, but i picked it up and he took it back countless times, each time putting it back to his mouth. Pretty soon a few bits started to disintegrate into his mouth. I am not sure that he swallowed anything that first day but he did seem to have fun! We let him continue to play with the broccoli until he showed signs of getting frustrated.

So that was Ethan's first attempt at solids! It seemed to be a success - he was managing to hold it for a little while and getting it to his mouth, having a lick and experimenting with this strange green mini tree!  It was fantastic seeing his expressions while he was doing it, and the best thing was that he was sharing our meal with us!