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Starting solids: Baby Led Weaning (BLW) or the traditional Purees?

When Nox was reaching the 5 month mark, it was an exciting time as i knew he could start solids soon around 6 months. Finally this kid can eat more than my breastmilk! Haha. I figured I would have to do the 'usual' thing of making purees and spoon feed him until he can feed himself. I was even gifted a hand blender for making purees from a family member to do this!

Spoon-fed weaning is something most of us have been exposed to (i'm sure everyone knows how you pretend that the spoon is a plane flying around wanting to land in the baby's mouth. haha). Basically the food is mashed or pureed and as the baby gets older, the puree gets chunkier and chunkier until they eat 'regular' food. For those in a time crunch there are also ready-made jars of purees sold in supermarkets.

Then a friend of mine told me about how she does the Baby-Led Weaning (BLW) method with her kids. Here in the Netherlands they call it the Rapley methode which is basically after Gil Rapley who 'came up' with this whole BLW thing.

Intrigued, i went online to research about this whole BLW business and i was quickly sold!!! I wanted Lennox to be a BLW kid! From my understanding, this is what BLW is:
  • babies are ready for solids when they are able to sit upright by themselves and bring an object from to their mouths using their hands
  • babies feed themselves from the beginning
  • babies will decide for themselves how much they want to eat and will eat at their own pace
  • baby joins the family during mealtimes which promotes good eating habits
  • baby is exposed to different food textures and tastes from the beginning!

Lennox holding and eating his first banana.
Helpful to keep the skin on as a sort of 'handle' for slippery fruits!


The main sticking point of BLW is the question, "won't the baby choke??" This was also something i was worried about but I learnt there is a big difference between gagging and choking. Gagging is normal and cool and totally expected to happen. Choking, on the other hand, is not. See the difference here.

BLW can also be time consuming and can get messy. Real messy. Don't be surprised to find pieces of slippery banana or avocado in their hair and all around the floor ;)

As with any issue, there are always the extremes. There are people in the die-hard strict BLW camp, who do not spoon feed at all, while there are spoon feeders who scoff at the BLW method. I firmly believe there is no right or wrong way to feed your baby - as long as s/he's growing and happy, that's the most important!

When Lennox started BLW, i was leaning towards a more strict-BLW method. I really enjoyed watching him feed himself. But a part of me also wondered if he was eating enough and I also enjoyed spoon feeding Lennox sometimes, especially when we are short on time and i don't want him to make a big mess! Haha. And now at 11 months old, I'm happy to say that we practice BLW about 80% of the time.

Meal times have been pretty easy so far, he sits happily in his high chair with us while we eat together, and most of the time he eats the same food as us (just without added salt and sugar). I will document the start of our BLW journey in a separate post!

In no way is this an exhaustive post about BLW. There are tons of resources online and books available and what really helped me are the meal examples on instagram especially if you use the hashtag #blw or #blwideas. Here are some sites i used to read about BLW:

Starting solids is an exciting time, especially for first time moms! I'm glad to have known about different ways to introduce it and hopefully this post also triggers interest in new moms! :)



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