Somewhere around 5.5 months, our baby started lunging for the food on our plates. She’d watch us eat and start to salivate. Was she ready to try real food? We decided she was.
My husband and I were both spoon-fed baby food from jars. He was a picky eater; my mother recalls a period when I would only eat white foods and grapefruit. Surely, we thought, we could find a different — and more delicious — way to feed our child. And that’s how we discovered baby-led weaning.
For the uninitiated: baby-led weaning is a method of introducing solid foods where you give your child finger foods in lieu of purees. The idea is that children learn to appreciate flavor and eat what the rest of the family is eating. We liked the approach, but the reality of adapting our usual menu to a baby seemed a bit overwhelming. On the advice of our pediatrician, we downloaded the Solid Starts app: a food-by-food guide to preparing meals for a young eater. The app suggested we start by giving the baby steamed broccoli coated in olive oil and hemp seeds. It seemed as good a place as any to begin. So I boiled a pot of water and agonized over how big to cut the florets. We put the baby in her highchair and handed her a piece of broccoli. She flung it around wildly. It landed, with a thunk, on the floor.
What they don’t tell you about baby-led weaning is that it’s an absolute mess. Grasping food and bringing it successfully to your mouth takes practice. Our baby managed to get broccoli in her hair, under her neck folds, and embedded in her armpits. She left a trail of broccoli on her high chair, the floor and the changing table. I wasn’t sure she’d even managed to eat anything, but two days later, I had proof that she did: little beads of broccoli dotted her diaper.
Since then, our baby has tried a lot of different foods: roasted red pepper. Chicken. Carrots. Sweet potato. Blueberry. Egg. Toast. Yogurt. Almond butter. She is crazy about daal and homemade pizza. She turned up her nose at banana. We’ve learned how to cut her big pieces of food she can safely handle. While I occasionally look up certain foods on the Solid Starts app, I don’t rely on it like I did in the beginning. I’m learning to trust that we can share most of the foods we enjoy with our baby – and she can learn to love them too.
Oh, and if you have a dog? Please bring it by to visit after mealtimes. We could use a little help with the clean up.
— Sarah Harris is the Addison Independent’s Digital & Calendar Editor.