In the spirit of keeping things simple, I’ve put together a few new pages on Baby Led Weaning. Whilst this is by no means an exhaustative coverage of all things baby-led weaning, it serves as a simple guide to getting you and your little one started with real food.

When taking a baby led approach to starting solids, most caregivers want to know the answers to the following questions:

When do I start offering my baby food?

How exactly do I get started?

Which foods are appropriate to offer my baby?

The following pages should help you get started.

When to start

How to start

Which foods?

How did you hear about Baby Led Weaning? What influenced your decision to take this approach? Feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

photo credit: Joanna8555

Eggs are one of nature’s superfoods. They are an excellent source of protein and the egg yolks in particular are a rich source of Vitamins A, D, E, B5, B12, folate, riboflavin, choline, selenium and phosphorus, as well as being a useful source of zinc and iron. The great thing about eggs is they are so versatile to use. From boiling, to poaching, scrambling to using in a range of baking recipes, eggs are the foundation of many recipes and a mainstay in most kitchens.

I started Teddy on well cooked eggs at 8 months and, thankfully he has not shown any signs of allergy or intolerance. I’m relieved because I use eggs all the time when cooking and they make a highly nutritious contribution to a balanced diet. So why have I only used egg yolks in this recipe? It is really for no other reason than I wanted this bread to be extra eggy!

Ingredients

2 egg yolks
3 tablespoons milk (can use rice or soy milk)
Pinch of cinnamon
2 slices of bread

Preparation

1. Place egg yolks in a bowl with the milk and cinnamon and whisk to combine.
2. Soak bread in egg mixture, turning to ensure bread is evenly coated.
3. Over a medium heat, melt butter in fry pan.
4. Once pan is heated, place bread in fry pan and cook for 2-3 minutes each side until golden brown and cooked through.
5. Remove from pan and cool before slicing and offering to your little one.

Serves 2

Teddy loves to eat fusilli pasta. Fusilli is the perfect shape for him to pick up and munch on and he finds it much easier to hold than thin pieces of spaghetti. Pasta is also the perfect vehicle for meat based pasta sauces, is popular with young children and makes for a perfect family meal.

I love to make this pasta sauce served with penne and a grating of Parmesan cheese for my husband and I and felt it would be perfect for our son. At the end of the cooking time, this sauce is so lovely and smooth and the ground beef so tender that it is perfect for little ones starting out with red meat for the first time.

This beef ragu is also a good source of Vitamins A, C, B3 and B6, iron, protein and zinc, all important for growing bodies. It is also perfect for freezing in baby size portions – or in adult size portions – and defrosted for use when a quick meal is necessary.

Ingredients

1/2 an onion, finely diced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
250 grams lean beef mince
2 tins of crushed tomatoes
1 bay leaf

Preparation

1. Over a low to medium heat, heat oil and gently saute onion and garlic for around 8 minutes or until onion is soft but not brown.
2. Add beef, tomatoes and bay leaf to pan and stir to combine.
3. Bring sauce to the boil before lowering heat to a simmer.
4. With the lid on the pan, simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
5. Remove bay leaf from sauce before serving with your favourite cooked pasta (250 grams dry weight) – we usually choose fusilli!

Serves 4 adults or lots of babies.

For those following Baby Led Weaning, deciding how to offer meat to our babies can be a difficult one. I’ve been playing with the idea of ground meat (savoury mince on a preloaded spoon perhaps?), a tender beef stew or a slow cooked leg of lamb. I ended up deciding to use ground beef to make mini burgers as I felt that a ground meat would be easier for Teddy to physically handle and in the form of a burger, easier for him to hold and self-feed.

In our house, Teddy still hasn’t got any teeth yet. He’s 8 months old now and has thus far has been happy munching his way through plenty of different fruits and vegetables, breads, cereals and teething biscuits. So far, these foods have provided him more than enough learning opportunities and have kept him busy practicing his developing mouth skills. Now that he is a bit bigger, I thought it time to start him on the meat food group.

Meat, particularly red meat, is an important consideration when starting solids as it provides a highly absorbable form of iron and is also an important source of zinc and Vitamin B12.

Ingredients

450 grams lean beef mince
1 carrot
100 grams spinach leaves
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon tomato paste

Preparation

1. Steam spinach either in the microwave with a little water or in a steamer for 5 minutes. When spinach is cool enough to handle, squeeze spinach of excess water and blend in a food processor until smooth. Place in a mixing bowl.
2. Place carrot in same food processor and whizz until finely chopped. Place in bowl with spinach.
3. Add mince to spinach and carrots and add egg, breadcrumbs, garlic powder and tomato paste.
4. Mix ingredients thoroughly and form into ‘burgers’ using 2-3 tablespoons of mince mixture for each burger.
5. Cook burgers on a lighly oiled grill pan (or fry pan) over medium to high heat for 5-6 minutes each side or until cooked through.
6. Cool before offering as a finger food for baby (or toddler).

Makes 6 adult size burgers and 6 baby size burgers (or lots of mini burgers)

A word about eggs

I have used one egg in this recipe as it helps to bind the burgers together so they don’t fall apart when cooking. Eggs however, are one of the more common foods that can cause allergies in babies and children. Previous recommendations have stated that it was fine to introduce babies to well cooked egg yolks from 6 months of age but to leave the introduction of egg whites until after 12 months. The most recent recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (2008) however are that “there is no evidence for delaying introduction of any foods beyond this period [4-6 months], including those considered highly allergenic”.

So what does this mean? When deciding to introduce eggs to your little one for the first time you need to talk to your child’s doctor, and make an informed decision about when you feel comfortable adding eggs to your baby’s diet. Given my husband and I do not have a strong family history of allergy and given our boy is now a little bit older (8 months) we felt it was time to start him on a little bit of well cooked egg. We did follow the 3 day rule of waiting 3 days after giving him egg for the first time before adding anything new to his diet so we could monitor him for signs of a reaction.

Reference:

Greer FR, Sicherer SH, Burks W et al. Effects of Early Nutritional Interventions on the Development of Atopic Disease in Infants and Children: The Role of Maternal Dietary Restriction, Breastfeeding, Timing of Introduction of Complementary Foods, and Hydrolyzed Formulas. Pediatrics. 2008;121(1):183-191.

I’m becoming a bit more adventurous in the kitchen now that Teddy is getting a bit older and is becoming even more efficient at finger feeding. He’s been happy to munch on lightly steamed slices of apple for a while now so I thought it might be time to try something different and bake the apples instead.

I offered Teddy a half a baked apple (sliced into wedges) for breakfast this morning and they went down a treat! I did leave the skin on the apple and he managed to eat the soft flesh of the apple, and much to my surprise,  spat the skin out. I stuffed these apples with dried fruit prior to baking them (baking helped to soften up the dried fruit) and also offered these to Teddy. He did manage to eat one prune before deciding that squashing the rest of his dried fruit into the highchair tray was much more fun.

Ingredients

2 medium size apples (skin left on)
1/4 cup diced dried fruit (I used prunes and raisins)
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup water

Preparation

1. Wash apples thoroughly with water then dry. Using a sharp knife (or an apple corer) remove the core of the apple, and if necessary, cut a bit of the apple way to increase the size of the apple hole. Prick the skin of the apples with a fork (this helps to stop the apple from splitting when baking).
2. In a bowl, combine dried fruit, sugar and cinnamon and mix well.
3. Place apples in a roasting tray and fill the hole of each apple with some of the dried fruit mixture.
4. Pour water into tray and place in a preheated 180C oven for 30 to 35 minutes, basting apples with water at 15 minute intervals and again at the end of the cooking time.
5. Leave apples to cool before slicing and serving with the dried fruit from the centre of the apples.

Tip

You can slice and serve the baked apples either with the skin or without the skin (depending on how well your baby can chew) as a finger food for baby. These apples also make a healthy dessert for grown ups too, served with a dollop of plain yogurt.

Teddy eating his fusili pasta

Eating this meal has to be, hands down, one of our best moments with Baby Led Weaning thus far. I feel like this meal has been the real ‘click’ moment so many other parents doing baby-led weaning often talk about. The moment when it all comes together and your baby really chows down on a real meal. This was our ‘click’ moment.

My in-laws are in Hong Kong at the moment visiting our boy (let’s call him Teddy from now on). On their first day in Hong Kong I decided to make pasta for dinner as I was keen to give Teddy – who is now 7.5 months old – a bit of pasta and see what he would do with it. Up until this point, we had mainly been offering Teddy fruit, vegetables, a bit of toast and rice crackers, all of which he had been happy to munch on and get quite a bit down (remember the peaches?).

We sit down to eat our pasta and my husband offers Teddy a few pieces of fusili on his highchair tray. He looks at it, grabs it with his little hands and shoves it into his mouth so quickly and so accurately that my in-laws were left sitting there, captivated. Teddy continues to eat his pasta, one fusili at a time, until his tray is empty. My in-laws sat there, through the whole meal, absolutely delighted at the sight of our boy, sitting up at the table, eating pasta with his family.

For my husband and I, this really was the defining moment in our Baby Led Weaning journey. We couldn’t have asked for a better family meal and were so enthralled watching our son sit up at the family table, quietly eating his pasta and showing his grandparents what a Baby Led Weaning baby can really do!

Here’s my recipe.

Ingredients

1 red capsicum
1 yellow capsicum
1 zucchini
1 eggplant
1 clove of garlic, crushed OR 1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 tins of crushed tomatoes
1 packet fusili pasta
olive oil

Preparation

1. Wash capsicum, zucchini and eggplant. Cut capsicum in half and remove seeds. Cut the top off the zucchini and eggplant.
2. Dice vegetables into large cubes and place in a roasting tray with the garlic.
3. Drizzle vegetables with 1-2 tablespoons of oil and toss to coat vegetables evenly with oil.
4. Place roasting tray in preheated 180C oven for 25 minutes.
5. After 25 minutes, remove tray from oven, add crushed tomatoes to pan and stir until mixed.
6. Return tray to oven and cook for a further 20 minutes until sauce is bubbling and vegetables are tender.
7. Whilst vegetables are cooking, boil a pot of salted water and cook pasta according to packet instructions.
8. Drain pasta, add to sauce, stir and serve.

Serves 4 adults (or many meals for baby)

Tip

If your baby is confident with finger feeding you can offer him this dish as is, allowing your little one to eat both the pasta and the vegetables. Alternatively you can keep a little of the sauce aside and process in a blender until smooth, before stirring the pasta through so it is coated with the blended vegetable sauce.

This sauce also freezes well and can be reheated and tossed with pasta for a lunch or dinner meal for your baby.

How do you make pasta for your little one?

Letting your baby feed himself is a great way for your little one to have control over his eating, to work on his hand eye coordination, develop his chewing skills and develop independence, confidence and mastery over self-feeding. Letting your baby feed himself provides your little one with endless learning opportunities – he can learn about texture, shape, colour, smell and taste – whilst providing never ending opportunities for your baby to practice his developing mouth skills.

Whether you are just starting out with Baby Led Weaning, or decided that your older baby is ready to try finger foods, here are some ideas for finger foods that your little one can try.

Slices of lightly steamed:

• carrots;
• apple;
• pear;
• butternut squash;
• sweet potato;
• broccoli.

Slices of ripe fruit (skin removed, served raw) such as:

• watermelon;
• mango;
• avocado;
• peach;
• plum;
• banana.

Carbohydrate foods, such as:

• Rice cakes;
• Teething rusks;
• Toast soldiers;
• Pasta (fusili is a great finger food for babies trying pasta for the first time).

When offering your baby finger foods, remember to never leave your little one alone whilst eating and have your baby sitting upright in a secure highchair to minimise the risk of choking.

What do your little ones enjoy eating all by themselves?

I’ve been offering my boy batons of steamed sweet potato for a few weeks now and given that he is chowing down on most things I give him these days, I thought it was time to become a bit more adventurous with food preparation and try something other than steamed vegetables. Given that sweet potato is a root vegetable that roasts up easily, I thought these might go down well, especially how, when sweet potatoes are roasted, they come out of the oven so soft and sweet. These certainly were a hit with my boy!

Sweet potato is a great introductory food for baby. It is naturally sweet, easy to prepare and can be mashed, roasted, steamed or even baked. Sweet potato is an excellent source of Vitamin A in your baby’s diet. It also provides dietary fibre, Vitamin B6 and potassium – and when baked – is a very good source of Vitamin C and manganese.

Ingredients

1 sweet potato (or yams as they are called in America)
olive oil

Preparation

1. Peel skin off sweet potato and cut into baton shapes, roughly 2 – 3 inches long.
2. Place sweet potato on roasting tray and pour over 1-2 tablespoons of oil. Toss sweet potato with oil making sure all ‘fries’ are evenly coated.
3. Place roasting tray in preheated 180C oven and bake for 15 minutes.
4. After 15 minutes remove tray from oven, turn fries, return tray to oven and bake for a further 5 minutes.
5. Once cooked, remove from oven and cool before offering to baby.

I suspect my boy has been teething for a couple of weeks now, so to give him something to really chew on I’ve been offering him teething rusks. I was a bit surprised that store bought teething rusks had so many ingredients in them (like added salt) so I decided to have a go at making some at home instead.  I used half the ingredients of commercial varieties and substituted rice flour for white flour to make them gluten free (you can use regular flour if your little one doesn’t have any issues with wheat). They won’t come out as rock hard as commercial bought teething rusks, however my boy really enjoyed these and spent a fair amount of time quietly munching away on them.

Ingredients

1/2 cup brown rice cereal
1/2 cup rice flour
1 mashed banana
1.5 tablespoons olive oil

Preparation

1. Combine rice cereal and rice flour in a bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, mash banana with a fork until smooth. Add oil and mix until combined.
3. Add banana mixture to cereal mixture and mix until combined.
4. Add cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until mixture comes together in a dough.
5. Take the dough, a large spoonful at a time, and roll into ‘log’ shapes. Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
6. Place baking tray in preheated 220°C oven and bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

Makes 8-10 rusks. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for 2-3 days.

photo credit: Kate Ferrara

When people find out that I have adopted a baby led approach to introducing solids to my boy, the first thing I am often asked is, “what is baby led weaning?” I have met only a handful of mothers who know what Baby-Led Weaning is and an even smaller few who are actually trying it. The whole concept of Baby Led Weaning is still relatively new in the parenting world but one that is catching on quickly.

What is Baby Led Weaning?

Baby Led Weaning is simply a method of introducing solid foods to babies that involves the baby self feeding pieces of softened finger foods from the beginning of the weaning process. Parents who begin with Baby Led Weaning do not offer purees or mashed foods when introducing solids. They simply offer appropriately sized, softened pieces of foods that a baby is able to pick up, hold and guide into its mouth.

The important thing to know with Baby Led Weaning is that the introduction of solid foods doesn’t begin until the baby is around 6 months old. At this age, the baby should be able to sit with little or no support, has good head and neck control and can reach out, grab things and take them to his mouth fairly accurately.

Starting solids at around 6 months of age supports the current position by the World Health Organisation that infants be exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months of life with the introducing of complementary foods at 6 months of age (180 days). Starting at this time also ensures that the infant is more developmentally ready to handle solid foods.

The idea behind Baby Led Weaning

One of the main ideas behind Baby Led Weaning is that in the first year of life food is for fun. Food is something that babies are meant to pick up, play with, touch, explore, taste, eat and enjoy. Baby Led Weaning allows the baby to learn about food through exploration of texture, taste, colour and smell. When taking a baby-led approach to starting solids the baby remains in control every step of the way, choosing which foods and how much to eat.

Baby Led Weaning is designed to take advantage of a baby’s general development. In babies, the development of general motor skills typically happnens in a sequential fashion. The theory goes that a baby learns to pick up food and put it to his mouth before he can learn to chew it. The ability to get food to the back of the mouth (and therefore swallow) does not develop until the baby has learnt to chew.

Baby Led Weaning also takes into account the ability of the baby to self-regulate their food intake. The idea is that when offered a balanced diet the baby is able to select and consume the right amount of food to satisfy his hunger. This approach is not completely hands off however. Rather the parent’s role is to offer a variety of nutrient dense, developmentally appropriate foods to the infant in a safe and nurturing environment, whilst leaving the ‘eating’ up to the baby.

It is important to note that when following Baby Led Weaning it is important to continue to breastfeed your baby on demand, as the milk feeds remain the most important source of nutrition for your baby in the first 12 months.

Some tips for taking a Baby Led Approach to starting solids

Trust your baby and his ability to self regulate his food intake;

Give your baby plenty of opportunities to explore different foods. Let him pick up, play with and taste different foods;

Expect mess. Until your baby becomes efficient at eating, he will probably drop a fair amount of his food, scrunch it in his hands and smear it on his face;

Have your baby sit at the table and eat with you as often as possible. Make him feel included and let him learn by watching you eat;

Avoid pressure. Try not to worry that your baby may appear not to be eating very much. Don’t pressure your baby to take more food than he wants, avoid forcing him to eat and keep meal times pleasant and stress free;

Be vigilant. Don’t offer foods that could cause a choking hazard (think small, hard round pieces of food like whole grapes, nuts and hard round candy). Have your baby sit upright in a supportive chair so he can clear his own throat if any foods cause gagging;

Offer foods that are easy to pick up and mash between the jaws. Cut foods into large chunks or baton shapes roughly 2-3 inches long. Lightly steam fruit and vegetables so they are easier to handle;

When starting out, always offer your baby a milk feed before offering food;

Relax, enjoy the process and have fun with food. Let your baby enjoy food for the pleasure that it is.

Source: Rapley G, Murkett, T. Baby-led weaning: Helping your baby to love good food. London: Vermilion; 2008.