So tonight was our 3rd softball game of the season (which we won – and I made an AWWWWWWWESOME catch, which basically made me feel like an athlete after years of not feeling like one).
In the meantime, Nana (my husband’s Mom) was in charge of the baby at home, and as we were leaving, I showed her “Stella’s shelf” in the fridge.
Anything on that shelf is fair game — it’s either food she has already been introduced to, or food I am a-ok with her trying in the immediate future. Like I mentioned before, we are basically going with Baby Led Weaning, which means we are giving her hunks of food to gnaw on (usually anything in our fridge which is 1/4-1/2″ thick and a couple inches long)…and just letting her experiment with all of the textures, flavors, etc.
My daycare provider said, “and you don’t worry about her choking?”
My MIL said, “and you don’t mash it up?”
Um, nope.
I have absolutely nothing against purees and “regular” baby food, which for ease of feeding, I will probably send to daycare (for example, we have given her pureed carrots, and she ate them just fine, and then was much happier just grabbing a stalk of carrot and chewing on it). It just made sense to me to give her hunks of food and to let her figure out chewing before swallowing, since she was 6mo old when we started solids and able to do that. It also means that she is a part of the family dinner without one of us actually feeding her the entire time – win/win!!
At any rate, we got home from the game tonight, and I asked my MIL if she had given Stells any solid foods from the shelf, and she said…”well…a little of the cantaloupe (which I’m sure she thought was weird that I left the rind on for Stella to hold onto)…and a little broccoli (Stells loves holding the stalk of the broccoli and gnawing on the floret).
Sweet.
I can definitely tell she wasn’t totally comfortable with the non-mashed/pureed thing, but thank God I have an awesome MIL who trusts my parenting ideas and just goes with it. 🙂 It’s so wonderful to have her around.
Stells eats some solid food y’all. INSANE.
BLW is seriously the shit. Sofi's had pureed food from the beginning (the beginning being 6.5 months or so, of course) at daycare, but we've also complimented that with actual solids as much as possible. My MIL definitely thought I was insane to try it, but then she saw how much Sofi enjoyed feeding herself and she's slowly gotten on board. It made meal time so much fun. Snack time too. Most days when Sofi and I head home after daycare I just give her a whole banana and she chomps away. It feels natural and easy. Glad that Stella is enjoying it too!
Love it!! You are definitely lucky to have a MIL who listens to you instead of pushing their ideas and beliefs. Love Stella's shelf! 🙂 I'm excited to start Alidia on more chunks of things when she hits 6 months. So far she has just had chunks of banana (which she loves to suck on), apple and avocado (as well as trying those 3 things mushed) because I didn't want to introduce too many things this early but they are all quite slippery in her little hands so I am excited to just start giving her whatever we are having… broccoli sounds like a great one! Way to go on your awesome catch and big win by the way!! 🙂
Wahooo! Very exciting to have an awesome catch. We did a combo of puree and BLW. It was the best of both worlds. I am sure many people thought we were a little crazy giving Ant chunks of food but we found he gagged less the his traditional eating friends.
I did not know of Baby Led Weaning, but it sounds much more like common sense parenting–which I am totally all for. Oftentimes, going with your common sense and internal guidance works so well for parenting! BTW, your fridge looks way more organized than mine!! 🙂
The thing I'm amazed by with Stella is she will just knaw on it and take little bites here and there. When we let Chloe try watermelon off the rind, she just kept biting and biting, not swallowing, and her mouth was full! Chloe doesn't eat baby food anymore, but we have to cut up everything we give her into pieces that she then picks up and feeds herself off her tray. Like that picture of Stella eating the avocado slice? Chloe would have crammed that in her mouth in one bite. Wonder how we get her out of that habit? Or if that just means we have to keep cutting everything up or her. It sure is nice though not having to sit there and feed her purees. We took her hints when she started spitting it out that she was over them.
I think its amazing!! Good thing you MIL trusts your parenting instincts, that's great!
I am so glad that you posted this update. Nick is 6 months old today and we are offering him some solids for the first time. I have really been wavering about what to offer first, so the list you posted is very helpful. So glad it's going well for Stella!
Avocado, sweet potato, and banana are sort of the holy trifecta of great 1st foods. Enjoy! 🙂
Interesting. I am going to have to look into this one day.
And butternut squash, pears, and apples. Bananas can stop them up – we avoided those early on 😉
My husband would NEVER let me try BLW – he's terrified of choking. Even at a year old, he cuts up Matthew's food into too-small pieces he can't really get a grasp on. HA!I've always put decent sized pieces on his tray and let him go at it. He loves it!
We did BLW, too, and I wholeheartedly feel that this made Arlo a better and more adventurous eater. I mean, dude eats curry with out blinking an eye. 🙂 Whatever we ate, he ate. (Appropriately portioned, obvs.) When we traveled, we would grab some of the pouches of prepared babyfood, but very seldom was it that we offered him purees. He gagged more on those than he ever did on real foods. BLW was easy (less prep, less clean-up, etc)and it was a GOOD, FUN TIME. 🙂