He’s had salmon, tuna, roast beef, steak, roast pork, chicken, pollack and lots more.

He’s had lots of fruit, bananas are a firm favourite, but we are yet to offer him something he hasn’t at least tried. If not on the first time, definitely on the second.

The remarkable thing is how good he seems to be with his hand dexterity in comparison to his peers and less and less ends up on the floor every mealtime.

We had lasagne tonight, with salad of lettuce, cucumber and tomato. Huge success.

In other news, Art seems to have started using the pincer grip tonight!

Every day he amazes us more and more with his eating skills, and also his hand co-ordination skills, which is actually what amazes me the most at this stage. If he goes to put something to his mouth but it isn’t the way around he wants it, he brings it back down, swaps hands or uses the other hand to rearrange it, then puts it back to his mouth.

Why don’t more people do baby led weaning?

It would appear that the only reason more Mums are not doing BLW is that they don’t eat healthily enough themselves or don’t cook from scratch for themselves, therefore it seems like a big chore to do baby-led.

We have found it so easy, but we primarily cook our meals from scratch and generally eat a lot of fresh vegetables. I really do think that anyone wanting to have a child who eats healthily should consider BLW. More than anything, it helps you eat more healthily yourself, which has got to have an impact on them, hasn’t it?

Highs and Lows

Top food so far is probably dried apricots, cucumber and celery. Oh, and broccoli.

In fact, he likes most food. Apples, banana, mango, carrot. He wasn’t interested in omelette, some that even hit the window behind him. Unfortunately I forgot until the day after when Art’s Dad asked what it was

Firstly, Art isn’t quite ready yet. He’s 22 weeks tomorrow, and although he’s happy and able to sit up in his high chair unsupported by us, I’d like him to be generally sitting more unaided most of the time out of his high chair.

Secondly, he’s not the magic 6 months yet. I don’t mind starting him a bit early as he was a late baby, 2 weeks overdue, but he’s north ready.

The BLW book says he needs the following:

* be able to sit unsupported
* be able to get most things from hand to mouth in a coordinated way
* be making chewing motions
* interested in our food

He’s nearly there, but not quite.

It all sounded very exciting, but sort of dull at the same time. Why did baby need to have bland baby rice and baby porridge mixed with breast milk/formula for the first few days? Followed by mild tasting fruit and veg. And what’s this baby-led weaning all about?

After reading about it whilst looking up papers regarding use of BPA free plastics for infants (thinking about ice-cube trays in particular), I decided to look more into it.  Of course I’d heard about it, but like most people I thought it just meant giving them things like sticks of carrots and cucumber instead of pureeing things, the article by Gill Rapley of Unicef suggested there was more to it.                                                                                                                                                                          Being the geek I am, I ordered the Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook from Amazon to see what it was all about, I figured I didn’t need to know the full score in the main BLW book and the cookbook was bound to have a decent enough introduction to the concept of baby-led weaning.

By the time it arrived, I’d read a bit more on the subject and was starting to become more intrigued and more sure that it was the way to go for us. Well, last night my husband and I read the book together and came away feeling very excited about the idea.

An easy decision once we’d read about it.  Really does seem like a no-brainer to us.  We’ve got a few weeks to go and we’re already excited about having Art share our meals.