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Baby Led Weaning First Food Ideas

Inside: What is baby led weaning and what are some great baby led weaning first food ideas give to your infant.

So your baby is showing all of the readiness signs to start baby led weaning?

Great! In this post, I am going to share some great baby led weaning first food ideas to give to your infant!

Did you do baby led weaning? If so, let us know your baby’s favorite first foods in the comments at the end of this post!

In this post I will go into what baby led weaning is and what are some great baby led weaning first food ideas give to your infant.

My baby’s baby led weaning first foods

I was super excited to start the baby led weaning process.

A little before my son Lennox was six-months-old, I tried some homemade purees with him because he was showing extreme interest in table food. Since I introduced him to some purees first but then decided to do baby led weaning, I stopped offering him solids for a week to reset the process. I did this to avoid chewing confusion. 

Baby led weaning consists of a baby holding and exploring their food. When giving them purees, they are merely swallowing and not learning how to chew.

The week interval that I gave between offering purees and starting Baby Led Weaning allowed Lennox’s new and developing brain to forget to swallow immediately to avoid choking on his pinky-sized, baby led weaning food.

Of course, after Lennox learned how to chew and digest food properly, we added yogurts and other soft foods to his diet. It was also convenient to carry around bagged purees for when we went out and about, but I highly suggest holding off on purees until your baby understands all the eating motions fully. 

To avoid Lennox craving the natural sweets of fruit, the first foods that I gave him were vegetables.

Below is a list of vegetables we offered.

  • Roasted Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Roasted Zucchini
  • Roasted Potatoes
  • Steamed Broccoli
  • Roasted Sweet Potatoes
  • Roasted Squash

Unfortunately, I did not take pictures at the time to show how to cut or prepare the food for baby led weaning correctly, but Jenna Helwig offers graphics in her post “How to Cut Foods For Baby Led Weaning”.

After a week of offering vegetables, I started introducing fruits.

First Fruit Ideas

  • Strawberries
  • Mangoes
  • Bananas
  • Watermelon
  • Avocado
  • Tomato
  • Pears
  • Oranges
  • Plums

Then, after a month or so of fruits and vegetables, we started offering proteins and starches. 

First protein and starches

Chicken
Turkey
Egg
Bread with butter or peanut butter

When Lennox was around nine months, and once we knew he didn’t have any allergies to any fruits, vegetables, or proteins, we started offering seafood and shellfish, which was a big hit. We were astonished when at 9 months old he gobbled up a plate of Caramelized Sea Scallops where we work. Below is a video of Lennox eating spinach and tilapia at ten-months-old.

Lennox loved trying an arrangement of food and I seriously credit baby led weaning as being one of the reasons why Lennox is such a healthy eater. It allowed him to explore and experiment instead of just being spoon-fed mush. 

As a 23-month-old toddler Lennox still adores food. He will go and sit at the table when he is ready for his meals or snacks. That is another benefit of Baby Led Weaning because table eating and partaking in family meals is how baby-led weaning works best.

Babies and children mimic everything their parents do. I am just glad he doesn’t have my sweet tooth. Today for lunch I served broccoli and chicken nuggets. The plate is clean of broccoli, and leftover are the nuggets. I also made oatmeal raisin cookies (damn sweet tooth of mine), and Lennox wasn’t interested in them at all. It makes me wonder how my eating habits might be different if this phenomenon was implemented more back in my childhood. 

One of Lennox’s favorite meals : Salvadoran Shrimp Ceviche

What did these mamas give their babies for their first baby led weaning foods?

Kassandra at Adelaideandi

Sweet potato, avocado, potato, squash.

Taylor at Mindful.mom_ents 

Guacamole and sliced avocado, roasted sweet potato and carrots with spices, oatmeal, sliced peaches. Everything was cut in quarters and as thick as my pinky to avoid choking.

 Jessica at HeyMamaJess

Banana and avocado.

Emily at This Crazy Maze

Avocado and sweet potatoes

Sheridan M.

1st: sweet potato, avocado 2nd: avocado, eggs, bacon

More baby led weaning posts:

Krystn M.

Friday 2nd of August 2019

This is very interesting. I’ve been wanting to start and you answered a lot of the questions I had.

Laurin Ruprecht

Tuesday 13th of August 2019

I am glad I could answer your baby led weaning questions. Please feel to reach out if you have any more questions or concerns!

Kendall | Is it nap time yet?

Wednesday 29th of May 2019

We are about to start baby led weaning with my little one. This is super helpful!

Trish

Tuesday 28th of May 2019

We started with avocado and he loved it. It was his preferred food for months. Now I can't get him to eat it to save my life now!

amanda

Tuesday 28th of May 2019

My first BLW food was a chicken bone for all my kids :) then we moved them to a banana (cut the peel around the banana so it doesn't slip out of their hands -- you can see my daughter holding it in a pic in this post! http://thekriegers.org/2018/06/7-months/)BLW is so great :)