I don’t remember where I first learned about baby-led weaning, but wherever it was it sure made a lot of sense to me. We also firmly believed in the benefits of delaying solids. My husband and I decided to hold off on feeding Meredith until she was at least 9 months old, if not older, and after that to follow her lead. She had other plans though!
Around five months, she was sitting up on her own and really interested in food. It became impossible to eat while holding her, which is where she had been eating up until then. Suddenly I was torn between delaying solids as long as possible and following her lead. We bought her a high chair, and gave her a spoon and bowl, which kept her happy during meal times for a while. She never liked breast milk popsicles. We managed to distract her until she was six months, using toys, her own bowl and spoon, empty cups, a Klean Kanteen sippy, and sometimes just by eating separately, with one of us holding her while the other ate.
At six months she started to become harder to distract again, and one day grabbed a raw carrot stick. She has no teeth, so we let her play with it. She loved it, and spent that meal playing with it, gumming it, throwing it on the floor, and banging it on the table. Watching her happily playing with the food, I decided that if I was committed to a baby-led introduction to solids, I needed to really let her lead. While I do believe that breast milk is best until at least one year, and that solids just take up room in the tummy where milk could go, I didn’t want to turn meal times into a battle, whether the battle was trying to get her to eat or trying to keep her from eating. I believe at that point she was mostly just wanting to take part in what she saw us doing, and not that she was hungry or needed the nutrition.
So we started letting her play with carrots or celery if she seemed to really want food. Once I let go and let her have food once in a while, I was surprised at how infrequently we needed to do this. I had been so worried that she would start wanting to eat at every meal, and that wasn’t the case at all. Between six and seven months she probably only got food once a week or less and it was always a raw veggie that she could suck and gum but she didn’t eat. Between seven and eight months we started giving her food off our plate, though again only when she seemed interested. It was still only around once a week and tiny amounts (about as big as the tip of her pinky). It seems that once she realized she could have food if she wanted, she no longer seemed so determined to have some every meal.
So far, she has had yam fry, asparagus, avocado, banana, rice, and green pepper. All very tiny pieces. I tried to give her a bit of hummus at a friend’s party over the weekend. It was the first time I had actually offered her food without her being interested first, and to my surprise she wasn’t the least bit interested. I had offered because it was homemade and all the other kids there seemed to love it, so I was curious what her reaction would be. Last night I gave her a small piece of my salmon. She mostly played with it, and I think most of it ended up on the floor.
She doesn’t have teeth yet, but she’s been able to chew and swallow anything we’ve given her with no problems. Once she has teeth, I will be more careful about giving her things like raw carrots, as I don’t want her to break a hard piece off. She has gagged a couple of times, but just to bring the food up so she could chew it more and swallow again. I was expecting a bit of gagging so I didn’t find it scary at all and just kept a good eye on her.
Our plan is just to keep following her lead. We’re going to try and cut out most dairy from our diets so we can keep offering her food right off of our plates when she is interested. I’m hoping it will continue to be a very gradual process. Right now I would say all her nutrition is still coming from breast milk, and I’d be happy if it remains that way to at least a year.
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