Adventures in Baby Weaning

Wikipedia says "Weaning is the process of gradually introducing a mammal infant, either human or animal, to what will be its adult diet and withdrawing the supply of its mother's milk." And that's just what it is - a gradual process of changing baby's food source. I'm a big believer in putting off solid foods as long as possible and most of all to follow baby's cues when it comes to this process.

Sophia was just in the biggest hurry ever, while Amelia wanted nothing to do with anything but milk until she was almost 9 months old. Henry is following in Sophia's footsteps - he has been so anxious to join in our meals for about a month. He watches us very intently when we eat, he reaches and reaches for our food, he drools and smacks his lips and chews on his tongue.



Finally this past weekend, we decide to let him try some of our food - and he was so excited!





We're not big on the ol' baby rice cereal route, for lots of reasons. White rice really isn't very healthy (here's an article, if you're into that sort of thing), plus it's terribly bland and boring. When I had massive gall stone attacks, they told me to eat baby rice cereal until my surgery, and it was icky! The girls had bananas + breastmilk and avocado as their first foods. Much more yummier :)

With Henry we're trying the route of "babyled weaning" - which is just a way of skipping pureed food altogether. Basically, the theory is that developmentally, once babies are ready for solids foods (sitting up being a big part of this!) they can self-feed themselves with large chunks of food. Other than common allergy-inducing foods, they can pretty much eat what we eat. I'm certainly no expert, and there is lots of information out there (oh look, Wikipedia has an article on it). The idea of skipping purees works well for us, because we're lazy like that. Both the girls went from homemade mashed up foods to just chomping on "real" food within a couple of months. Here is Sophia chowing down on a barbecue sandwich at 10 months



Plus we almost always sit down and eat together as a family, and generally eat a healthy diet, so it just fits for us. Henry agreed! Day One he got avocado slices and loved them.





Day Two he got some broccoli. This was our dinner, so before salting our steamed fresh organic broccoli, I set a couple of pieces aside for Henry - doesn't get much easier than that!


(steak bites, mushrooms in red wine, smashed red potatoes with sour cream and kosher salt, steamed broccoli - this meal took less than 20 minutes to make)



He would watch us eat ours, and then bring it to his mouth and make the funniest faces! At this stage, they really don't ingest very much at all. The saying is "food is for fun before age one" - basically they are just learning how to eat right now, and exploring textures and tastes, and solids don't become nutritionally important until after 12 months.



Today we went back to his favorite (ha!) avocado.



I think tomorrow we might try a yummy mango I picked up at Whole Foods. Keeping the peels on helps him hold on, so we're definitely sticking with organic. It's been nice to all sit at the dinner table and have Henry feel like he's part of the action! He's my Little Baby Bumpkin, and I'm certainly not in any hurry for him to grow up. But after about the fifth time that he actually grabbed food from my hand and tried to eat it, I decided he was ready.