Baby Led Weaning Update at 8 Months

About a month ago I wrote this post all about the start of our Baby Led Weaning journey which had actually begun a month before that, so I though it was about time for an update. So much has changed! She is  now 8 and a half months old and we are still on the Baby Led Weaning path, she hasn’t had any purees so far and is absolutely loving her finger foods!

A typical day of meals for Darcie will be:

Breakfast – tbsp Full Fat Natural Greek Style Yoghurt and 1 Weetabix with whole milk.

Lunch – grated cheese, one slice of toast with butter, a tomato cut into quarters, 4 sticks of cucumber, 2 tbsp of hummus and half a satsuma.

Dinner – tends to be more of a variety so it could be homemade potato chips using regular or sweet potatoes, fishcakes made with salmon or spaghetti in homemade cheese sauce.

She eats all of this with her hands which can be very messy (especially the yoghurt!) but she loves it and has so much fun picking it all up and discovering all these new textures and flavours. We have given her the spoon to feed herself with which she can do, but that just makes it even more messy as she uses it as a catapult to fling food around the kitchen. Her favourite foods at the moment are definitely hummus, tomato and cheese. I’ve experimented with a few BLW recipes I have found online and anything that involves cheese is always a winner. I’m planning on doing some recipe posts but for now some that have been a success are couscous fingers, fishcakes and cauliflower cheese bites. There are hundreds of recipes online and, after a lack of motivation at the start, I have a new energy for trying them out.

One of the appeals of BLW for me was the whole ‘just give them whatever you are having’ attitude as it appeals to my lazier side. I haven’t really found this to be the case for us as Dan gets home from work too late for us to have dinner together so Darcie’s dinner ends up being me just throwing something together. I suppose I should start making extra of our own dinner and then giving it to her the next day to save time but I have actually been really enjoying trying out new recipes just for her. Lunch and breakfast are so easy though as I can just give her whatever we have in the fridge that I am using for my own lunch.

The next step for us is to introduce more meat to her, for some reason I have been hesitant to give her  meat even though we eat meat almost every day. I think it comes down to not wanting to give her anything too processed and particularly with things like mince you know they have  been well processed.

Until a couple of weeks ago I wouldn’t say she was necessarily consuming much of her food, more playing with it and chewing it around her mouth before spitting it out. But now she is definitely eating a great proportion of it which is really rewarding to see and reassuring too. This is probably the reason I have new motivation to cook her more interesting things as there is a smaller chance of them just going in the bin after a good chewing. I was starting to worry that she wasn’t eating as much as other babies that I was hearing ate ‘a whole steak’ for dinner. But I think a lot of people do exaggerate when it comes to how much their baby eats as they might actually have just played with it for half an hour the same way Darcie was at first. So if you are just starting out with BLW don’t worry if it feels like every other baby is eating more than yours, every baby is different and your baby will figure it out in their own time!

I was met with a lot of scepticism when telling people that we weren’t going down the traditional puree weaning route. I was asked why I wasn’t doing purees as it ‘had worked for them’, or told that my baby would choke or just generally made to feel like it was unnecessary and a bit dangerous to be doing BLW. But I am so glad I ignored all of that, now when people see Darcie eating her food or when I tell them how it is going, they are so impressed with how much she eats and with how she is not a fussy eater at all. It makes me so proud of her and so thankful that we stuck with it as it was definitely the right option for us.

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This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. Melissa

    Gotta to do what feels right for you and not worry about what others say.

    1. ohlovelydaysblog

      Definitely! That’s the biggest thing I’ve learnt since becoming a Mum!

  2. diaryofninemonths

    I so want to go down the baby led weaning route! I keep hearing I have to do the purree thing and give them finger foods so they still get a ‘proper’ meal. I think I’m just going to have to lie and say he already ate his ‘meal’ if anyone every asks. Do what feels comfortable for you! Each family is different and advise has changed so much over the years so everyone has a different opinion on how people should do things. You’re the only one that knows what is best for you and your little munchkin!

    1. ohlovelydaysblog

      Absolutely! You have to do what feels right to you at the end of the day. But I can really recommend BLW, I think it gives the child so much more freedom to explore food and hopefully grow up with a healthy relationship with food.

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