Baby led weaning, teething and the beginning of crawling

This is something that I have been researching for a while and as the name alludes, it basically puts feeding solids in the baby's hands, literally. No it does not mean that we are weaning her completely off of breastmilk. Breastmilk is supposed to be her primary source of nutrition till after her first birthday. Food is for fun until one! But it lets Emily have control of what she eats and how much she chooses to eat. Looking back I gave our pedi the weird side eye when she said that there are some babies who are just not big on baby food and at her six month appointment she told us to give Emily what we were eating if she showed interest in it, with in reason. Just to chop it up till it more manageable pieces and let her go to town. We are going to do this in combination of feeding pureed fruits, veggies and oatmeal while she is at daycare. It is so weird because she does AWESOME eating all her food at daycare, but when she gets home, she wants to eat like we eat. None of that mush. It could be because she isn't ready for a full meal at night, so we are putting the ball in her court and letting her feed herself till she is done.

So here are the basics of BLW. I will keep you up to date of how it is working out as we go along. We will give Emily pieces of soft fruits and veggies, no skinnier and no shorter than my index finger. This includes steamed green bean sticks, sweet potato, broccoli, squash, soft melons, bananas, strawberries, avocado etc. Basically anything she can mash with her mouth. The big concern with this and the question I have gotten from most people I have told, is "aren't you scared that she is going to choke?" And my answer is, yes I was at first and then I educated myself. I learned that a baby's gag reflex is closer to the front of their mouth when the are babies and when they are slowly more capable of mashing up firmer foods, it will move back till it is where ours is as adults. I also learned that if you let baby feed themselves they are less likely to bite of more than they can chew per se. You are not supposed to feed the baby. You let them feed themselves and trust me, it is messy, but Emmy LOVES it! She looks like she is having fun eating and that is what is important for now. She will be supervised at all times (duh!), so we aren't worried. You can still give the baby purees and cereal, you just load it on a spoon for them and show them how to feed themselves. In the beginning, it is all about the baby learning about different textures and flavors, and you're not supposed to be so concerned with how much they actually take in. Eventually they learn to feed themselves more efficiently. It is not something that you start till after the baby is over 6 months old. And research has shown that this isn't a "new" thing. That when we were babies, our parents started feeding us solids much earlier that the AAP currently recommends, so by the time we hit 6 or 7 months we were likely eating more finger type foods. It is actually really interesting and hopefully something that will work for us. Emily is very independent, so we think she is going to love it. So far she has fed herself puffs, watermelon, strawberries, banana and even chicken. You should really google it. There are some amazing videos out there. I used this site as a big resource. http://baby-led.rhgdsrv.co.uk/. It seems to be huge in Europe because a lot of the videos have people with British accents. Again, we are still sending purees and cereal to daycare, because she does really well during the day, but night time is fun time for the Ziegler's! Splat mats for all!

In other news, Em has a tooth starting to poke through the her gums and the other lower one seems to be pretty close behind. And ::knocks on wood:: she has been in surprisingly good spirits. It hasn't really seemed to bother her. This is where the BLW is also coming in handy. I think nomming on the softer solid foods feels good on her gums.

Also, right after I posted the video last week Em has been teasing us by pulling herself almost to her hands and knees. She sits in a yoga pose and kinda pulls her body forward bringing her hips off the ground a bit before toppling over. She also is rolling like a mad woman. She used to really only roll one way, and now she rolls every which way. She is going to be trouble when she is mobile! Ha!

Ok, so really, check bag tomorrow if you want to the cuteness that is Emily in a bathing suit and pictures of her nomming on a hunk of banana for dinner.