Hollis Eats Solids!

As I mentioned in Hollis' 6 month summary post, we skipped purees and cereals and went straight to solids! This concept is called Baby Led Weaning (BLW) and we absolutely adore it! At Hollis' 4 month appointment our doctor told us it was time to introduce cereals and pureed food. I left that appointment ready to make my own baby food and jump right in. Like always, I went to my sister in law, Katie (whose 4th daughter Julianne is just 3.5 weeks younger than Hollis), for advice. She told me this time around she was skipping cereals and purees and going straight to solids! She sent me some articles she read and I then did my own research. My friend, Emily, did this exact concept with her daughter Britt and had great success! So, I bought the Baby Led Weaning book, read multiple articles and blogs, talked with Ryan and we decided that going straight to solids at 6 months would be perfect for Hollis and our family!

Baby Led Weaning (BLW) is a method of adding foods to a baby's diet of formula or breastmilk. BLW allows babies to control their solid food consumption by "self-feeding" from the very beginning of their experiences with food...there is no spoon feeding by the parents at all. The term weaning doesn't mean giving up formula or breastmilk, but the introduction of foods other than formula or breastmilk. It is recommended to wait until 6 months to try solids in this fashion because by then the baby’s digestive system is mature enough to handle food and the baby is able to sit up properly. We waited for all the appropriate BLW ready cues and decided to start Hollis 5 days before turning 6 months old. Hollis was absolutely ready!

Hollis' first food was avocado and she loved it! After her first big bite and attempt to swallow, she gagged and it scared us! I knew from reading the book that gagging is common (even in spoon feeding). Gagging, as opposed to choking, is actually a safety response to food traveling too far back into the mouth, so when we see Hollis gagging we try not to interfere (although that first time we jumped right up) and let her handle the problem. Here is a video and some pictures of Hollis eating avocado for the very first time!

After eating avocado for 3 days we moved on to broccoli! Hollis gobbled it up and I'm pretty sure that's her favorite! G-Daddy and PawPaw both stopped by to enjoy a bowl of chili and watch Hollis eat! We also introduced a zippy cup of water this night.

After a couple nights of broccoli we did steamed carrots! She didn't seem to like these as much as broccoli and avocado.

We introduce a new food every 3 days to make sure she doesn't have a food allergy to that particular food. This week we plan to introduce roasted peppers, sweet potato (she's had a taste before already), squash and maybe some turkey on Thanksgiving! Watching Hollis explore these foods has been so much fun! I look forward to each meal with her!