BLW is new to me. We didn’t do it with my first I made her purees. What are the benefits, if any? If you’ve done both purees and BLW which do you prefer and why? I’m thinking of doing it with my second baby, he’ll be 6 months the first week of March
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My older 2 I did purees as they are now teenagers and I hated it. My toddler we did blw at 6 months. Best thing ever, she ate what we ate, less time and bs. Only bad is It gets messy but we have dogs so they loved it too and she literally always wanted our food, nothing was safe. She’s now 2 and my least picky child ever. I have 5 total now (blended family) Saves time and money too.
You don’t have to pick or the other.
Baby led weaning was amazing for us. My daughter always ate what we ate making meal time easier and she is an amazing eater even now at 6. She never had issues with food colors or textures like so many other kids do and now loves all kinds of seafood, meat, veggies even green veggies, etc. It makes eating out easier and cheaper too when she is fine splitting a meal with me rather than needing to order off a kids meanu
I’ve raised 4 kids and I only did the purees with my oldest because he’s almost 12 and they didn’t talk much about BLW when I had him. But I definitely prefer BLW over purees for so many reasons. 1- it engages them with eating and helps them learn about meal times. 2- they learn hand eye coordination by feeding themselves. 3- they get to explore different tastes, textures, and flavors earlier and it really helps have less picky eaters. You can discover any allergies along the way also. This helped us discover my younger son was lactose intolerant as a baby rather than as a 2 yr old or something. The early exposure also allowed him to grow out of the intolerance because he was exposed and his body was able to adapt earlier to not having any dairy products and we were able to give them slowly to allow him to overcome it. Which he did at about 2.5 to 3. (Dairy milk is in formula and he was breastfed so we couldn’t have known til they put him on cow milk at 1 which we didn’t do because BLW at 5-6 months allowed us this information to prepare for later). Also with purees they don’t get to eat and enjoy as a family. You have to feed them and yourself which means someone is waiting to eat and it’s never gonna be the baby yelling for another bite lol. The BLW way is to let them explore, feed themselves with a spoon or their hands, and just engage with them while you eat and they eat. They will watch you feed yourself and learn that way also. Makes for less stressful meal times in my opinion. My younger kids are far less picky than the older 2, my older daughter was super picky even with BLW. She doesn’t like sweets, won’t eat birthday cake, hates cheese, doesn’t like food thats too messy, and absolutely will not mix her food together. She was a picky toddler too. Not a picky baby but as she started exploring foods herself, she just started making this personalized idea of food and thats the beauty of it. She found what works for her and I didn’t have to try and force her to eat things she didn’t like. She ate til she was full and we moved on. By feeding them and not letting them lead, you don’t let them learn the full sensation either. They’re enjoying the time with you and the smiling airplane spoon so they don’t understand they’re about to burst lol