Yesterday we started the process of weaning Little Girl. For some reason before we had her I had this picture of breastfeeding her for months and months and months and it didn’t occur to me that she would start on solids quite this soon! She’s going to be 6 months on Monday, when did that happen?
I am starting weaning her in earnest from Monday but yesterday I thought I would see what would happen if I put food in front of her, out of curiosity really. Wonderfully, she reached, picked up and stuffed her mouth with cucumber and cheese and happily sucked on the lot.
She sucked, she made faces, she gagged a bit because she’d put the cucumber too far back and she dropped the lot all over the place. And then she tried again. Today, she also had tomato and really liked it!
For those who are surprised that these should be her first foods, we decided a couple of months ago not to bother with purées and go straight with normal food so she will be eating the same as us. All I need to do is to adjust my recipes by cutting out the salt and to stop using shop-bought sauces and stock. This means I am going to have to learn how to make Puttanesca pasta sauce from scratch! I’ll let you know how that goes…
This approach is called Baby-Led Weaning (or self-feeding) and I will be posting more on this subject as we go on our feeding journey, but for now I leave you with this encouraging image.
afrogatlarge.wordpress.com 
Ooh I’m kind of jealous of your BLW adventures! It was one of the highlights of our son’s first year, and meal times are still a pleasure (especially as now at 22 months he can do things like help stir/crack eggs/knead his own bits of dough). I’ll be keeping an eye out for your BLW adventures 🙂
We’re having fun already! Although it has made me realise how little I actually think about the food I eat. It’s good in a way that I have no hang-ups about food but I am happy to just throw something together. Now I look at it and think ‘I can’t give her that’; it’s not as healthy as I thought it was!