We’ve been asked to keep a diary of our experiences introducing Izzy to solids using the baby led weaning method so that it may help other parents who may want to try the method. I thought I may as well use my blog as a place to keep the diary.

I’ll do a catch-up post at some point to summarise the first 17 days, but for now we’re beginning at day 18.

Breakfast:
I cut up some banana and soft pear this morning, but she didn’t seem very hungry. She played with it for a bit, but any that went into her mouth didn’t stay in for long. She probably swallowed a couple of mouthfuls.

Lunch:
I steamed some butternut squash cut in large chunks. She loved this but made a very big mess smearing the soft veg everywhere. Hard to tell exactly how much she actually ate, but seemed to have a reasonable amount. She really enjoyed it which is the main thing.

Dinner:
I steamed some parsnips and sweet potato. This was the first time she had tried parsnip but it was nice and soft and she seemed to love it.

The big improvement this evening was Izzy really started to puck up the food herself. She’s always done this to some extent, often with us placing food into her hand, but the feeding was mainly us holding the food and her pulling it into her mouth, or moving her mouth onto it. Today she learned that if she used both hands to scoop the food up she could eat any if the food, even the smaller pieces. No need for stick-shaped food any more.

After lots of sweet potato and parsnip, we tried some satsuma. She found this easier if we bit the ends off the pieces first so she didn’t have to puncture them, but she loved it. We planned to try a few pieces, but she ate most of a fruit.

Overall, a lot was eaten at dinner.