Solid Foods

Now that Lua is six months old, we're taking our first tentative steps towards giving her solid foods.  She's not exactly a good eater-- she ingests almost nothing-- but she's playing and having fun.  In the past couple of weeks, we've been working on what's food (broccoli, carrots, bananas) and what's not (plastic and fingers).

In terms of feeding methods, we're doing a mix of traditional baby feeding and Baby-Led Weaning.  Traditional baby feeding is the normal method of giving pureed baby food on a spoon.  Baby-Led Weaning is the process of putting regular grown-up food on her tray and letting her pick it up and eat it on her own (more info here).

After two weeks of experimentation, I can say that the traditional method is much, much easier.  She can swallow more of her food from the spoon, and it doesn't get all over.  It's simply less work and less clean-up afterwards.  Baby-led weaning is more promising in the long run, though.  I would love for Lua to be an autonomous and self-sufficient eater.

Here are some pictures of her first attempts at solid food:

Baby-Led Weaning:  Eating cooked broccoli

Squishing her food and losing it in the bib

Baby-Led Weaning at it's finest

Making a huge mess!

A more traditional approach:  Rice cereal and breast milk

So proud of herself!

Playing with her spoon

So far, Lua likes both methods of eating!  They're both fine with me, too.  We'll just keep experimenting.  Like they say, "Food is fun, until age one!"