Baby-Led Weaning

Taking a break in the recipes briefly (I'm still trying to get caught up in posting them here) to talk about feeding my son.

Anybody who knows me, knows I'm exclusively breastfeeding my son. Meaning whatever I eat, he gets through my breast milk later on (anybody know how long it takes for the taste of what I eat to go into my milk?). I'm planning on breastfeeding exclusively (as in it's the only thing he's going to eat) until at least 6 months of age.

I am *not* planning on doing any type of cereals or purees or any of that, because I like the idea of baby-led weaning.

What is baby-led weaning? Well, in short it's where you give baby pieces of whatever you're eating and let them play around with it and try it. Is it messy? Sure. But so is feeding purees and cereals. Heck, so is breastfeeding, from time to time!

http://www.babyledweaning.com has some information if you'd like to know more.

I have a feeling that we're going to start pretty close to the six-month mark though. I'd like to wait longer, but I don't think he'll let me. The other night, I had him sitting on my lap while I was eating orange jello. He watched that spoon of jello go from the bowl to my mouth every single time. He was absolutely interested! For fun, I put the spoon towards his mouth to see what he'd do and he opened his mouth as if he expected me to put the spoon in and give him the jello!

I admit I was pretty tempted to give him a tiny bit, just to see what he thought of it, but I'm adamant that he not get any "real" food until he's officially six months old (and that won't be until September 18). I mean I freaked out on Alex when he put a bit of chocolate ice cream on Charlie's lip a few weeks ago. I don't want to be a hypocrite, ha ha!

Because this blog is about food, I'll probably include posts of our adventures in baby-led weaning when it happens as well.