I’ve talked a lot about our experience with Baby Led Weaning before, here on the blog. We have loved getting to introduce new foods to Bastian. And he has absolutely thrived and loved eating solids over these last four months since we started BLW. The way that we feed him is actually one of the things I get questions on the very most, and so I figured it was time that I wrote another post.
Bastian eats everything. I’m truly not exaggerating when I say this. We’ve tried really hard to introduce all sorts of different foods and flavors to Bastian. And the only two things he hasn’t liked were blue cheese and plain greek yogurt. We’ll eventually reintroduce those foods again, though, to see if he likes them later on.
The biggest reason we chose to do baby led weaning, is because we didn’t want Bastian to be a picky eater. We figured, if Bastian is introduced to lots of different kinds of food from an early age, he would learn to love lots of flavors. And wouldn’t be picky.
I’m going to knock on wood here before I state that Bastian is not a picky eater. I know he’s only 8 months old, so seasoned moms, please don’t scoff at me. Bastian never refuses food that we give him though, and we’ve tried to give him a wide range of foods. He loves spicy food, curries, strong cheeses, sweet potatoes(a food I personally hate), and green vegetables are his absolute favorite.
Aside from just trying to feed him a wide variety of foods, the other thing we did to prevent Bastian from being a picky eater, is that we don’t let him have sugar. Not even fruit, until this last month. See, if babies eat a lot of sweet things early on, they’ll become accustomed to the taste of sweet things and will begin to refuse things with strong savory flavors. This isn’t true of all babies, some babies are just truly good eaters. But we didn’t want to risk it. So the first time we gave Bastian fruit/sugar, was a cutie during Christmas break.
We aren’t against sugar(I myself love sugar more than any one person should). And we do plan to let him have cake on his first birthday. We don’t want to put him into a sugar coma, so we’re introducing fruit into his diet now.
Believe it or not, I’ve experienced a little bit of mom shame because of this…I’ve had moms who have chosen different dietary guidelines for their babies tell me that I need to give Bastian sugar. So I just feel the need to clarify, that every child is different. What works for me won’t necessarily work for you. This is just my experience with my very non picky eater baby, due to our experience with baby led weaning and restricting sugar.
