• Eating out with Vegetarian Babies in the Birmingham area

  These are my favourite places (obviously based around the Midlands, UK - at the moment!) I have order them simply by my favourites according to how accommodating they have been to my boys and myself on a regular basis.

• An Introduction to Vegetarian Baby-Led Weaning

  I have been a vegetarian for half of my life - 20 years (I'm 40 now). I was vegetarian before becoming pregnant, during my pregnancy, while breast-feeding and throughout weaning my boys. They are healthy. I am healthy. In fact we are all more than he

• Equipment for Baby-led Weaning

  When I commenced on our blw journey I had no idea where to start. I feel that now (the boys are almost 4 months in) I have found the best solutions for us at. However, there was a lot of trial and error. You don't need any equipment at all, but some

• Veggie BLW Recipes

  These are tried and tested recipes of my own, adapted from my own vegetarian recipes that I have used for years. I always try to cook the same food as we eat, one of the principles and benefits of BLW is that you eat alongside the babies as you don't

The WHO now recommends that babies are not weaned until 6 months (Your Health Visitor may not know this yet even though its been this way for quite a while). So actually it is obvious that we don't need the puree stage anymore. However change is hard for many, especially when information is not freely given by those who should know.

But all this aside, when a baby can pick up food and put it in his mouth, he can safely be allowed to eat it. The internal digestion matures at about the same time as hand-eye co-ordination develops. In short, BLW is weaning by introducing solid food without the puree stage from about 6 months of age.

Baby-led Weaning means no more feeding your child and eating your food afterwards, it means sitting with your baby and eating the same food at the same time. It means thinking about your diet and adapting it to be baby-friendly and nutritious and then just enjoying mealtimes together. It means going out for lunch with your baby and not having to take anything other than a bib.

You do need to take precautions (most are the same for any kind of safe weaning).

Dos and Don'ts of (baby-led) weaning:

• your baby must be sitting upright, either on a lap on in a chair (high or low) mostly unsupported
• no added salt (daily maximum allowance for a baby is about 0.5 mg)
• no honey before 1 year old
• raw apples and similar can cause choking hazards
• do not put anything into the baby's mouth for him(if you want to use a spoon, load it with food and let him do it himself- and duck!)
• let him take his time
• make sure he isn't hungry, give him milk before his solid meal, he needs to be able to concentrate on exploring the food and learning how to handle it, not getting stressed about having to fill up his little tummy
• do not worry about intake, As Gill Rapley succinctly puts it "food is fun until they're one" (again your HV may look puzzled if you quote this at them). Their sources of iron won't deplete and they will drop milk when they are ready - mine started to cut down a little around 8 months but still had a good 4-6 milk feeds a day
• be prepared for mess
• they don't need '3 solid meals' go with the flow. By 9 months I had tried out a lot of combinations and settled on: big late breakfast, big late lunch, afternoon light snack instead of dinner (the 3rd meal was causing issues because they were tired so we all but dropped it at that point)

BabyCentre

BabyLedWeaning.com

Baby-led Weaning

BabyWorld

Wikipedia

Baby Banana

Babyledweaning Blog

Netmums