With my first child, we tried Baby Led Weaning – which, contrary to the American use of the word “weaning” does not have anything to do with decreasing nursing.  Rather, it means baby-led eating-of-solids.  And it was thrilling!  We got a huge kick out of watching my daughter eat chicken and broccoli and sweet potatoes as her first foods, and for several years she was an adventurous eater.  Of course, she is now an opinionated three-ager and all of our smug feelings about our daughter who loves smoked salmon, broccoli and eggs have had to face the reality of a toddler palate.  Although, she does still love broccoli, eggs, and salmon in sweet chili sauce, so hey!  Try baby-led weaning!

Our first resource, and the one we relied on most heavily to CALM THE GRANDPARENTS DOWN was, dun dun dun, Wikipedia.  It’s surprisingly informative!  Take a look.  My mother-in-law still has a hard time hiding her puzzlement about the pictures of her six-month old granddaughter eating long pieces of chicken and avocado as her first foods although, bless her heart, she tries!  The other major resource we followed was a Baby Led Weaning book that came highly rated on this obscure little site that talks about books and ships them to me quickly and magically through the air and onto my kindle.  It’s this one. [Not an affiliate link because duh, this is barely a blog and anyway, I have no idea how to do that . . . ]

The other encouragement we got for baby-led weaning were some friends who went ahead of us and various blogs I’ve read over time.  I don’t want to call any of those friends or blogs out here, but am happy to share further resources if you want to ask in the comments.  However, I do want to share this  amazing blog because the post is helpful and the comments are staggering.  The Wednesday Chef is one of my favorite food blogs to read (and clearly the author is a soul-sister who doesn’t know it, because we’re both finely attuned to the NY Times food section and, um, I really liked her book).  She has a series of posts about feeding her son that are uniformly interesting, but the comments are wonderful!  She has a number of international readers, and this post about what different cultures expect the baby’s first food will be was the written courage I needed to go ahead with feeding the baby vegetables and meat first!