Baby-led weaning is a safe and effective alternative to conventional, adult-led spoon feeding. Starting solid foods can be scary no matter what approach you take…but it may help to know that research demonstrates there is no higher risk of choking with a baby-led approach compared to conventional adult-led spoon-feeding, provided that parents are educated about reducing choking risk.

Infant milk (breastmilk and/or commercial infant formula) will continue to be a primary source of nutrition during the weaning period. Babies who start solid foods with a baby-led approach are at no higher risk of choking than are conventionally spoon-fed babies, provided that parents and caregivers are educated about reducing choking risks. Baby-led weaning babies are not at risk for growth faltering and they are able to meet their overall iron and nutrient needs. 

Choking is a very rare, but real risk - and everybody who helps feed your baby should know basic CPR skills. CPR can help save your baby’s life. Here’s a link to an affordable online CPR class I take each quarter and that I recommend to parents and caregivers (this is an affiliate link).

Many people mistakenly think baby-led weaning just means skipping purees…which it certainly does not. In fact, purees are an important texture for your baby to master…they’re just not the only texture your baby can eat!

You can honor the self-feeding principles of baby-led weaning and still let your baby self-feed naturally puree-like foods such as full-fat, whole milk yogurt, unsweetened applesauce or whole-grain (non-rice) cereal or porridge. We do this using the pre-loaded spoon technique.

The pre-loaded spoon is a term and technique coined and developed by Dawn Winkelmann, MS, CCC-SLP, a pediatric feeding expert and designer of the award-winning baby-led weaning spoon for ezpz called the Baby-Led Tiny Spoon.

You can learn more about the pre-loaded spoon technique from Dawn in this interview we did together called The Right Way to Use a Pre-Loaded Spoon…and if you want to check out the ezpz feeding gear for baby-led weaning, you can get 15% off when you purchase ezpz using the code BABYLED (this is an affiliate code).

If the thought of jumping right from infant milk to soft solid foods for your baby is kind of freaking you out, you are not alone! Many parents mistakenly think that spoon-feeding your baby is safer than letting them self-feed….but putting any object in your baby’s mouth - including a spoon - can be a choking hazard.

Babies who are 6 months of age (or 6 months adjusted age if born prematurely) and demonstrating the other reliable signs of readiness to eat can safely self-feed soft strips of properly prepared food.

TRUST is at the core of baby-led weaning. You can learn more about why combination feeding is not baby-led weaning in my conversation with Gill Rapley, PhD the founding philosopher of the baby-led weaning movement and co-author of the original baby-led weaning book here: Combo Feeding: Can I Do BLW + Traditional Spoon-Feeding Together? with Gill Rapley, PhD.

From a developmental standpoint, 6-month old babies can pick up larger pieces of food and safely self-feed. In the earlier part of the weaning period (6-9 months of age), babies use their whole hand or palmar grasp to rake and scoop pieces of food up and into their mouth. 

Baby-led weaning foods are generally offered as soft pieces of food shaped about the size of an adult pinky finger. Older babies (9-12 months of age) will have developed their pincer grasp which eventually allows them to safely self-feed smaller pieces of food.

To learn more about how to safely prepare baby-led weaning foods, I invite you to register for my free Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners Masterclass. It’s an online video workshop where I’ll show you how to make foods safe for your baby’s age and stage…plus everybody on this free workshop gets a copy of my original 100 First Foods list…so you’ll never run out of ideas of foods your baby can safely eat. Click here to sign up.

There is no scientific basis for or peer-reviewed, published infant feeding guideline to support the recommendation to wait 3-5 days between new foods for babies.

Many doctors still incorrectly recommend waiting 3-5 days between new foods, claiming that the “waiting period” is intended to give parents and caregivers a chance to observe for any allergic reaction to the new food.

The reality is: if your baby is going to have an allergic reaction to food, the vast majority of allergic food reactions will occur within minutes and up to no more than 2 hours following ingestion. 

Waiting 3-5 days between new foods unnecessarily slows down your baby’s progress and ability to achieve diet diversity. 

In fact, new research points to the importance of introducing MORE foods to babies during the all-important flavor window when they will like and accept a wide variety of foods and flavors and tastes and textures.

You can learn more about why it is perfectly safe to offer 1 (or more) new foods per day for your baby in this interview I did with one of the world’s leading pediatric food allergy dietitians called “Why You DON'T Need to Wait 3-5 Days Between New Foods with Carina Venter, PhD, RD”.

While baby-led weaning is a relatively new term and parenting phenomenon, the baby-led weaning approach and philosophy is millenia old. Different cultures and ethnic groups around the world have historically offered and continue to offer their babies modified versions of the same foods the rest of the family eats. Contrast that with commercial baby food, a largely Western invention that has only been available and marketed since the earlier part of the twentieth century3.

With this feeding method, the focus is on allowing the baby to learn how to eat, with less emphasis and pressure on how much the baby is consuming. The benefits of baby-led weaning include4-6:

• Increased feeding autonomy and participation in family meals from the baby’s first bites
• Reduced risk of selective (i.e., “picky”) eating later in toddlerhood
• Decreased risk of food allergies due to earlier exposure of potentially allergenic foods 

With the baby-led approach, babies learn to recognize and respond to their inborn hunger and satiety cues.

It can be challenging when you feel like you have to “defend” your decision not to force-feed your baby by spoon!

Baby-led weaning is a safe and effective alternative to conventional, adult-led spoon feeding that has numerous benefits, including:

• Increased feeding autonomy and participation in family meals from the baby’s first bites
• Reduced risk of selective (i.e., “picky”) eating later in toddlerhood
• Decreased risk of food allergies due to earlier exposure of potentially allergenic foods. 

I have a number of resources to help you explain baby-led weaning and get others in your tribe on board with this approach too:

• Read this article to understand the basics of baby-led weaning: What is Baby-Led Weaning?
• Listen to these podcast episodes: Getting Grandparents on Board: BLW Across Generations and Grandparents, Spouses & Partners: Getting Others on Board with BLW
• Read this free feeding guide: BLW + Daycare: How to Be a Baby-Led Weaning Advocate at Daycare (this requires an email address to download the free feeding guides on this site and I never sell or redistribute your personal information or email address). 

If you are looking for a supportive community of like-minded parents to learn more about baby-led weaning with, my digital program BABY-LED WEANING with Katie Ferraro may be a good fit for you. Click here to learn more about joining and helping your baby get a safe start to solid foods.

Ugh. There’s nothing worse than coming strong out of the gate with some simple starter foods like avocado, banana and sweet potato…and then getting stuck.

This happens all the time: families are gung ho about baby-led weaning for the first week or two...and then they run out of ideas of foods to feed.

When I was starting baby-led weaning with my quadruplets, I really struggled with which foods to feed my babies after the simple starter foods too. 

They weren’t getting enough iron rich foods, we weren’t doing the allergenic foods at first…all of which is exactly why I created my original 100 FIRST FOODS™ approach to starting solid foods with baby-led weaning - so that NOBODY would ever run out of ideas of foods to offer their baby next.

If you want to learn more about this approach and get your free copy of my original 100 FIRST FOODS list, I give it away to everyone on my free on-demand video workshop called BABY-LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS. This is a 75 minute training that you can take right now, later today or tomorrow. Click here to register for the free workshop.

If you’re already committed to the idea of getting your baby to eat 100 safe, baby-led weaning foods before turning one, my digital program BABY-LED WEANING with Katie Ferraro is for you! 

This program features my 100 FIRST FOODS™ meal plan and 100 FIRST FOODS™ content library which shows you exactly how to prepare and sequence all of these foods SAFELY for your baby…so you don’t have to hunt and peck all over the internet trying to figure it out on your own. It’s all in one convenient place that you have instant and lifetime access to. Click here to join the program.