Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food

Would you buy this again if lost? YES Recommend to a friend? YES QUICK SUMMARY: Baby-led weaning means; 1) Not starting your baby on solids earlier than 6 months. 2) Letting your baby feed himself all of the time. I did NOT follow baby-led weaning but STILL give this book 5 stars! This is because it has taught me more about nutrition and health than any other book or source I know. Not because the book has some secret or complicated information, but because of the way the information is laid out with incredible clearness of explanation. Considering how much I already know about nutrition and health I think this is absolutely amazing. Buy this book if you want to improve your health. Apart from that, I do agree with a review already made above that this book very much oversells the idea of baby-led weaning. Many of it's points are simply inaccurate, and that can be a bit annoying when your reading! Before I had my baby I fancied the idea of starting to wean at 6 months and not earlier, but my son was very forward with his weaning and started himself on solids at 5 months! So I had no choice but to combine both approaches with worked out brilliantly in the end. This book clearly states that pure baby-led weaning is far superior to any other method. Yet from personal experience I know that it is not necessarily the most natural way! Saying that having read this book you will probably have a very good grasp of what baby-led weaning is, advantages, history, and how to go about it if you want to. The authors are todays experts on the subject. Buy it even if your not doing baby-led weaning.

I purchased this book because I'm due to start weaning my 2nd child soon, and didn't find weaning my first the 'traditional' way to be a positive experience. I wanted to find out about this alternative approach so that I could decide if it was going to be right for us as so went into it with an open mind. It's a great book, easy to read, with logical chapters ranging from why you shouldn't wean early to 'how to do' baby led weaning. I found there were plenty of ideas of things you could give your child and, unlike other reviewers, I found that there was due consideration given to formula fed babies - although it's clear from reading that if you are formula feeding it's not quite as straightforward as if you are breast feeding, although you can still do it. Ultimately, I decided that BLW on its own probably isn't the best approach for us - but I do think we will try a combination of the 'old style' approach (so I can make sure at least some calories are going in) and just try some finger foods earlier. Current advice is that you only give purees for 2 weeks now anyway and then move on to lumpy food. But I needed to read the book in order to make an informed decision, so if you are a parent with an open mind, who's interested in understanding a bit more of the science behind weaning (whichever way you choose to do it), then you will probably get quite a lot from Gill Rapley's book.

This book just made a lot of sense and it is easy to read. I agree with the other readers that there is not much about what to actually feed your baby but once we have applied it to our baby things just fell in place and one sort of get creative, at the end of the day the food must be big enough and in a shape that baby can hold it and as natural as possible (no sugar and salt added) My six month old took to feeding himself like a fish to water. His first meal was well cooked bread dipped in egg and a big slice of mango, it was amazing to see him completely concentrating on the food and chewing (mouth closed!) and he only gagged once or twice, and as the book promised he managed to spit out the big pieces. He is now seven months old and so far had mango, banana, apricot, lightly steamed apple and pear, steamed vegetables like red pepper, carrots, baby patato, sweet patato, asparagus, baby marrow, sugar snap peas, chicken and meat.I also baked him some thick pancakes made with wheatfree flour egg and prunes in fruit juice. He struggles a bit to chew and swallow meat so I made a little "stew" for him of onion steak and sweet patato pureed to try and get some meat in him, he spat the first spoonful that I have placed in his mouth out, but after that he started to feed himself with the spoon (even though half ends up on his face), he also does this with his porridge. As he ate by himself right from the start he is not keen on us feeding him and will literally grab the spoon and put it in his mouth, it is really amazing to see how independant he is. Like everybody says it is a messy business and you really need time as some feeding sessions has taken up to an hour, however the great thing is that he eats until he had enough and you can see by his poo that he is definately getting a good amount of food in... he also like all babies goes through times of liking something and then not. His motor skills are very advanced he started clapping hands at seven months and are able pinch things already. I would definately recommend this book and method of feeding to everybody as it just gets them on proper food rigth from the start!

Este libro nos da la información necesaria para darnos la motivación y valor de ayudar a nuestros bebés a aprender a comer de una forma natural y sana, desarrollando habilidades motrices, sociales e incrementando la seguridad en ellos... ¡y solo se trata de regresar a lo básico!

Excellent book, helped me to build the confidence to introduce solid food to my child, and we never looked back.

es un método muy práctico y natural de darle de comer a nuestros bebés. Yo me empecé a interesar cuando me tocó volver a trabajar y vi que mi hija no quería de ninguna manera un biberón pero se interesaba por la comida. Así que, buscando por Internet, encontré el método y después, el libro. Y lo recomiendo 100%. Aunque hasta que el bebé se da cuenta que la comida sacia pasa algún tiempo...

Excelente libro. No solamente que está muy bien escrito, contiene muchos ejemplos y recomendaciones muy prácticos! Se lee muy fácilmente. Que idea tan natural y "normal" que al mismo tiempo está tan revolucionario! Recomiendo el libro para todos los padres, buscando un camino de introducir la comida a su bebé con mucho respeto y amor y además asegurar que el bebé come sano! Un libro para toda la familia, ya que al fin y al cabo apoya a que toda la familia se alimente de la mejor manera posible!

Great book. First off this is not a weaning off the breast book, it is an introduction to solids book. I exclusively breastfed my daughter for 8mos and when I was ready to introduce solids, she wasn't. She was more interested in feeding herself and wouldn't let me spoon feed her. Turns out that was great for me. I spoon fed my boys at 4 and 5 mos old and it was very time consuming and I wasn't sure if they were full or fussy when they'd refuse to eat. This book eliminates the struggle. Babies have a sensitive gag reflex and by using this book I was able to let my baby take the lead on feeding herself while not overreacting at any sound she made while eating. Also it gives a great guideline of how much and when to feed them solids that correlates with breastfeeding and formula feeding. If your little one has issues with spoon feeding or heck even if they don't, this is a great book for beginner feeders. I wish I had this with my boys.