Any advice on how to start etc???
This may help
Baby-Led WeaningI would go mainly for the foods you already eat as part of your family meals, this way LO learns the flavours and textures of your regular meals and is more likely to go along with those as they get older - it also means not having to keep cooking separate meals for LO. There's no need to go exploring for foods you haven't tried yourself before, although BLW can also be a great way to move towards more health conscious or varied meals for the whole family too
The main things really are to keep things large enough to hold in a fist grip, so the size of an adult finger, and to cut out added salt to your cooking where ever you can (eg I never put salt in pasta any more but instead rely on the sauce or dressing to season) at that age I never added salt to anything as their daily allowance is taken up so quickly. Also to make sure baby is sat up properly to reduce the choke risk.
Sweet potato can be:
- cut into fingers/wedges and lightly steamed (keep checking with ta fork as it takes less time than a carrot for instance) although may turn to a mush quite quickly (no harm in it being very soft for LO, just it's harder to pick up)
- cut into fingers/wedges and roasted in the oven like roast potato or oven baked chips. Toss in a little oil or use oil spray and bake until the outside begins to firm up and crisp. The outside can be quite dry and easy to pick up this way whilst the inside will be very soft like a mush/puree. Many other veggies can be cooked this way (we often have 'chips' here as I know we are all getting a great variety of veggies). You can use herbs and spices on any of these oven roasted chips, but I'd avoid salt.
- baked in the oven, whole, then sliced open (treat like a baked potato, if you can easily stab it with a fork through then it is soft and cooked). Wedges can be served, the inside will be like very soft mash but the skin on the outside should help LO grasp the wedge. If you want to make sweet pot mash this is a great way to make it, bake then scrape out the inside which will fall apart like mash and you can almost just stir it into a soft mash. Unlikely to need butter/milk adding as it is already slacker than white potato. Some LOs like to grab hand fulls of mashed food to self feed.
- grated and used in sweet recipes such as sweet potato and sultana mini muffins (yum! Think carrot cake type of thing) or sweet potato pancakes
...and it's a great source of vit A
And it is okay to offer some foods on a pre-loaded spoon, right? From what I can understand, the point is to follow their lead
Yes that's right. I found a plastic fork a bit more useful than a spoon when DS was very young. I used to hold the end of the fork to prevent him poking himself in the eye but he had control of picking it up (or taking it from me) and guiding the food to his mouth.
Although you generally follow their lead on quantity, you are still the parent, it's up to you to provide healthy foods and reasonable balance to the diet. If you discover certain foods cause constipation or diarrhoea in large quantities then it's your job to limit the portion, in the same way you wouldn't give in if your 6 month old was crying for access to a glass of wine yk. It's fine to explain to LO why they can't have more and offer something else.
Mine became too firm in his BM with carrots so I made sure to skip carrots if he was getting a bit form, cook up a portion if he was getting a bit loose. And in the main balance out a portion or carrot with a portion of prune.
She had some sort of a reaction to carrot and got red spots on her face
Do you think it may have been a contact reaction? Mine had some of those, esp where his poo touched his bum, orange foods seems to be the main culprit but he was never poorly in his tummy.
