The Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook: Delicious Recipes That Will Help Your Baby Learn to Eat Solid Foods—and That the Whole Family Will Enjoy (The Authoritative Baby-Led Weaning Series) Kindle Edition

I was looking for ideas for my 7 month old who would have nothing to do with baby food. After 3 months of trying to force feed him baby food I had basically decided I needed to try table foods, but was not sure how to go about it. He didn't have the fine motor skills for feeding himself bite-size pieces of food and I was worried about him choking, so this book was a great resource for me getting started. Some reviewers have said you could get all this information on the internet or that it's common sense, but for me having a thorough set of guidelines all in one place has been extremely helpful (I started with the internet and didn't find all the information I was looking for). I also took the advice of many reviewers who advised this over the original book, bc it opens with several chapters that give you all the informaion you need regarding "baby led weaning" and I agree. I actually haven't even used the recipes yet bc with the ideas in the first chapters I've been able to modify our family meals to suit my baby without needing any new recipes, but I read through them and plan on using some of them when I find the time! There's a lot of helpful information including healthy guidelines for babies (like they need as little salt as possible bc their kidneys aren't developed), preparing food to suit their developing fine motor skills at different stages, how babies learn to chew and swallow (including the difference between choking and gagging), and what to expect (a lot of playing and exploring food with their mouth with a gradual move toward more actual eating), etc. Some of it has really helped me to know what to do and other parts are just reassuring to me that he's not going to choke and that it's ok to just offer him food and see what he does rather than stressing about how much he's actually eating. It's been really helpful to me. My baby has been much happier with feeding himself than me trying to feed him and he is gradually eating more! It is so nice to sit down and eat a family meal together, just put food on his tray and let me do his thing, rather than trying to feed an unwilling baby! I still get a little nervous about choking and food allergies (there's not a lot of info on food allergies), but so far so good. It definitely beats the alternative for my baby. I ordered it on Kindle and if I had it to do over I would prefer the paper copy - it's easier to me to bookmark a real book than on the kindle, so a book that's a resource is nice to have the paper version.

Like many other reviewers I also purchased both this Cookbook and the Essential Guide. Unlike most reviewers, I actually found the Essential Guide to be interesting and helpful. If you are interested in the "why" and the "how" and the theory and history behind it, the Essential Guide is the way to go. If you basically already know BLW is for you (who cares how the sausage is made), you don't need the Essential Guide, the Cookbook does a nice quick summary in the beginning. To me, though, the Cookbook defeats the purpose. Isn't the point of BLW that you DON'T have to make special recipes, for the most part, but just feed the baby what you are having? Plus, the recipes are really nothing to write home about. We cook almost everything from scratch at home and are quite aware of simple egg scramble and roast chicken recipes. I imagine many of the parents out there who are considering BLW are in the same boat, you are already used to cooking most of the time and feel like your diet is healthy enough to feed baby (with whatever minor adjustments). It was an ok read-through just to re-familiarize myself with ideas I don't always remember, and perhaps it will serve as an aid for our nanny if she needs to come up with ideas. Otherwise, all of these recipes you either already know or are easily found online. And, again, in the end, I think the point is to have the baby eat what you are eating, just adjust your meals to exclude salt on the front end and you are good.

I didn't find this great little cookbook until my baby was 12 months old. By that time she was able to eat things mostly without me having to cut them up into tiny pieces. I think this is a great time to start making recipes from this book, because if your kid doesn't have teeth (mine had 8 teeth when I bought this) it would be difficult for them to eat a lot of food prepared from these recipes.The book goes into why it's good to let baby chomp on large pieces of food, and not cut them up into tiny pieces which frequently cause choking. So I let my baby chew on a whole dinner roll and she was in heaven, turning it around and around in her hands and taking tiny little bites out. This book has many great recipes like mac n cheese, sardines and tomatoes on toast, chickpea patties, and some desserts. There is a sugar free carrot cake that is sweetened with raisins, dates, coconut, and our little one LOVES it.I love this book because none of these recipes are very complicated, none of them take hours to make, which makes them perfect for weeknight dinners. All the recipes are meant for 2 adults and 1 baby which is great because it's exactly our family. You can easily scale up the recipe if you have more kids. All the recipes I've made so far are easy to read and follow, and my little one loves watching me make her dinner, I can't wait to get her involved when she's just a little older.

first time mom u need it

This book is not only a great recipe book but it also has a long intro to explain BLW so you don't need any other book, which I really welcomed.The downside is that there are no pictures od the ready meals so you can't just flip through the pages and pick what catches your eye. I simply read the whole meal titles to have a rough overview what's in store and then I try to recall...

having done purees with my first baby (she's now 2 and a half), i thought i'd try baby-led weaning with my second (who is now 7 months) as he seemed much more keen to be in control of what goes into his mouth. (i.e. would only open mouth if he is holding food in his hand). A friend of mine recommended Gill Rapley's original baby-led weaning book but when i looked through the reviews a lot of people were saying there weren't really any recipe ideas in there ... and that was what I needed! (don't really need to read an entire book on the principles of baby-led weaning. understand the concept, we've worked our way through every root vegetable oven chip variant now give me some other ideas!). Reviews for this book were good so I downloaded the kindle version as i figured would be good to have the book on my phone so if i was out and about, I could scroll through for some recipes and buy whatever i needed on my way home.I absolutely love this book and I love the majority of the recipes. I wish wish wish I'd found it earlier as I've been struggling for ideas on what to feed my eldest (how many times can you give the child bolognese in one week, right??). I remember looking for an Annabel Karmel family recipe book (her books on top 100 purees and top 100 finger food ideas are brilliant BTW, I HIGHLY recommend) but the reviews put me off. People were saying too many ingredients, recipes repeated a lot from other books. But a lot of people have her family book and love it so ... up to you on that score!Anyway. The recipes in here are simple, delicious ... i've got loads of new ideas on what to feed my toddler ... and it's easy to double up so it becomes a family meal, rather than having to cook different meals for everyone.With the kindle version, you can access the list of recipes easily and scroll through really quickly to decide what you want to do, on the day or the night before.How it works in our household: basically the baby just gets handed bits of fishcake or new potato and does with them what he will. I'm doing a combo of puree and baby-led with him. With the baby-led, he's just not taking in enough food for my liking (read: to sleep through better!) so this is a good compromise. He feels like he's exploring lots of textures and holding and tasting food. And he's also happy to open his mouth so i can spoon in some delicious pureed beef casserole, yum yum (thanks Annabel, love your work!), or whatever's on the menu that week. A lot of food ends up on the floor which is heart breaking when you've put all that massive effort in. I can definitely say, there's NO WAY i would be doing this just for him ... the fact that I can cook for the whole family and he's enjoying the same food works well.And and and. I have to say ... meal times really are much more relaxed. You're not sitting there, doing circque de soleil with your face to get him to open up for the spoon. It's chilled, all happens naturally - he's munching a bit, you're shovelling a bit. Good times.Now for the clean up.

BE WARNED - assess progress and switch to spoon feeding if baby doesn’t progress by 10mo as you could be wasting time!I switched to BLW when my son was between 7 mo and tried to 10 mo.. as he stopped letting me spoon feed after first 2 weeks on purées. I watched a YouTube video to see how a baby could progress and they all recommend this book.I found the book very useful to explain what to expect the baby to do with the food at each month into weaning. It also provides recipes which basically suggests you can feed a baby exactly same foods as the family (I.e there’s not really much difference in the way you serve the food for yourself or baby!I tried this method but my son didn’t eat much by 10 months and he was drinking a litre of formula. His solid Pooh suggested he was eating but the volume of milk he was drinking was worrying me. So I rang my HV and she advised me to switch to spoon feeding.2 weeks in and my son is eating a lot more, meal times are SIGNIFICANTLY less messy/stressful and fun! And I think my son enjoys eating now and reduced formula.In summary I do think BLW can work but some will take a lot longer and could risk baby missing out on eating by 1yrs old. I was annoyed I wasted so much time with BLW as I don’t believe there’s enough info on textures/size of food as I think that’s why I failed. But the book suggests you can give LO anything, but think my son ended up giving up when he’d bite something and something was too large/hard.The book also doesn’t specify which recipes can be frozen or how to serve. Which is why I recommend to assess your babies progress as by 9/10 months your baby should be eating a lot more. I appreciate it could just be my experience but it’s worth keeping an eye on milk volume otherwise your baby may get 1yo and not be eating much.I’m working on spoon feeding now before my son starts nursery in 5 weeks time and turns 1!

This book is a great introduction to BLW and is packed with receipe ideas that are suitable not only for babies but for the whole family! Receipes are simple to follow.

I wanted to follow BLW but after being convinced it was a bad idea, I purchased the Annabel Karmel book and gave my son some purees for about three weeks. During this time I noticed my son was grabbing the spoon and helping me get it to his mouth. I thought if he could do that he was more than capable of guiding chunks of food to his own mouth and as such, got this book. Well, how my life has changed! I am not steaming then blending for a couple of hours, I am simply making food for the whole family. The recipes are easy enough and is even broadening my own taste horizons (I hate fish).In the throws of my new love for BLW, I recently purchased the River Cottage book for babies and toddlers. Having looked at the recipes, a lot of them contain sugar so I don't think I will be making a lot from it for a while. The BLW Cookbook offers food that can be eaten by babies when starting weaning and then has tips either alongside the recipe of throughout the book of modifications you can make.All in all, it beats the others I have tried, although I am not knocking pureeing. I gave my son a piece of salmon to try and he spat it out immediately with a look of disgust on his face. The next day I crumbled it into a puree I had and he ate the lot, then the following day tried him with a chunk and again he ate it again!This is the only dedicated BLW book I have and have been going for about three weeks and we still have stuff to try. It is value for money and comprehensive if you are thinking of BLW your child.