Lou and baby-led solids

I am doing things a bit differently with Lou in regards to solids than I did with Iris. Although I never pureed food for Iris I still started her with mushy soft foods and slowly worked up to "real" food over a few months. I am doing baby-led solids with Lou instead. I was going to wait until she was six months before giving her any solids or later if she still wasn't showing any interest. Well Lou decided at five months of age that she was most definitely interested in food and no way was she waiting till six months to get her hands on what everyone else was eating in front of her. She started grabbing food from my hands or from my plate and getting very upset when her "prize" was taken away. After a few weeks of this I finally let her keep a peach she had snatched from my hand. She ate nearly the whole thing! She only stopped when I pried it from her hands not wanting her tummy to be overloaded with too much of a new thing all of a sudden. The next day I gave her a piece of banana thinking she might suck on it a bit and throw it away, well she ate the whole banana and cried for more when it was all gone! She pretty much hasn't stopped eating since and it's nearly impossible now to eat or drink while holding her without her grabbing at your food, cutlery, plate or drink.

At seven months Lou's favourite foods are bananas and toast but she has also tried chicken, pork, nectarine, cantelope, strawberries, blueberries, beans, peas, pumpkin, potato, cheese, cous cous, corn on the cob and I'm sure there are foods I've forgotten.

Following Lou's lead as to when and how much she wants to eat has made starting solids easy and as you can see she is having a great time exploring food.