Divya Shravan 
As my son neared six months, I was facing a mix of excitement and apprehension. Excitement at the new milestone and starting his journey into the world of food and apprehension at the thought of the millions of stories we hear about kids fussing to eat. I was imagining having to jump and dance in front of my kid (what my cousins did to get me to eat when I was a baby) or doing the famous aero plane movement with the spoon or succumbing to a daily dose of television at mealtimes. While these are tried and tested methods, being a poor eater myself, I wanted to make him eat in a positive way without any distractions – a thought that seemed impossible until I came across the concept of baby led weaning.
Simply put, it’s a method of weaning where we do away with spoon feeding and let the baby take the lead and feed themselves. It sounded like a dream and something that was definitely crazy but the more I researched about it and the more videos and testimonials I read, the more doable it sounded to me.
Armed with this newfound knowledge I excitedly broke the news to my family only to be met with initial disapproval – how can the baby start with anything other than a puree? He’s just a baby, how can you expect him to take a spoon and feed himself too? Do you know how long you were spoon-fed and how difficult it was to make you eat? The barrage of questions and comments were never-ending. However, I was lucky enough to have a supportive family, who after a little bit of convincing agreed to go ahead with my idea however outlandish it sounded to them.
On the D-day we all sat around my son. The pressure to perform was immense. I sat with my steamed carrot sticks and preloaded spoons of thick ragi kanji. My family looked at me expectantly while I smiled at my son and held out the spoon. The second he grabbed it and put it to his mouth and started chewing I was on cloudnine doing a happy mental dance. Not only did he take the spoon from me, he put it in his mouth the correct way (a lucky coincidence but one who’s timing was perfect), he also chewed on it, gulped down the food and grabbed the carrot stick from me once he was done with it. There was the expected small gagging episode but all in all it was the perfect start to our feeding journey. From there in a week he progressed to being able to pick food from his highchair tray on his own and even handled slippery textures like mangos like a pro. We tried 11 food items the first week of which he thoroughly enjoyed 9 of them.
All in all, I just want to say – it works. It’s not some unrealistic western fad and this can be easily modified for our Indian foods. I’m super excited to see where this journey takes us. Yes, this is a very early stage and I hope I’ll be able to continue this over time. But for now, we are in a happy space and I can’t wait for my son to explore newer foods and textures!
I’m currently planning towards getting to 100 new food items tried by his 1st birthday. What foods did your baby love at this stage? Do share below. It’ll help me set up my son’s meal plan.
