Celebrating One Year of BLW

It was exactly on Ava's 6th month celebration when we introduced her to solids. Her first food was avocado. That was one year ago already.

When we started out with the whole parenting thing, we were basically relying on our doctors, parents and siblings for advises. That meant doing everything the traditional way. As we adjusted a few months later, we began to have a better understanding that we are already building a family of our own. I, particularly, wanted to break from my family's norm of raising up kids. Don't get me wrong, I am forever grateful to my parents and I respect my siblings' decisions in raising up their own kids. It's just that I think, our generations have evolved immensely and there are significant information that we didn't know back then that we know now. That's where our choice for Attachment Parenting (AP) came in.

One of the key principles in attachment parenting is to "Feed with love and respect". Feeding a child involves more than providing nutrients; it is an act of love. Breastfeeding is the best way to fulfill this principle in the first six months of a newborn's life. Though we had difficulties in the beginning, being able to sustain and provide for my baby's needs was very rewarding.

On her sixth month, with the go-signal of our pedia, we started introducing solids the Baby Led Weaning (BLW) way. This is an informed choice along side Attachment Parenting. Now why I said informed choice is because a lot of new mothers I encounter make decisions, parenting decisions in general, based on what someone told them or it looks cute or because that's what's trending nowadays. Probably because being first-time parents can be really overwhelming, so they just grab the first advise given to them without really knowing the full details. If you're one these parents, please stop. Sit, take a minute or two with your husband and discuss what your family really needs. This is what Mr. T and I do. We love talking and discussing family matters. In the car, in the grocery, date nights, messages in between work, before we sleep, and more. Just like our choice of BLW, we read and searched for months prior to our first day of solids.

Here's a quick introduction about BLW:

Baby Led Weaning, quite simply, means letting your child feed themselves from the very start of weaning. No purees, no ice cube trays, no food processor, no potato masher, no baby rice, no weird fruit and veg combos… just you and your child, eating food that you enjoy with you and your family.

You just hand them the food in a suitably-sized piece and if they like it they eat it and if they don’t they won’t. 

If you want to read more about it you can browse through this website and see how everything works. That's basically the essence of BLW. So apt for Attachment Parenting right?

The benefits of BLW were amazing. One that I love the most is that our whole family gets to sit at the table together, and enjoy our meals without having to take turns in feeding the baby. This is one of the things that Mr. T and I wanted to practice as a family. Our meals will always be shared in the dining, over good stories between ourselves and soon between our children. And BLW allows us to do that exactly.

I can go on and on about the benefits of BLW but maybe those deserve a post on their own. For now, let me just share with you a short video of our amazing and fun journey in BLW from the year that passed. :)