Our Adventures in New Orleans: Solid Food Fun: Sweet Potato!

Maddox is a solid food eater! Well, kind of... more like he plays with solid foods and maybe some of it gets into his mouth and even more maybe some of it gets swallowed. At any rate, we have officially begun our adventure into the messy (and fun!) land of solid foods. His first food was sweet potato. We took pictures and video, which are posted below.

Before we get to those, though, I wanted to say a bit about how we are going about introducing solids. We decided to do baby lead weaning (also known as baby lead solids). Rather than feed Maddox purees, we are feeding him finger food sized chunks of food. We liked this approach for several reasons:

It lets baby control what and how much enters their mouth. They place the food in their mouth, so they also have more control of what actually gets swallowed.
Because the baby has more control, they only really swallow food when they are ready. If they aren't ready, they gag it back up and spit it out.
There is a lower risk of choking because baby is controlling the food in their mouth rather than having it placed in their mouth for them.
It seemed more like a game (food exploration!) this way because Maddox can play with the food... and maybe get some of it in his mouth.

We have read up on this approach a lot and it made sense to us. You can read more about it here: http://www.babyledweaning.com/some-tips-to-get-you-started/

I wanted to point this out because I didn't want people to think we were nuts giving Maddox chunks of food. Or, as you'll notice, that we are terrible parents because we laugh when he is gagging on food. Gagging is a natural reflex and it is what they are suppose to do if they aren't comfortable swallowing yet. Gagging does not equal choking. :)

Ok, on to the super cute pictures and videos!