Baby-Led Weaning: The Essential Guide to Introducing Solid Foods?and Helping Your Baby to Grow Up a Happy and Confident Eater

The Natural, No-Fuss, No-Purée Method for Starting Your Baby on Solid Foods

"[Baby-Led Weaning] makes life so much easier." -The Times, London

Baby-Led Weaning explodes the myth that babies need to be spoon-fed and shows why self-feeding from the start of the weaning process is the healthiest way for your child to develop. With baby-led weaning (BLW, for short), you can skip purées and make the transition to solid food by following your baby's cues.

At about six months, most babies are ready to join the family at the kitchen table and discover food for themselves. Baby-Led Weaning is the definitive guide to this crucial period in your child's development, and shows you how to help your baby:

• Participate in family meals right from the start
• Experiment with food at his or her own pace
• Develop new abilities, including hand-eye coordination and chewing
• Learn to love a variety of foods and to enjoy mealtimes

Baby-led weaning became a parenting phenomenon in the UK practically overnight, inspiring a fast-growing and now international online community of parents who practice baby-led weaning-with blogs and pictures to prove it! In Baby-Led Weaning, world-leading BLW authority Gill Rapley and early BLW practitioner and coauthor Tracey Murkett deliver everything you need to know about raising healthy, confident eaters.

Gill Rapley, PhD, has studied infant feeding and child development for many years. She worked as a public health nurse for over twenty years and has also been a midwife and a voluntary breastfeeding counselor. She developed the theory of baby-led weaning while studying babies’ developmental readiness for solids as part of her master’s degree and has since been awarded a PhD for research comparing spoon-feeding with self-feeding. Gill lives in Kent, England, with her husband and has three grown children, all of whom tried their best to show her that they didn’t need any help with solid foods.

Tracey Murkett is a writer, journalist, and breastfeeding peer supporter. After following baby-led weaning with her own daughter, she wanted to let other parents know how enjoyable and stress-free mealtimes with babies and young children can be. She lives in London with her partner and their daughter.