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We haven't started yet (she is five months now), but plan to next month. We are going to start with purees. The doctors we go to strongly recommend against BLW to start, so we are going with the route they suggest.

I will probably do a combo but we are going to start with puréed foods.

Good thread ! Following ! We are planning on starting with purées right now !

I'm not really sure yet. I guess it depends on when we start solids and how he reacts to them? His first food will most likely be a puree (how do you guys get the accent on the e??), then we'll go from there.

We've only been doing solids for a short time, but are doing a combo. She's had purees/regular baby food, but we've also let her chew on banana and cauliflower. We're sticking to fruits and veggies that are low allergy so we haven't been waiting as long in between introducing new ones.

We started with purees BC I was to scared to do blw right off the bat. Slowly started doing blw around 7.5 months and now at 9 months he eats what we eat and still I give him purees about once a day just BC I wanna make sure.he is full

I put a combo but we started with purées. Now at 8 months we do lots of chunky purées on "loaded spoons" (she loves taking the lead and grabbing the spoon into her mouth). I've given her larger pieces of a banana and avacado but she really doesn't know what to do with it. I think I would be too nervous to do full baby led weaning. I know there is a difference between gagging and choking but still hearing her gag on something makes me go "OMG!"

@pastemoo: it was the opposite for us. We started with BLW and he wasn't too interested. Mostly he threw it on the ground. His daycare started giving purées and now that's all he wants.

I'm hoping we can go back to him eating what we eat soon (he'll be 7 months in a week). I'm not jazzed about buying baby food, but I don't have the time to make my own purées.

We're doing straight baby led weaning. We started a little "late" - about 6.5 months. At first I gave him easily grabbable, softer foods (ie, cheese, steamed broccoli) but now I give him anything. I try to have dinner with him most nights and sometimes lunch but thats not consistent. We also don't have any history of allergies.

Advantages:
i literally feed him off my plate. No extra work.
Forces us to eat healthier - no more popcorn for dinner if we're being lazy
I don't worry about how much he eats. "Food before 1 is just for fun". He gets a variety of food.
No added costs beyond a bib and a high chair since he feeds himself directly off the tray.
We can eat at the same time as a family; I'm not busy with feeding him and then trying to eat myself.

Disadvantages:
The mess. Most nights it's straight into the bath after dinner. We do have the ikea frog-catcher bib so that helps (he also goes in and gets food that he drops. It's hilarious).
The gagging takes some getting used to. He's figured it out pretty quick but it's still eeeeeeeeek-inducing.

@sera_87: agree with all your pros. I haven't cooked anything special for him and it's so nice to sit down as a family at dinner. And I agree with the disadvantages. It can be nerve racking for me at times when he gets a big chunk in his mouth. I kind of freak and my husband remains calms and he just spits out the chunk.

Starting at 6m, cereal followed by purees, per ped reccomendations to check for allergies first w/ cereals then veggies, fruits, meats. We didn't continue on cereals like we were supposed to though.

We started with purees around 5 months. We originally started with rice cereal at 4.5 months, but LO did not do very well, so we took a few weeks off, then re-started solids at 5 months with sweet potatoes. He took to them right away. LO is turning 8 months this week, and he's been a great eater ever since. We just introduced Puffs this past month, and are working on incorporating more finger foods as we speak.

I said purees and (semi-jokingly) breastmilk for life!! We started purees at 5.5 months, but very slowly. She still nurses often throughout the day, and only recently stoppes nursing at night. So now she gets baby oatmeal mixed with a jar of pureed fruit for breakfast, a jar of fruit and/or veggies for lunch, then half jar of meat and a jar of veggies for dinner. Occasionally, if we are eating something she can chew, I will give her some. But, she didn't have teeth until 9 months and couldn't chew anything. She loves puffs, yogurt melts, cheerios, and freeze dries fruit for snacks. And I plan on starting to give her more cheese and yogurt soon.

We were totally on board with BLW, and we started that first. But then we realized that DD really liked being fed from a spoon, so we ended up doing a little of each.

we started with purees because she seemed really uninterested in food when we started showing it to her, she didn't even know what to do with it, so i doubted she would figure out how to "chew" anything. she has a sensitive gag reflex too, so i thought BLW would be too much for her at first.

We did the normal purée route with our son. With our daughter, we started with purees as well but by 7 months, we switched to BLW since she was more interest in feeding herself.

@sera_87: This is pretty much us exactly.

ETA: We started around 6.5 months because he was sitting in my lap during dinner one night and grabbed chunks of butternut squash off of my plate and shoved it in his mouth.

@mrskc: it's amazing watching the chunks just drop out of their mouths!

Miss A is six months and we're doing a combo of BLW and purées. Favourite finger foods are slices of raw apple, peach etc, raw salad vegetables (tomato, capsicum etc) and grated cheese.

When we do purées I tend to pre-load the spoon and let A feed herself which she's getting pretty good at!

TBH the gagging doesn't really bother me and A is already getting much better at managing her eating.

@boiledpnut: Doc gave us the go-ahead, plus she sits up assisted and is really interested in what we eat. We don't give her a lot, but she definitely swallows what's in her mouth and tries to put the spoon in her mouth when she's holding it. At this point, it's more for fun. Her milk/formula eating hasn't decreased, and she gets maybe 1-2 tablespoons of food every other day.

ETA - A is 4 months now.

I started fruit purées at almost 7 months. EBF before that. Now at 8 months we do 2 meals a day. a finger food meal every couple of days (avocado, banana, cheese, yoghurt etc), and chunky blended whatever I'm eating the other meals.

We started with purées because DH wasn't comfortable giving him finger foods first, so we compromised a little

He definitely gags on the finger foods, but it doesn't bother me much at all