What My 8 Month Old Eats In A Week // BABY LED WEANING tips, tricks, & recipes!!!

Hello, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Delilah and I make videos here weekly. I've been sharing our life and our journey of starting a family young. A common video that people love and request whenever my babies are starting to eat is a what my baby eats in a day video. And so I figured this time I would take it a little step further and I would share what my baby eats in a week. We do a mix of baby led weaning and a little bit of spoon feeding but mostly baby led weaning. I really only resort to spoon feeding on occasion depending on the situation. I'm no expert, I'm just a mom doing this for the third time so everything that I know is mostly based off of personal experience. I'll try to make most of his food homemade or like he'll eat off my plate at dinner time depending on what we're eating. But I'm also not opposed to the odd store bought snack or food pouch or whatever here and there. My goal with this video is just to give you a lot of inspiration, give you some good baby food ideas, some snack ideas, some inspiration on how to go about doing baby led weaning. Also keeping in mind William has no teeth, he's currently working on his two bottom, like I can feel them coming through but they're not quite there yet. And so everything that he's eating is totally appropriate for- ow! Is totally appropriate for babies with no teeth. So join me for the next week as I feed my baby I guess. Now that my shirt is covered in baby drool. Excuse the state of our kitchen, we are currently in the process of a budget friendly DIY kitchen makeover. Yesterday meal prepped a whole bunch of food which is what I'm pulling from today. So I've got some baby iron fortified pancakes here that I'm just gonna pop in the toaster. I've been starting what I call meal prep Mondays which has come in so handy especially at this age when they're just starting to eat. You really have to modify everything so that they are able to eat it. So I like to have some snacks I can quickly grab and go. And this book has been so handy for that. I have marked off- I'm gonna make his food first so that he can eat and then I'll finish telling you about this. What you see here is a homemade baby pancake with a fruit lax spread which is really good for helping keeping him regular. And on the side I added some steamed apple and pear wedges. So yesterday I made some iron fortified baby pancakes which he's eating right now. I made some like peanut butter baby cereal fingers basically like a baby's version of a peanut butter cookie. I made applesauce, I made pear sauce and when I made those as well I also just set aside a little bit of the steamed wedges so that for situations like this he can eat it on his own and then I don't have to spoon feed him or anything like that. But I do like to make some kind of a puree each week so that I have something to grab when we're going out of the house. I just find it's much easier to fill a reusable pouch with a baby food, a puree of some kind rather than packing something like this because it's easier to just feed him a pouch on the go. I think that was everything I made for him this week. Just a couple snacks that I can easily grab and all of those recipes I found in this book. This has been my number one go to book when it comes to baby led weaning. I got this when I was a first time mom really trying to figure out what baby led weaning was all about. So there's a lot of super great information on how to begin. There's even like meal plans and stuff which I personally never use but really good to reference to. And then so many good recipes like great beginner baby recipes which we're in right now and then breakfast, lunch and dinner recipes for when he's a little older. I can link this below. It has been so useful, so helpful. Everything that he's eating right now came from here. A couple weeks ago I made this fruit lax spread which has... It has dates, raisins, prunes, wheat bran. This lasts for a month in your fridge and it little goes a long way. So you can even freeze it to make it last longer. I find it helps so much with keeping him regular and he loves the taste of it. So I'll spread it on pancakes, I'll spread it on toast, I'll spread it on whatever and it's a nice alternative to jam. I'm also trying to teach him how to learn a sippy cup or a straw or some form of cup. This is a really great one. It has a weighted bottom so it's more likely to stay standing. It's small for his little hands. It's got a straw. He hasn't quite figured it out yet but we with all our babies have skipped right past bottles. Never really felt the need to use bottles and then when it gets to this point, it just doesn't make sense to give him a bottle. I'd rather just go straight into sippy cups or straw cups. He's got the concept but he hasn't figured out how to suck so it's just a matter of time. You gotta let him figure it out. That's all for breakfast and I'll see you at lunch. So I've slept out for a little bit this morning and it was right over the time when William would normally feed and so I told Zach if he's hungry just feed him something. So they were having lunch. They had leftover soup and scones that I made from scratch yesterday. William nibbled on a little bit of scone as well as some puffs. All he really had was just a snack, a little nibble to get him by. So I have some frozen yogurt that I put in here. This is a Greek yogurt that's flavored and slightly sweet. There's no honey or anything in here. That's something you want to watch out for when feeding babies. Honey and maple syrup, their stomachs can't quite handle that yet so it's not recommended they have that. But even a little bit of plain Greek yogurt with some sugar mixed in or some berry puree or something like that is really good for them. I froze it on these little silicone feeders so that it would help maybe soothe his gums a little bit because they're pretty inflamed and sore because he's teething. He seems to be enjoying it quite a bit. When he's done with that, I'm also going to give him one or two of these little peanut butter cereal fingers that I meal prepped yesterday. I have it easy because he's really not picky and he eats most things and he does really well with his gagging reflexes and everything. Some babies are going to gag a little more than others. One of my kids was definitely a gagger. The other two were not. It is scary but watching them closely, making sure you know the difference between gagging and choking is really important. If you're new to baby lead weaning, definitely do your research so you're more comfortable with that. I know that's definitely something that had me hesitant to do baby lead weaning in the first place but it really has been so good for our family. For dinner, we are having Southwest Rice Bowls of sorts. We've got cilantro lime rice, chicken, roasted corn, beans, sweet potato, avocado, all the good stuff. Very often when we eat something, I will modify our meal so that it's safe for William to eat as well. What I've done is on this plate I've got some rice just like we have it, some chicken cut in small pieces, some roasted sweet potato also cut in small pieces that's nice and soft for him to eat. Then with the avocado, what I've done is cut it into slices or little fingers so it's easy for him to grab. Then I rolled it in baby cereal. What this does is two things. It makes it easier for him to grab because it's not so slippery and it gives him a little bit extra iron and vitamins and stuff like that. This is William's version of our meal. While I was roasting the sweet potato, I also set aside a small portion of sweet potato with just olive oil, no seasonings or anything. I'm going to blend it up and I'll probably mix it with the applesauce or the pear puree that I also did this week. Then he has a little bit more variety to his baby food. Checking in a couple days later, William's getting hungry so I'm going to go ahead and feed him. This is leftovers from a couple days ago. We've got some sweet potatoes, some cilantro lime rice, some refried beans. Then I went ahead and rolled some banana that I sliced into quarter strips and some baby cereal. That is one of his favorites. He loves bananas. Yesterday for breakfast, he had a fried egg that I cut into strips, some shredded cheddar cheese and some steamed pear wedges. He was not a huge fan of this meal, but he did really enjoy the few pieces of homemade banana muffin that Zach shared with him later. For lunch, he had homemade baby pancakes again with the fruit lax spread again. He also had some homemade pear sauce, pear puree. He wasn't so sure how he felt about that one at first, but he ate the entire thing down to the last drop. That one I did spoon feed him just because I wasn't in the mood to clean up a giant mess. Last night, he was actually at Gammy and Poppins for the evening and over supper, so I packed him a supper. I packed him the sweet potato applesauce mash that I had made the day before. Since I wasn't sure how he was going to react to that, I packed up some backup snacks as well. I packed him some pureed prunes that I had open in the fridge and some of the homemade baby peanut butter cookies. Then this morning, he ate a huge breakfast. In hindsight, I normally would have given him about half the amount that I gave him, but he ended up eating most of what was in front of him. I warmed up another one of those baby pancakes, again with the fruit lax spread on it. Then he had some yogurt on the side, which I just let him dive right into, let him do his thing. He loved it. Then again, I gave him some banana in quartered lengths, just rolled in some baby cereal. He has been eating big this week, and I feel like his appetite just keeps growing and growing. William gets two to three meals a day, depending on the day. In addition to the food that I feed him, we also do breastfeeding on a very regular basis. We feed on demand, and we haven't dropped any feeds or anything like that yet. He is still getting quite a bit of milk. I'd say we nurse four or five times a day, and then two, three, sometimes four times at night as well. We are having toast for breakfast, so William is as well. The key to doing toast with babies with no teeth is to make sure that it's not too gummy, and it's not too crispy, because that obviously would hurt their gum. What I like to do is butter on both sides. This softens it a little bit, but doesn't make it gummy. It also adds a little bit of extra calories as well. Then I did peanut butter, and I did banana, and some pear sauce on the side, which he has already made a huge mess of. For lunch, William had the baby pancakes and fruit lock spread. Once again, it's a go-to. He loves it. On the side, I also cut up a bunch of grapes, really, really small, so it's a good way for him to practice his pincer grasp. For supper, we got Chinese food takeout, and I don't feel comfortable with William eating that quite yet, so I went into my stash of pre-made food. I gave him a few of these baby peanut butter cookie finger things, and I am going to mix together some yogurt and prunes. This needs to be eaten, and ... I'll wait a minute. This needs to be eaten, and he loves yogurt, so I'm going to mix this in. It'll also help make it a little bit more filling. I'm going to give you some prune yogurt. I think you're going to love it. I think so. I'm going to go ahead and pop these into the freezer just because I don't want them to go bad. I'm sure they'll be fine for another week or so, but I'm not sure William is going to eat this much in the next few days, so I'm just going to put them in the freezer before they have a chance to go bad. Today is Sunday, which means we went to church, and so this morning before we went to church, I made a family batch of scrambled eggs, and William had some of that. We were out for lunch, so I ended up packing him some of the leftover sweet potato and apple mixture from before, so he ate some of this as well as snacked on some rice crackers throughout the service. You can probably hear he's getting hungry again, so I'm going to reach into my stash, my stash of pre-cooked baby food, and he's going to have baby cookies. Yeah, he's smiling at me, so he's going to have some of these. Should we do some yogurt and prunes again? Yeah? And then maybe you could dip them in there too? Okay, we're going to do yogurt and prunes again. This is a good combo too, because he can take these, he can dip them in the yogurt mixture, and there's a variety of different ways for him to enjoy this meal. We have a really nice sticky bowl and sticky plate from Mushi that we love, as well as these fun little baby spoons that are just really nice for him to hold and grab. There you go. The introduction to foods is mostly just sensory and learning and getting the hang of it, and not so much for nourishment. For nourishment, of course, but they get most of their nourishment from either breast milk, thanks, or formula in the first year of life. So you don't need to worry too much if they don't eat much, if they mostly just play with it and make a mess, because it's mostly about the experience right now. I think today is going to be a sink bath kind of day, hey? Okay, yesterday was a busy day, so I kind of forgot to share what William ate yesterday, so we're going to pick this back up. It is Tuesday, we've got two more days left of this. This morning I'm going to make a family batch of oatmeal. I'll show you how I modify that specifically for William. So it's pretty much the same thing as what I made for the rest of the family. Just do oats and water, and then usually I do maple syrup or honey, but because William can't have that, I just went ahead and made the family batch with some brown sugar instead. I also added a little bit of flaxseed, ground flaxseed, just because it's good for you. When it's all cooked, I like to loosen it up with a little bit of cow's milk, and that's where I serve it to the rest of the family, and that's how we eat it. But for William, I also added some of the, hold on a second, a little bit of the homemade pear sauce, as well as the fruit lax spread to William's, just to give it some more flavor, some more nutrients, and then I topped it off with some hemp hearts, because I realized I had hemp hearts in my pantry, which I normally don't have, but it's got some nutritional value, so I might as well add it on top. And then on the side, he's having some of his favorite cereal-covered bananas. So for dinner today, William is having some hard-boiled eggs. He's going to try some hard-boiled egg for the first time. I ended up cutting these into eighths instead of quarters. I figured that would be easier for him to eat. He's got one of these baby cookies again, and then some frozen yogurt as well. Just a little mishmash of everything. He doesn't love eggs, at least not fried eggs or scrambled eggs, so we're going to try a hard-boiled. I did a bit of a softer yolk so it's not so dry in his mouth, so hopefully he'll be able to eat it easier. Let's try that. Obviously, we go for the sweet stuff first, right? You're like your mama. Yeah. Is it kind of weird? You don't know about that one. Want some water? There you go. There you go! Good job! Yay! This week, he finally figured out how to drink out of a straw. Woohoo! Okay, we are on the last day, day seven. Today, William is having the same thing for breakfast as he had yesterday. The oatmeal mixture, except I am spoon-feeding it to him this time just because... Oh, there's Theo's toast. Just because sometimes it's the easier thing to do. But when I do that, I like to give him some food that he can eat on his own. He's got a couple of peanut butter cookies. We're all out of bananas, so he doesn't get that today. Last night was kind of a gong show, and I ended up just giving William whatever I could quickly grab and give him, so I think he had some rice crackers, some of these baby cookies, some of the baby pancakes I still have in the freezer. We are getting to the last of my supply, and I'm going to have to meal prep a little bit more here soon. But it is moments like those that I'm very thankful that I have prepared that food in advance so that when I'm struggling to just keep up with everything and he's hungry and grumpy, then I can just whip it out and give it to him. We were out for lunch unexpectedly, so I wasn't prepared. We all just kind of snacked. Today, we didn't really have a lunch, so I just pulled whatever snacks I found in the diaper bag for William to eat. He had baby crackers, some applesauce, stuff like that. And now for supper, we made a HelloFresh meal, and he's having... He's hungry. He's having exactly what we're having, some chicken, broccoli, and rice, and I've just shredded it up real small so that he's able to eat it. And that's it. That is the last meal for this week of what my baby eats. I'll leave a lot of links below for some really great resources. There's some really good Instagram pages I follow that are really, really helpful with advice and tips on how to get your baby to eat and stuff like that. Make sure to go check those out. Thanks for watching. See you in a minute. Bye-bye.