Our Favorite Gear for Starting Solid Foods and Baby-led Weaning

Are you getting ready for your baby to begin their solid food journey? Congratulations! It’s an exciting (and messy) milestone, and we hope that it’s a fun experience for your family!

We’ve walked alongside hundreds of thousands of families as they begin their journey with solid foods, and we’ve found and tested specific products that we absolutely love for this process. In our online Infant Course we teach Baby-led Weaning, or infant self-feeding, because it allows your baby to have independence with food right from the start. However, no matter how you start solid foods – whether it’s via Baby-led Weaning or traditional spoon-feeding – having the right gear is essential.

Here are our tried-and-true picks:

NumNum GOOtensils

Our favorite spoons are also the #1 baby/toddler spoon on Amazon, and for good reason – they make self-feeding much easier by reducing frustration! Food sticks to GOOtensils better than any other “baby spoon,” they’re the perfect length for small hands and arms, and babies and toddlers love putting them in their mouths. GOOtensils have been our tried-and-true favorite product for over a decade.

We created our own custom 3-pack GOOtensil set with NumNum because we wanted our clients to have an easy way to practice the Three Spoon Circus. You see, when babies are self-feeding they tend to hold onto their spoons and don’t want to give them back to re-load with more food. When you introduce a third spoon and “trade up,” your baby is more likely to hand back one of the empty spoons in their hand. Cool, right?

You can also use the GOOtensils as teethers before you introduce solid foods. Learn more about that here.

BapronBaby Baprons

Baprons are the only bib we recommend because they tie around the torso, not the neck, and babies love to wear them. (Most babies start to pull off bibs by 10 months old, but not Baprons!) Perfect for sizes 6 months - 3T, Baprons are amazing at keeping kids' clothes clean while allowing them to explore and get messy with food. Wash them in the sink, dishwasher or washing machine and let them air dry quickly. Since they’re made from a waterproof material, your child can eat just about anything and still keep their clothes spotless. Our clients always say to us, “Once you go Bapron you’ll never go back!”

ezpz Tiny Cup

We recommend practicing cup drinking starting at 6 months of age when you introduce solid foods. Our favorite first cup is the ezpz Tiny Cup, since it’s weighted at the bottom, small for small hands and easy for your baby to learn to use. Open cups are recommended before you try any other types of cup, and the Tiny Cup makes it much easier for your baby to learn to drink water or other liquid!

Honeybear Straw Cup

After your baby learns how to drink from an open cup, it’s time for a straw cup! We love the Honeybear Cup because it makes straw drinking so easy – simply put water in the cup, squeeze the bear’s tummy and watch water go up the straw! Once your baby figures out how to use a straw, you can use any type of straw cup.

A high chair that promotes good positioning

We recommend high chairs that allow your baby to sit as you would – with their feet supported, their knees bent and their back upright or leaning forward. Why does this matter? When babies are well-positioned and comfortable for mealtime, they’re much more likely to sit and eat! It can make a massive difference. Check out our favorite high chairs here.

Our Infant Course

Starting solid foods can be confusing, especially with some much information floating around online. Get exactly what you need in two hours with our Infant Course, beloved by families worldwide! In this course we’ll teach you:

How to prepare your baby for solid foods – there are some great activities to try long before you put them in the high chair!
How to know when to start with your baby
Which foods to offer and which ones to avoid
Safety, gagging and choking
How to cut food so your baby can pick it up – without having to look up every type of food each time
Allergenic foods and what to do if your baby has a reaction
Nutrition and high-iron foods
Cup drinking
How to manage or prevent solids-induced constipation
Troubleshooting if things don’t go as planned

We look forward to walking you through this journey!

Our Infant Course walks you through every question you have about solids, including safety,. allergenic foods, cup drinking, nutrition and more. Check it out here.