Infant Course

• Meet your experts.
• What this course is about and how to navigate.
• Safety caveat and applying this course to babies born prematurely.

• Why offering solids is important.
• What is Baby-led Weaning?
• What about spoon-feeding and baby food?
• Hunger and fullness cues, the importance of milk feeds and dealing with the mess.

• How do I know if my baby is ready for solids?
• My baby isn’t old enough for solids – what can I do to help get them ready?
• Myths about readiness cues.

• What are the Four Foundations of Mealtime?

• What can my baby feed themselves, and what should I not feed them?
• How to serve your baby a wide variety of foods.
• A video explaining how to serve almost 100 foods.
• Printable: a BLW Food Guide you can use for quick reference.

• What Baby-led Weaning looks like via a video play-by-play of 14 babies eating various foods.
• What to expect for your baby’s age and stage.

• What can I expect with BLW?
• What about food waste?
• How do I introduce a cup?
• What about utensils?
• How do I schedule this?
• What do I do if I started this later?
• And more.

• The difference between gagging and choking, and what to do if your baby gags.
• Choking hazard foods and how to keep your baby safe.
• How can I ease my fears about choking?

• Why early, frequent introduction of allergenic foods is important at 6+ months.
• How to offer the top 9 allergens safely.
• What do I do if my baby has an allergic reaction?

• How to help your baby get the nutrition they need.
• Answers to your questions about sugar, salt, infant cereals, juice and dining out.
• Supplements for babies.
• How solids affect digestion, constipation, teething and illness.

• What we expect by age 1.
• Our favorite gear.

• Smart spoon-feeding.
• Common spoon-feeding traps.
• How to promote independence during spoon-feeding.

• Troubleshooting multiple common challenges when feeding babies, including how to help babies who aren’t interested in solids, won’t put food in their mouth or won’t transition off of purees/spoon-feeding.
• Red flags that might warrant further evaluation.

• How to cook food using various cooking methods so it is safe for your baby.
• Cooking methods include: roasting, sauteing/stir-frying, steaming, boiling, grilling, air frying, pressure cooking, or slow cooking.

Baby-led weaning, or BLW, is an infant feeding philosophy that centers around self-feeding from the start. The term “weaning” can be confusing – in the United States, weaning means stopping breast- or bottle-feeding, but in much of the world weaning refers to how babies start solids. Thus, Baby-led Weaning is baby self-feeding.

In BLW, babies hold strips of soft foods, bring them to their mouth and learn to chew and swallow. BLW promotes independence at mealtime and might help prevent selective eating at some level. Parents tend to like how babies can eat what the family eats and they don’t have to make any special food. While you might find a lot of “rules” about BLW online, our online Infant Course focuses most on promoting independence and skill-building with babies and less about rigid rules or definitions. We are here to support you in doing what feels best for your family.

Our Infant Course focuses on self-feeding and BLW, as well as how to transition off purees if you have been spoon-feeding and how to offer pureed foods/baby foods in a way your baby can feed them to themselves. We believe that parents have to do what’s comfortable, and for some families that means starting with purees on a loaded spoon before transitioning to pieces of food. Our course helps you understand what’s safe, what foods to offer babies, how to handle milk feeds, and more.

We recommend starting solids around 6 months of age, so taking the course around 5 months is ideal. However, since it doesn’t expire you can purchase it much earlier than that to use when you’re ready. 

If your baby is older than 6 months but is not yet self-feeding, the course is great for you to learn how to transition from purees/baby food to finger foods. 

If your baby is 10 months or older and is already self-feeding, it’s time for our Toddler/Kid course.

The core content of the course is 2 hours long. Additional sections like troubleshooting, smart spoon feeding and cooking methods take up to 1.5 additional hours if taken in their entirety, but many clients do not need all of the content in this course. To customize your learning experience and cut down on run time, the Infant Course can be watched as videos, listened to podcast-style or read as a script.

Babies born prematurely may show readiness signs for solid foods at a different age than babies born full-term. We recommend that parents of premature infants talk with their pediatrician and therapists about readiness cues and how to safely begin feeding given their specific medical or developmental needs. Many premature infants have utilized our Infant Course successfully!

Our course focuses on self-feeding solid foods. “Weaning” in the term Baby-led Weaning is all about introducing solids, not weaning from the breast or bottle. Our Infant Course also includes an ebook that can help you wean from the breast or bottle when you and your baby are ready.

Absolutely! Our course helps you move toward successful self-feeding, now matter what texture your baby eats now. In our Troubleshooting and Smart Spoon-feeding sections, we talk all about how to transition babies off of spoon-feeding and purees. Baby struggling to transition? We also detail a Texture Graduation Protocol that can help.