- Meet your experts.
- What this course is about and how to navigate.
- Safety caveat and applying this course to babies born prematurely.
Expert guidance for starting solid foods.
Overwhelmed by offering solids to your baby? Our Infant Course offers realistic, step-by-step guidance for introducing solid foods so you can feed your baby safely and with confidence. It’s a perfect fit for babies 6 months and older who are new to solids and babies who have been spoon-fed but want to transition to self-feeding.
Baby-led weaning done safely.
Our course focuses on Baby-led Weaning, which means your baby learns the skills to independently feed themselves. Whether your baby is brand new to solids or they have been eating pureed baby food, our course helps you to take the next step toward self-feeding at a pace that feels comfortable to you. Our experts are here to help make your baby’s transition to solids seamless.
ABOUT
Infant course details
Our two-hour Infant Course was created for busy parents who need practical, expert guidance on demand. Take it at your own pace, skip what you don’t need and go back for a refresher as often as you’d like. Each lesson contains a video you can watch, a script you can read and an audio file you can listen to so you can choose which learning style is best for you. Our courses don’t expire as long as we are hosting them.
We understand how hard it is to enjoy mealtime when you’re stressed about how your child eats, so we created our online courses to help families all over the world have access to our time-tested tips and expert techniques from the comfort of their homes.
After bringing thousands of clients through this process, we can anticipate your biggest questions and concerns, and we’ve answered them in this easy-to-use resource. No need to scour the internet or read a bunch of books – we have a singular guide that has you covered. This course includes:
- How to get your baby ready for solids and when your baby should start
- What foods to serve and how to prepare them
- A printable BLW Food Guide that shows you how to serve almost 100 different foods with photos and descriptions.
- Choking hazards and keeping your baby safe
- Videos of babies eating and what gagging looks like (and why gagging is normal at first!)
- Allergenic foods and nutrition
- Scheduling and milk feeds and introducing cups
- How to help your baby be successful with this process and what to do if they’re struggling
- Troubleshooting tips for babies who aren’t interested in food, struggle to transition off of purees, struggle with chewing/gagging, don’t like getting messy, etc.
- A Milk and Weaning eBook for transitioning of breastfeeding/bottles when you’re ready.
- 14 beautiful printables, including a letter for caregivers about our philosophies, choking hazards, Baby’s First Grocery List, a meal plan and a Cooking Crash Course.
- And much, much more!
Our course is video-based and includes footage of 14 babies feeding themselves, in-studio footage of Judy and Megan and short, engaging animations that help you understand each concept.
When you purchase our course, you’ll get access to our Clients Only Facebook Group, where you’ll find support from our Feeding Littles Team. You’ll also become part of a community of like-minded parents who share tips, answer questions and offer encouragement – without the judgement you might find in so many places on the Internet.
We are so thankful for the Feeding Littles Infant Course!
“I’ve been a terribly picky eater my whole life and I so desperately wanted our daughter to enjoy all kinds of foods. She is just barely one, and she is already such an adventurous and intuitive eater. It has been so fun to watch her experience new tastes, flavors and textures. Our family is always very impressed when they come to visit and can see how well she does with us at the table.”
INSIDE SCOOP
What will you learn during the course?
Welcome and introduction
Step 1. Understanding BLW and why solids are important
- 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.
Step 2. Getting started: readiness cues and how to prep my baby for starting solids
- 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.
Step 3: The Four Foundations of Mealtime
- What are the Four Foundations of Mealtime?
Step 4: What do I feed them, and how do I serve food safely?
- 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.
Step 5: What does Baby-led Weaning look like?
- 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.
Step 6: Answers to your most common questions
- 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.
Step 7: Safety and gagging
- 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?
Step 8: Allergenic foods
- 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?
Step 9: Nutrition, meal planning, digestion and teething
- 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.
Step 10: Putting it all together and next steps
- What we expect by age 1.
- Our favorite gear.
Bonus: Spoon-feeding or traditional feeding
- Smart spoon-feeding.
- Common spoon-feeding traps.
- How to promote independence during spoon-feeding.
Bonus: Troubleshooting and red flags
- 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.
Bonus: Cooking methods
- 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.
FAQs
Infant Course
What is Baby-led Weaning?
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.
Does your Infant Course teach only Baby-led Weaning?
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.
How old should my baby be when I take your course?
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.
How long is the Infant 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.
My baby was premature. Can I take your Infant Course?
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!
I’m not breastfeeding. Can I take your Infant Course?
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.
We started with purees and baby foods. Will your Infant Course help me?
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.
Where to go next?
After completing our infant course, be sure to follow up with our Toddler & Kid Course, which is the next step in raising an adventurous, intuitive eater. The Toddler & Kid Course will empower you with expert tips for preventing or managing picky eating. You’ll find realistic, flexible guidance on nourishing your growing child, no matter how your family likes to eat. This course is perfect for kids ages 10 months all the way to 10 years old.
Stressed out at mealtime? We have you covered. Our Toddler & Kid Course was designed to help parents weather the ups and downs of childhood picky eating and feel confident feeding their kids from toddlerhood through elementary school.
Our Toddler and Kid course includes practical recommendations on feeding your family while fostering a healthy relationship with food. We arm you with strategies for dealing with common mealtime challenges, including food throwing, refusing favorite meals and school lunch drama. Our course offers 96 meal ideas and 36 snack ideas that your kids will love.
We believe parents and caregivers know their children best – we want our courses to help you become an expert in feeding your kids.
Get in touch with any questions you might have, and be sure to join the Feeding Littles community on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest