BLW
Also called blw, baby-led weaning, baby led weaning, BLWing
BLW stands for baby-led weaning, a way of starting solid food where the baby feeds themselves pieces of family food instead of being spoon-fed purées. Parents use it as a noun and a verb, so a baby can be BLW and a parent can BLW.
How it's said
I'm still undecided whether to do BLW or not (my baby is 5 months + 1 week).
FWIW, my son was BLW.
BLW is no more or less "baby led" than spoon feeding.
Who says it
In the UK, weaning is the everyday word for starting solid food, which is the sense BLW uses.
Not to be confused with
- Weaning can also mean moving a baby off breast milk or formula. Baby-led weaning doesn't mean that: milk carries on and solid food is added beside it.
Where it came from
The approach has been traced to online parent forums from around 2001. It gained its momentum from Gill Rapley, a British health visitor of more than 20 years, whose 2008 book Baby-led Weaning, written with Tracey Murkett, gave it a name and a theoretical basis. Rapley says many parents told her they had done it on instinct but never talked about it because it had no name.
BLW caught on in the UK and Australia first and more recently in the United States. A pediatrics journal calls the name a misnomer, since the baby isn't weaned from breast milk or formula at all.