Hi!
Welcome to the Fortified Family! I’m Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and mom of 7 and I specialize in baby-led weaning. I’m passionate about feeding strong families and making food fun.
Welcome to the Fortified Family! I’m Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and mom of 7 and I specialize in baby-led weaning. I’m passionate about feeding strong families and making food fun.
— Robert Orben, writer
Starting solid foods can be stressful.
There is so much conflicting information and ideas and opinions about the best way for your baby to start solid foods.
Perhaps you’ve struggled with traditional spoon-feeding in the past, or you’re just looking for a more natural way to start solids with your baby. Well if you want to give your baby a safe start to solid foods, raise an independent eater AND prevent picky eating...then baby-led weaning is exactly what you’ve been looking for!
This alternative to traditional spoon-feeding allows babies to feed themselves safe, wholesome, age-appropriate foods from their first bites. Baby-led weaning honors your baby’s inborn ability to regulate food intake and helps your baby build a healthy, life-long relationship with food...starting as early as 6 months.
Allowing your baby to eat safe, modified versions of the same foods the rest of the family eat is a centuries-old practice. In our modern era, however, the term “baby-led weaning” was coined by Gill Rapley, PhD co-author of the Baby-Led Weaning book and a champion of this feeding philosophy.
If you’re just starting out with baby-led weaning, I certainly recommend you read Dr. Rapley’s book Baby-Led Weaning The Essential Guide to learn more about the philosophy and ideals behind the baby-led weaning movement.
And for more information about how to put baby-led weaning into practice with your baby, take my free online workshop “BABY-LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS: How to get your baby to try 100 foods before turning 1 without you having to spoon-feed purees or buy pouches!” Click here to register.
Thanks to the work of Dr. Rapley and others’ work and research in the field, there is a real and emerging body of research supporting a baby-led approach to starting solids. Research shows us that babies who start solid foods with baby-led weaning are at no higher risk of choking than are babies who start with traditional spoon feeding...provided that parents and caregivers are educated about reducing choking risk.
Your baby should be 6 months of age plus exhibiting the other signs of readiness to feed before you start baby-led weaning. For tons of great info about getting a safe start to solid foods, subscribe to my podcast BABY-LED WEANING MADE EASY. Each week I release 2 podcast episodes designed to help you easily navigate the ins-and-outs of starting solid foods safely with baby-led weaning.
Purees are an important texture for babies to master. But they’re not the only textured of food babies can eat. Too often babies get stuck on purees for weeks and months on end, thereby being deprived of the ability and desire to try a wider variety of foods.
We know that babies who are exposed to the greatest variety of foods, flavors, tastes and textures - early and often - those are the babies who are more likely to become independent eaters and less likely to be picky eaters.
In 2016 I developed the 100 First Foods approach to starting solids with baby-led weaning. My 5-step feeding framework helps parents and caregivers safely offer the wide variety of foods, flavors, tastes and textures that babies can - and should be exposed to.
My Purees for a Few Days approach to baby-led weaning gently transitions baby from a liquid-only breastmilk and/or formula diet quickly through a number of pureed foods and on to traditional baby-led weaning foods. You can incorporate pureed foods fed to your baby by spoon AND honor the principles of baby-led weaning by using the pre-loaded spoon technique I teach as part of my Purees for a Few Days program.
For all of my courses, programs and additional free baby-led weaning resources, click here.
If you’re on board with building a self-feeding baby, sign up for my free “BABY-LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS” workshop where I’ll walk you through how to get your baby to try 100 foods before turning 1 without you having to spoon-feed purees or buy pouches.
Everyone on this free workshop gets a copy of my 100 FIRST FOODS list, so you can start SAFELY knocking out these 100 BLW foods for YOUR baby. Click here to see this week’s workshop times.
