How to feed a baby: baby led weaning

I wish I could be very confident and say I know exactly how to feed this baby, but the truth is that it's mostly guesswork.  I don't always feel that confident that I'm feeding her the 'right' things (except for breast feeding) at the 'right' times.  

This time around, with so much baby knowledge under my belt, (read: one child worth of experience) I thought it would be a great idea to work ahead and make a bunch of baby purees for the deep freeze before Little Lady was even ready to eat them.  I made batch after batch of carrots, peas, squash, sweet potatoes, apples, and pears.  I was unbelievably prepared to start Little Lady on solids that were homemade and yummy and all ready to go.

I was not prepared for my daughter to want to chew her purees.     

I thought it was curious how she started making chewing motions within a very short time of starting to eat oatmeal baby cereal.  As the weeks passed I realized she was kind-of trying to chew everything.  We introduced some finger foods (homemade bread, sweet potato fries) and she went to town.  Before I knew it she would not eat baby cereal and getting her to eat purees was a big, stressful job.  Little Miss Independent wanted to do it herself and I was left with some half-eaten boxes of cereal and a freezer with a whole lot of baby food waiting to be consumed. 

All by herself, Little Lady had started what is officially called Baby Led Weaning  and didn't let me in on the secret.  Baby Led Weaning sounds to me like it deals with stopping breast feeding or bottles, but it really refers to feeding babies by skipping the purees and spoon-feeding and instead going straight to finger foods.

It's actually a wonderful thing that Little Lady wants to feed herself.  It makes mealtime more pleasant for all of us.  She developed an incredibly accurate pincer grasp very early on, which seemed to lead to some wonderful fine motor skills.  She can eat what we eat, more or less, and that makes meal preparation much easier for me and I think it will make her a more adventurous eater.   It's amazing what she can chew with just gums - she has zero teeth!  She only eats yogurt and a few pureed fruits from a spoon, but otherwise she is enjoying the five food groups as much as her big brother, and is feeding herself nearly every bite.

How do you feed a baby?  With Little Lady, the answer is, "Let her decide!"