Weaning Sense: A Baby-Led Feeding Guide from 4 Months Onwards

by Megan Faure, Kath Megaw

Weaning Sense demystifies the weaning world helping you grow healthy tummies and happy babies (and mums) in no time! Packed full of delicious recipes, this book will help you feel less stressed and more informed when it comes to introducing your baby to solid food. Offering a weaning solution from expert authors based on your baby's sensory personality, this book helps you learn how to tap into your baby's cues on weaning and, using current research, gives you an easy-to-use, real food solution. As every baby is an individual, this book teaches you how to be mindful of your own baby's needs and advocates a collaborative baby-parent approach to help you know when is the best time to start weaning and what is the best technique to introduce them to solids. Chapters
1. COLLAB weaning
2. Cues
3. Own person
4. Led by science
5. Age appropriate
6. Baby friendly
7. How to guide
8. Ready stage, 4–6 months
9. Steady stage, 6–10 months
10. Go! stage, 10 months – toddler
11. Recipes

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

Published May 4, 2021

Reviews

[Carla Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.7 stars, rounded up. A very informative guide to weaning, but I’d take some of it with a pinch of salt and advise other parents to not feel obliged to follow the book to the letter. Take the advice that works for you and discard the rest. I believe the authors themselves encourage such an approach, too.

Pros:
- plenty of wonderful, diverse recipes.
- insight into babies’ different sensory personalities and how to adjust your weaning experience accordingly.
- science-backed information on nutrition.
- different approaches to food and weaning that offer flexible solutions for parents.
- advocates for parents to adjust all methods according to their babies as individuals.
- advocates for use of locally-sourced and seasonally-available foods, which is cost-effective for parents.
- baby-centric.

Cons:
- briefly touches on the topic of baby sleep, making claims that babies should sleep through the night at a certain age; a practice that is based on antiquated baby care ideologies and is by no means the rule parents should live by. This is a matter of opinion.
- the different sensory personalities are described very cut-and-dry, there is likely to be crossover of two or more descriptors for each individual baby, but this is up to the parent to decipher.
- demonizes the use of commercially-available baby foods, such as baby cereal. While these products are factually nutritionally inferior to freshly-prepared foods, parents shouldn’t feel shamed for using them if that is their best available option. All circumstances differ, no parent should feel like they are failing their child when they are doing their best to feed them. This book does provide methods for parents to choose the healthier of the commercially-available options, but these options can often be more expensive, too.

[Natalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a really helpful guide to introducing solids and keeping your baby interested in food as they grow older. I particularly liked the explanations of the different sensory personalities and how you should approach feeding your baby based on their sensory personality. I found the suggested intake of each food group per age a bit daunting and kind of impossible to hit, but I guess each baby and each mom is different.

[Becca Sloan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful and balanced. Hitting four months this week, so guess we’ll see if this book is helpful over the next few months!

[Maria Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth it. Very informative and explains very clearly every step to help lead you and your baby safely and trouble free onto solids.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully broken down book, easy to read segments which go through the different stages and considerations of starting solids (minimal discussion of baby lead weaning).

[Monika Malan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book! As a ftm I appreciate so much the clear directions on how to start weaning my baby and which cues to watch out for.
I love the emphasis on taking the lead from your baby, as well as the focus on what the science actually tells us. Since falling pregnant I've realized there is so much noise and so many opinions out there, having a resource that's practical, evidence based and respects your baby is a life saver.