As a new mom almost two years ago, I got swept up in researching baby led weaning while pregnant and decided that’s what we were going to do when it was time for my son. Well, by the time my son was 6 months old and ready in February 2020, I got nervous. How do I cut these things for him? Any foods to avoid? Do I have to introduce 1 food at a time for a certain # of days to help show allergies? It doesn’t all have to be mushy/purée food? Even with looking into baby led weaning, I still had so many questions and though I love my pediatrician, they gave such outdated information that I wasn’t sure where to turn! Thankfully I found SolidStarts on Instagram (right when they first started!) and that was the support and guidance I needed this whole time! Save to say, my son will be turning 2 this august and is an AMAZING eater. Every time we go to a family members house, out to eat at a restaurant, or even random social media posts, everyone says how they are amazed with how well he eats and I have to give a big THANK YOU to Jenny and all of the team at Solid Starts because this mama would’ve been so lost and confused without all of their information and support! I highly recommend not only this app but checking out their Instagram page too. So many helpful tips and advice and seeing real babies with how and what they are eating. Thank you again Solid Starts! I’ve got one HAPPY eater!

As a first time mama, I had fed my son too many purees at first and when it was time to feed him solid foods, I wouldn’t feed him much of a variety because he would try something and act like he didn’t like it so I would just think to myself, “Okay. He doesn’t like that. I’m not going to serve it again.” This led to him being picky and not really willing to try new foods. I wouldn’t say that he’s extremely picky, but still.. I knew that I wanted to do something completely different the second time around. As a second time mama, I decided to go with baby led weaning. I knew that I was going to do it, even if I didn’t know how. Right as I was having my second child start solids, I found solid starts. And thank goodness because it helped me so much. I was able to serve him a variety of foods, have him eat what we ate by learning how to cut it and just make simple modifications like not adding salt or sugar. It was slow in the beginning, mostly because I was always afraid of him choking. But they teach you the difference between choking and gagging as well. And as he for better at eating I became more confident in what I was doing as well. I owe it all to solid starts. I would recommend this app to any of my mama friends or family. So great to see my son eat 3 meals a day at only 10 months old and my first son willing to try new things as well.

I’ve used Solidstarts Instagram to learn how to cut foods and recipe ideas. However, the FREE app is beyond convenient to search exactly what you’re trying to serve. I’ve used his app for my first child. He’s now 20 months and thriving with food. He eats what we eat and I owe it all to Solidstarts. My daughter is 7 months and we started solids about a month ago. I’ve since forgotten how to serve a lot of foods for her age range. But then I can easily search the app and see how to cut foods, how to prepare, nutrition facts, history of the food etc. and it’s all backed by specialists, doctors and research. There’s also a free recipe included with each food they have in their system. Which is a win-win. You can decide to purchase a subscription to track foods. Their website also provides even MORE searchable data. They have a very advanced search engine which allows you to look up things like “prevent picky eating”, “baby eating fast” etc. and all the articles will populate on that topic. It’s amazing what this company is doing. I recommend this to all of the parents I know. I can’t thank them enough for their hard work and dedication!!

The information this app provides is wonderful. The articles are helpful, the instructions on how to prepare different foods safely give me peace of mind, and the guidance on introducing allergens made it much less scary. BUT, the functionality of this app is absolute trash. When I try to add a meal to the tracker, it always logs it for the following day and I have to manually go in and individually change every ingredient to the correct day—it’s infuriating! The allergen introduction feature also just stopped working for me after pistachio. Usually when you complete an allergen, the next one pops up for you to start, but the app just stopped working once we hit pistachio. I hate the meal planning feature, and I dislike that you need to complete these other modules (like dip and bite) before it will give you instructions on the next allergen. Why can’t I just go into the allergen list, click one, and get the instructions and meals for introducing that allergen?? Logging foods is so annoying that I just stopped using the feature after a few weeks. I will also say this app is very white and has little to no information on many of the Chinese vegetables we consume. Lastly, the recipes on the app are not good and I did not enjoy any of the ones we tried that are designed to be shared by the whole family. TLDR: useful for allergen introduction (as long as the app is working) and for checking how to safely prepare a food (as long as it’s a mainstream food), and not much else.