Can I follow baby led weaning methods and spoon feeding when needed? Will this just confuse my child?

In baby led weaning (blw) babies are supposed to pick up their own food, eat at their own pace and stop when they're full. Food is given in bite size pieces somewhat the size of your pinky finger and baby eats, biting off chunks and chewing (or gumming) before swallowing. In traditional weaning, food is pureed and fed to baby. As time passes, baby learns to eat mashed food and then with little chunks working their way up. Hence baby swallows first before learning to chew. Due to these reasons, it's generally not advisable to do traditional and blw concurrently as baby may forget to bite (or gum) during blw and swallow instead which can be dangerous. Hence the combination method has to be done with extreme caution and surveillance. Personal experience: it can be done. My mum feeds baby puree because it is her chance to bond and play with her while I do blw, but not all the time, as I sometimes run out of ideas. So far baby is able to adapt well. I think you just have to try and see if it works for you. Just need to constantly remind baby to chew when blw by making the chewing action for her to imitate. Have fun!