Our Experience With Baby-Led Weaning

Graham is 7 months this week! I can't even believe it! People always say, don't blink...they grow up so fast. And it's true! I'm trying to take more of an "excited for each new phase" mindset as opposed to getting upset dwelling on how fast things go. But truly, it goes fast!So, we've been practicing a way of teaching Graham to eat called "baby-led weaning", or I think more appropriately termed "baby-led feeding" because they don't necessarily wean off of breastmilk or formula quite yet. But rather it's about teaching them to feed themselves. That's what baby-led weaning is all about!I first heard about baby-led weaning when I was working as a pediatric nurse. Parents would ask about it and, honestly, I had very little knowledge of how it played out practically. I didn't have a baby yet and hadn't seen it first-hand. But now, I can honestly say I love this method of introducing baby to solids. It's maybe not for everyone, but if you're curious about baby-led weaning I'm hoping this post will help shed some light for you and even empower you to give it a try! 

THE BIGGEST HESITATION WITH BABY-LED WEANING

While this way of teaching babies to eat solids has been around since the beginning, it's definitely not the most common way of feeding them. Most often, babies start "solids" with purees through either store-bought baby food or homemade purees. A common concern is that babies can choke if given anything but purees at the beginning. And I totally hear that concern...choking is a scary and terrifying thing to think about! But studies show that baby-led weaning doesn't lead to any more choking incidences than spoon-feeding purees. It's thought that baby-led weaning can actually be helpful in preventing choking in the long-run because it teaches babies to eat solids while their gag reflex is still closer up. For a newborn, the gag-reflex is in the mid-tongue region but as baby matures that reflex moves back to the back of the throat. So you could imagine that introducing larger food at a time when the gag-reflex is farther forward can actually help prevent choking incidences and teach baby to eat in a way that doesn't elicit choking as opposed to waiting until the gag-reflex is so far back.There's a difference between choking and gagging. We definitely had to learn that. My husband would say, "ahh he's choking" when in fact Graham was just gagging and a few seconds later the food would shoot out. Something the site "Feeding Littles" teaches that was really helpful for me was seeing gagging as a good thing! It's your baby learning how to eat safely. Gagging was most often during the first couple of weeks, but the key is it should get better. And for us, a month into this, Graham hardly gags anymore. Which is nice for me because my heart still drops a little each time he gags even though I know it's not harmful. 

HOW DO YOU KNOW BABY'S READY FOR BLW?

There are a few things to look for as a "go-sign" that you can start practicing baby-led weaning. Typically these signs of readiness happen around 6 months, but that's just a general time. We actually started at around 5 1/2 months but I know some babies aren't ready until 7. This is totally baby-dependent, not based on a strict timeline.Here's what to look for...

• Baby can hold his head up well, has good head control
• Baby can sit up by his/herself, unassisted
• Baby shows an interest in table food
• Reaches and grabs things effectively
• Taking objects to his/her mouth

HOW IT WORKS

There are a few reasons I was drawn to BLW. One was that I just love how it teaches baby independence with eating which I believe sets them up to be more intuitive with food right from the start. Baby learns the physical dynamics of picking up food and putting it in his/her mouth, but also learns how to self-regulate eating, which foods they like/dislike (even though I keep offering foods he doesn't seem to like just to keep trying), and gets used to different textures of food. I've seen some people say it can help prevent food aversions and texture issues with baby in the future.But another big reason I love BLW is because it's so EASY & COST-EFFECTIVE! I love that I don't have to prepare baby food on my own and don't have to buy specific baby food. I just try and modify what we are eating and feed that to Graham. He's had salmon, eggplant parmesan, pancakes, muffins, tuna salad and loves it all! There are a few things to keep in mind when modifying food for baby:

1. Food should be soft enough to squish between your fingers. Fruit like pears, peaches, plums, and bananas are all great and don't need any modifying, so I always like to keep these on hand. For fruits like raspberries and blackberries, I'll either squish them into yogurt or cut in half so it's less of a choking hazard. For vegetables, I love roasting or steaming things like zucchini, acorn squash or butternut, carrots, onions, broccoli...again, most foods you eat on a regular basis can be made for baby to eat. The key is to cook them for a long time if they're not already soft.
2. Cut food in finger-like strips for easier handling by baby. Graham's gotten better with picking up smaller pieces lately, but in the beginning I cut everything to be finger-like. So cutting zucchini lengthwise and then in little strips, or toast, avocado. Here's a great post on how to cut foods for baby-led weaning. The point here is to make it easier for baby to pick up on his/her own.
3. For slippery foods, keep the peel on (exposing just part of the food) or coat in breadcrumbs. This applies to foods like avocado...you can coat the avocado in fine breadcrumbs so that they have an easier time picking the slippery avocado up. For banana, also slippery, I cut it so that it still has some of the peel on at the bottom and then some banana exposed. That way baby can grab the peel and eat the exposed fruit.
4. Keep food un-seasoned. Babies under 1 year old are only recommended to have 1 G or less of salt. So I either don't season what I'm cooking for Graham or if I've already seasoned food I'll rinse it off to get a lot of the salt off. I talked with our pediatrician and the concern is greater risk of dehydration with too much salt since their bodies and fluid-volume is so much less, so I'm mindful of this but Graham still has some food with salt in it.
5. Begin practicing with them drinking water from a cup. This is something I had no idea that babies started so early. But it's been so cool to see Graham already, with my assistance, is sipping water out of his little silicone cup! This the set we have.
6. With foods that need a spoon, I have a little silicone spoon (from the set I linked above) that I'll put food on and then I let Graham hold the spoon with me and pull it to his mouth. Some people will say to pre-fill the spoon and just place it on the highchair tray for them to take, themselves, but in my experience that's just a total mess waiting to happen. I think we need some time before he's ready for that, but this way he still is the one directing food to his mouth.
7. Solids are more for the experience of baby learning things like food texture and taste at this time. Breast milk or formula are still the main sources of baby's nutrition so solids shouldn't take the place of breastmilk or formula. As baby gets better and better at eating, they'll start to transition to taking in more calories and nutrition from solids, but for now and up until around a year, solids are more like a fun experiment for baby! Knowing this, you don't have to stress out about a perfect "balance" of all the foods for baby.

OUR FAVORITE BABY-LED WEANING FOODS

Graham's been a good eater, thankfully, from the get-go! He's so adventurous and excited to try everything. There have been a few things I've made he wasn't too keen on yet, like some broccoli-cheese-quinoa cups I made. But overall he's done so well!His favorites are definitely any and all fruit. He loves banana, peaches, plums, pears, and oranges.Other things he loves are carrots, zucchini, acorn and butternut squash, spaghetti squash, and broccoli.Meat he has a harder time with still, but he loves salmon and scrambled eggs.Other things he loves are plain whole milk yogurt which I'll sometimes put some applesauce in. Speaking of applesauce, he loves the applesauce pouches from trader joes! Also dried mango which is always in my diaper bag for emergencies which he loves sucking on. We'll do toast which I cut the crust off of and cut into strips and top with peanut butter, butter, or avocado. Also oatmeal is a favorite...I'll also flavor it with applesauce. Some last things that have been helpful...This silicone bib! A life-saver because, not gonna lie, feeding a baby and a baby feeding themselves gets messy! This one with the little pouch helps catch things Graham drops. Also, it's super easy to just spray or rinse!The "Feeding Littles" website! I can't speak enough about how amazing their website and Instagram page are as resources! Ok, so overall we've loved our experience trying baby-led weaning. I'd love to hear your experience and any questions you have! Honestly, I'm learning here along the way too, but happy to share any and all about our experience and things I've learned so far.