“He has such a good appetite.” “He sure loves his food.” “He’s so good at feeding himself.” “I can’t believe he’s eating that!”
…some of the comments I used to get about my son’s eating habits. I got them for as long as people had been seeing him eat, and, though the novelty has somewhat worn off since he’s a little older now, people are still often surprised by his relationship with food.
Baby-led weaning is a theory of starting babies on solid food that flies in the face of contemporary convention.
The concept is simple: skip the spoon-feeding—no cereals or purees—and go straight to self-feeding table food. Let the baby decide when to start on food by reading their cues. (I’m not suggesting you give a three-month-old a carrot stick.)
Before there were blenders, babies learned to eat just fine without constantly choking to death or dying of malnutrition. They breastfed longer; they were introduced to solid foods when they were ready (not at a time pre-determined by a doctor or book or association).
This happened, and is happening today in many parts of the world, without there needing to be a theory for it.
With baby-led weaning, learning to eat is about experimenting rather than nutrition. For the first year of life, a baby is completely nourished by breast milk (or, to a lesser extent, formula). Because their little bodies are still learning to digest, they can’t get optimal nutrition from food anyway.
According to baby-led weaning, by exposing your child to the foods your family eats from the get-go, their palates will develop well and they are less likely to become picky eaters.
As far as choking hazards go, it is said to be more likely that a child will choke if you are spoon-feeding them: they may not be ready for the mouthful you are trying to get into them.
Babies have a gag reflex to eject anything foreign from their mouths (it’s a survival instinct), which at first is everything except the boob or bottle. In order to overcome that, it must be put to the test.
With baby-led weaning, they are in control of what goes into their mouths, so they learn more quickly how to chew and swallow.
My son was about six and a half months old when he told me he wanted to try food.
He was fat and healthy and breastfed. Prior to this, his only taste of food was sucking on the occasional lemon.
I sat him in his high chair about once a day and give him finger-foods to gnaw on and play with: green beans, slices of bell peppers, raspberries, that sort of thing.
I avoided common allergens but otherwise paid no mind to the “new food every three days” rule, or any other rule for that matter. I watched his reactions and his poop and everything was fine.
I spoon-fed him sometimes, when he developed a taste for yogurt and soup, and when he wanted more food but became impatient at his incompetence.
It wasn’t until he was past nine months old that he dropped a nursing session. By then, he was eating twice a day—we had breakfast and lunch together, and he’d nibble whatever was on my plate.
In restaurants, baby-led weaning was a blessing and a curse. I didn’t have to bring food or order separately: we shared things. He made messes, though, which I minimized with pocketed bibs and always helped to clean up.
He tried anything. He had favorites—seafood, beans, crackers, grape tomatoes, cheese, olives, my homemade broth, and all fruit.
I gave him loaded spoons to practice that, and drinks in a shot glass. (Controversial, maybe, but how would you like to learn how to drink using a bucket, which is what a regular glass is like for little mouths?) We did sippy cups, too—ones with straws were the easiest while he figured out the whole tilting thing.
Around his first birthday we discovered his favorite food.
I’d gotten us some take-out sushi and some special fancy roll had ikura, salmon roe on it (fish eggs, the big sticky red ones). I put one on his finger; it stuck to him. He looked at it, fascinated. Then he put it in his mouth.
His widened eyes lit up. I could tell when the egg popped because he started, and giggled.
I gave him more. He couldn’t get enough. He ate all of them.
Now whenever we get sushi, I get him his own order of salmon roe sashimi—just a clump of the eggs. He eats them like candy. Now that he’s handy with a spoon, he’ll take a big scoop and pile them into his mouth.
At our local sushi joint, the staff knows him as the white kid that eats the ikura.
During his second year, he honed his skills:
…spoon, fork, cup—eating soup, sipping broth, spearing fried eggs, shoveling in blueberries—drinking from anything and only spilling on purpose or when he gets too excited.
He does go through occasional picky phases, but they are nothing like the french-fry-horror-stories I hear about.
Though, as I admitted, I did not follow baby-led weaning 100% (I spoon-fed him sometimes), but its principles guided us. It allowed for an almost totally stress-free experience in getting my son eating food.
Baby-led weaning can be scary to consider, if you’ve swallowed the conventional wisdom of the dangers of early self-feeding (no pun intended) and/or the need for early supplementation, but even a slightly long view of history and the world should help to assuage your fears and give you permission to ignore the so-called expertise of the pediatric establishment.
It can be messy. It is probably always messy. But if you’ve got a baby, messes are nothing new.
Baby-led weaning, like everything, has its own dogma and fear-mongering (never ever spoon-feed!, they say, it’s a choking hazard!).
Personally, I think it’s best to look at many approaches, then just pay attention to your baby, and figure out what works for your family at that time.
Learn more about baby-led weaning:
- Baby-led Weaning: A Real Food Approach to Feeding Your Baby (Nourished Kitchen)
- Skip the Mush: An Introduction to Baby-Led Weaning (Naturally Mindful)
- Starting Solids and Baby Led Weaning with Real Foods (Hybrid Rasta Mama)
- BabyLedWeaning.com
Learn more about nourishing foods for babies and their moms:
- Beautiful Babies: Nutrition For Fertility, Pregnancy, Breastfeeding & Baby’s First Foods by Kristen Michaelis aka Food Renegade
(Shared with Fight Back Friday.)
[shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="242634"] [shareaholic app="recommendations" id="14114887"]
STANDARD FTC DISCLOSURE: In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please note that I only ever endorse products that are in alignment with my ideals and that I believe would be of value to my readers.
As usual, a great article (that I completely agree with; geeeheehee). You’ve really got the follow-your-natural-instincts thing down. I love it! I remember pulling smooshed avocado out of my sandwich while sitting in the deli with my 7 month old with my finger and letting him suck it off. I got some funny looks but hey…he grew up big and strong, loving food…pretty much anyway. He wasn’t picky as a kid but developed some finickiness later as a teen. What’s a mother to do?? He’s 36 so I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t suck avocado off my finger now; his wife’s maybe…
Our last breast feeding session happened when he was 2 1/2. I walked into the bedroom to do the nurse and read routine but he was already asleep. that was it, he was done. So I had to make sure to get in there and read to him earlier so he wouldn’t give that up too! I read to him until he was about 13. I highly recommend that. You can take turns reading to each other; such fun. I hope when I am old and blind that he will come read to me.
Happy New Year!
I’m experiencing the French fry horror story. I can’t get my daughter to eat anything but starches and junk. French fries, chicken nuggets, pizza, hotdogs, pancakes, breads and PASTA….I’m sick over her eating habits and try and try to get her to eat new things or at least TRY them. No luck and tears for hours. Any suggestions for a 23 month old?
There are a lot of recipes on line to help you make copycats of those horrible things. I have some in my files if you can’t find any on your own.
Also, try letting her go without eating (HORRORS!) She will naturally get hungry; all humans do! Most other cultures in our world don’t pander to the nit picky demands of their children and those children grow up big and strong with healthy appetites for the things their parents eat.
Here’s a great article on parenting styles around the world: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-grossloh/have-american-parents-got-it-all-backwards_b_3202328.html
I meant to write “healthier copycat versions”
My daughter is 30 and I knew less than nothing about nutrition when she was a baby. But they told me to give her rice cereal and I knew starch was a filler food, just cheap calories. They also said don’t give cow’s milk for a year cause babies can’t digest it. So I figured yogurt was a good first food as it was predigested and I “invented” mashed bananas mixed with full-fat yogurt as her first solid food as it made sense to me.
I knew there was SOME nutrition in fruit and yogurt and it seemed to me if she was going to drink less breast milk due to eating solids, the solids should have something more than just calories. Even knowing NOTHING, cause I was young and uneducated and there was no Internet, I knew rice cereal made no sense at all and came up with a better answer than the pediatrician.
Today, knowing a great deal more, I would likely give egg yolk as a first baby food, if I thought in terms of baby food at all; I rather like the idea of just food instead of “baby food”. It makes so much sense to me: eat good food yourself and give some to them when they want it.
In her first year, I asked for a food processor for my birthday and started stewing fruits and vegetables and making homemade baby food in ice cube trays cause there was “stuff” in the baby food at the store that I didn’t understand. Like, why does someone who has never eaten anything but breast milk need sugar and salt to make fruit and veggies palatable? I like plain apples, why won’t she? Why can’t I just give her the apple? And then I started doing the same with meat, cooking, processing and sticking in ice cube trays to make single servings.
This was all seat-of-the-pants, just using rather uninformed judgment, cause the official advice made no sense to me. I still had the “baby food” idea, but… I got what was “food,” and it just didn’t include lots of cereal and adding sugar to every bite she ate, which made no sense.
I think it’s AWESOME there is so much good information available now to clueless new moms like your site.
What great story, Jackie. I wish more people would just follow some natural instincts as you did instead of following (swallowing) the mass marketed ideas they see on TV, in magazines and on package labels.
I agree that this is an awesome site.