Baby Led Weaning

The local mom email list exploded last week with the conversation of baby-led weaning (BLW). We had been all set to prepare purees, but the BLW concept just seemed right for us, given Lily's reaction to food and spoons.   Here are some of the highlights:

• Feed baby with breastmilk first before offering solids, so that she isn't frustrated and starving while trying to figure out how to eat.
• With BLW, food isn't meant to be a source of nutrition this early.  It is about learning the mechanics of chewing and how to eat, with or without teeth.  Baby might not actually eat much of what's offered for a while. He might smear it all over, smell it or throw it on the floor, but not eat it.
• Foods like applesauce, oatmeal, yogurt, and soup can still be fed with a spoon. 
• Don't have to make special food for the baby.  She can just eat what we eat.
• It is very messy.  Food has the potential to get all over her face, hair, hands, arms, outfit, the high chair, and the floor.  Dogs are good sweepers.
• Parents worry about babies choking, but the parents on the email list didn't have any issues with that.
• You give larger pieces of food at first, and the baby might cough to move food around their mouths.  
• Give her something that is long enough that the baby can hold onto it in his/her grubby little hand and still get a piece in her mouth.
• Can help settle into a routine meal time where the family eats together.
• Spicy food is okay.  It may prevent a picky eater.  Then again, it may not.

Exploring more of this BLW stuff these past two weeks as we continue to experiment with solid food.  So far, Lily has tried banana, avocado, carrot, sweet potato, hasbrowns, chicken, hamburger, and bacon.  It is very much a success with our whole family, and we all love it.  Lily especially loves to feed herself.

First Solid Foods

Big. Day. Lily had her first taste of solid food Saturday, and it was a hit!  I wrote earlier about our process figuring out if Lily was ready for solids.  We decided to wait until she was sitting up mostly unsupported at six months.  Well, the week before we were going to give her solids, the local moms email list exploded with a conversation about "baby led weaning," which is where you give baby large pieces of food an allow her to feed herself.  I went into food ready to make purees.  I had tried to feed Lily some slushy breastmilk and breastmilk fat with a spoon in the weeks prior, as suggested by Kellymom.com to stave off a baby clamemering to get real food in her mouth before she is ready, but Lily did not care for that.  She loved to eat the spoon, but did not like eating food off of a spoon.  Lily took one look at the first banana, and put that shiz-nit in her mouth. 

Going into this, we have several beliefs about the food that Lily should eat:

• Organic, non-gmo food.  She will eventually be exposed to crap, but we'd like her digestive system to mature with the best food possible.
• We don't eat cereal.  It's too processed.  We don't eat cereal.
• We may do oatmeal, but I don't want to start feeding her food with a spoon before she can really try to feed herself with it.
• No jarred baby food.
• No frozen food.
• Occasional juice.  Not much.

Bananas, avocados, and carrots are cited as good first whole foods.  Day one was bananas, and we tried some strawberries, because we had them.  We have since learned in conversations with friends that it's recommended that folks wait until later for strawberries, because if a baby is allergic, it could kill them at this age.  That said, many babies eat raw strawberries and have no reaction.  One friend said that if it's something like 1 in 1,000 babies that are allergic, but if you're that one baby, it's best to wait.

Day two was avocados and chicken.  She was so/so about the avocado.  She didn't seem to like the taste, but she loved trying to eat it.  The chicken was probably a bad call.  She really liked the taste, but she could pull off pieces that we felt she might swallow.  We decided it was best to wait until she really got the hang of chewing.

It was obvious by this time that we still had more to read before expanding into more advanced foods.  I had no idea that folks were allergic to strawberries.  We went to a bookstore and picked up the book that my friend had, Super Baby Food, because there was a chart and it laid out foods by month.  It talks about allergies and other stuff that we need to know before going forward, but it basically says to only give purees now and mashed food until a year, which is totally opposite of what we're doing now.  It also says bland is best, but the BLW moms mentioned that spicy early was all right.  All of this parenting stuff is so confusing.  For every piece of advice, there is an equally contradicting piece of advice, and we're all left to sort it out for ourselves.  I think that what is best for Lily is figuring out what foods we can eat with her together and when we're out, because she is very excitedly trying to grab it out of our hands.  If I had let her, she would have eaten bacon, eggs,  and a cheeseburger in the past 24 hours.

And, I have read a few places to introduce a new food every few days, but we totally blew that out of the water.  This because you can better pinpoint an allergic reaction to something.  Maybe it's stupid parenting, but I really don't think it's best for our family to wait a few days.  The thought of the effort to get bananas or avocados that are just the right ripeness in the proper succession is enough to drive me bonkers.  She loves to taste different things, and she's so alert and over ready for solids that I think she'll get bored if we do the same thing too many days in a row.  Reactions to food can happen immediately, within a few hours, within a few days, or within a week or two.  When I was trying to figure out what was making Lily gassy, I had just about driven us nuts.  If she has a reaction to something, then we'll do an elimination diet. 

Day three, this morning, was steamed carrots.  She really liked those, too.  She also has a banana and more avocado for the afternoon.  After watching some BLW videos where different foods are offered every day, I don't feel like such an idiot. We may be giving her strips that are too small.  Instead of quartering the carrots, I should have them, maybe.

She really enjoys feeding herself.  Food is a great experience for us so far.  She is figuring out how to chew the food.  Most of it comes back out of her mouth at this point. But, you put that food down on the tray, and it's in her mouth.