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Attachment Parenting
Angelwax99
member
ETA: Baby Led Weaning - Please help!
Angelwax99
member
ETA: I tried doing a search on this board but nothing came up. I actually found the answers to most of my questions in a post below. Please feel free to add any additional advice though. Thanks!
TImeline:
1-4 months: BM only (EP)
4-6 months: BM, FF, & rice (adding oatmeal and 1st foods solids)
My 7 month LO loved his solid foods and cereal. But, within the last month, he absolutely will NOT let us feed him anymore. I've tried letting him hold my hand to 'help' and given him his own spoon, but still no luck. I've accepted that we have an independent little guy that wants to and is ready to feed himself. So, I have started giving him finger foods like the Gerber Graduates cheeto snacks and puffed cereals. He does pretty well with getting them in his mouth and chews them up -- I know there isn't much nutritional value here, though. We've also tried watermelon, banana, steamed carrots, and soft apple pieces, but his coordination isn't quite there to get those slippery little guys up to his mouth. He's so eager to eat whatever is there, but no matter what it is, he usually winds up spitting it back out.
So here are my questions:
Am I doing the right things? Should we just keep encouraging him to self feed and have confidence that he is getting the nutrients he needs from his formula? Do you have any other suggestions?
And please...flame free. I'm asking for advice on how to do this, not judgement on how we did things to start with. In hindsight, it would have been different.
TIA!
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Re: ETA: Baby Led Weaning - Please help!
I'm by no means a feeding expert, but I think it's ok to let LO feed himself. Everything I've read about early solids says that it's more for exploration, learning, etc. So, as long as he's eating BM (or formula) on cue, I wouldn't worry about him getting "nurtrion" from solids.
FWIW- DS hardly ate a bite of solids until he was closer to 15 mo. We just offered him healthy foods that he could feed himself w/... messy, but fun- most of it he ended up spitting out or just playing with!
One tip I had read somewhere was to coat slippery foods (like bananas or avocado, etc) w/ crushed up cereal (plain cheerios or something along those lines). I was actually too lazy to ever try it, but it might help your LO. It won't be long before his coordination is better!
Baby led weaning is all about letting your child feed themselves. Many BLWers skip cereal, and don't start solids til 6 months. The only thing I feed to DS is yogurt (meaning, I hold the spoon). If he fights me, I don't force it. There's plenty other foods that he can handle on his own.
We give him whatever we're eating, as well as extra veggies and fruits if he's not interested in our food. Make sure the food is big enough that he can actually grab it. My LO just recently started being able to pick up things like cheerios, so we only just started feeding smaller foods to him. Also, if he doesn't have teeth, you might want to steer towards softer foods to help him out (ie: steamed or shredded carrots, instead of just a whole baby carrot).
Don't worry about him spitting things out. Sometimes if they take too big a bite, or it they don't like the food, it will come back out. I would personally avoid "snacky" foods. If they aren't offering him nutrition, there's no reason he would need them. As long as he's getting nourishment elsewhere (with FF or BF), don't worry. The food eating will come
First of all, quit giving crap like gerber cheetos.
Let him try, even if he can't give it there. He'll figure it out. We did huge chunks of avocado (a winner because it's easy for them to hold in a big chunk, easy to eat, and a super food), bananas cut into long strips, sweet potatoes cooked and cut into long strips (like a fry), broccoli (cooked), green beans, etc. He'll try and get it.
He'll figure out how to eat if he wants to, even if that means eating off the tray like a dog
If he wants to spit it out, let him.
I agree that I'd skip the baby snacks. The only reason they're out there is so that Gerber can make more money.
DD2 loved toast. I would cut the bread into 4 long strips, and since it was toasted, it was easier to eat. She also loved sweet potato fries, large pieces of cooked broccoli (she'd eat the florets off), refried black beans wrapped in a tortilla... He'll start to show a lot of improvement over the next few weeks, and then you can introduce some other foods that may be too slippery or difficult to handle now. Spitting out food is part of the learning process too.
Charlotte Ella 07.16.10
Emmeline Grace 03.27.13
BLW by definition is letting baby feed himself and pick how much he wants to eat. I would skip the packaged baby foods, give table foods with more structure, and let baby learn how it works over time.
Have you read the book Baby Led Weaning by Gill Rapley? I think it will really help you.
More Green For Less Green
It helps to think of foods as a learning/fun experience at this age instead of nutritionally necessary (which they aren't!). Think of mealtime as a way to expose LO to different tastes, textures and to give them lots of opportunities to learn to self-feed. Spitting it out is totally normal and while it's definitely hard to watch LO struggle learning to eat, there are so many benefits to them learning on their own. You're on the right track and LO will pick it up before you know it. For us we kept experimenting with how I'd cut/cook the fruits and veggies so I could find the right combo that LO could pick up. You can also let LO go wild with things he can suck off his fingers and/or make the pieces larger so he can gnaw on them to help encourage the fine motor skills needed.
I follow a great kids nutrition blog and like she always mentions that we should worry more about habits and less about nutrition and that snack is a time of day not a type of food (as in, fruits/veggies/dairy should be snacks not carbs all day). Toddler snacks, goldfish etc. also teach kids the habit of going to dry, crunchy, salty carbs when they're hungry instead of training their tastebuds toward fruits and veggies with a variety of textures and flavors so I'd drop the snack type foods.