XP:Talk to me about Baby-Led Weaning

JumpAroundBucky · October 2012

DH and I are deciding between making our own baby food (purees and such) and baby led weaning. I don't know much about baby led weaning other than what I've read on a couple of blogs and babyledweaning.com.

S+TMs if you have experience with baby led weaning, can you tell me about it- things you liked, things you didn't, are you planning on doing it again, etc?

mistresscox · October 2012

I'm not sure what making your own baby food has to do with baby led weaning-maybe I'm thinking of something completely different and my response will not make sense at all.

I nursed DD until she was a year old. My goal was to go as long as I could and I still hadn't decided when I would "cut her off" when she stopped. My only decision had been that I would DEFINITELY stop pumping at 1 year. We went on vacation the week before her first birthday and she was more interested in eating what everyone else ate and got too distracted to nurse and she just sort of gave up. I consider that baby led weaning in my world-she didn't want to nurse and since I had supply issues anyway I dried up pretty quickly. Pretty much as soon as we introduced "food" (purees) she was more interested in that.

This time around I also plan to go for as long as I can with a soft goal of 1 year. If we go after that I will see how life is treating us and decide then what to do. Again I will stop pumping at 1 year (provided we are still going then) because pumping sucks. I loved nursing though and would have been content to go on longer had DD still wanted to.

mrsodonnell12 · October 2012

mistresscox:

I'm not sure what making your own baby food has to do with baby led weaning-maybe I'm thinking of something completely different and my response will not make sense at all.

I nursed DD until she was a year old. My goal was to go as long as I could and I still hadn't decided when I would "cut her off" when she stopped. My only decision had been that I would DEFINITELY stop pumping at 1 year. We went on vacation the week before her first birthday and she was more interested in eating what everyone else ate and got too distracted to nurse and she just sort of gave up. I consider that baby led weaning in my world-she didn't want to nurse and since I had supply issues anyway I dried up pretty quickly. Pretty much as soon as we introduced "food" (purees) she was more interested in that.

This time around I also plan to go for as long as I can with a soft goal of 1 year. If we go after that I will see how life is treating us and decide then what to do. Again I will stop pumping at 1 year (provided we are still going then) because pumping sucks. I loved nursing though and would have been content to go on longer had DD still wanted to.

100% all of this! I guess I technically did baby-led weaning with DS, but I didnt even really know it I guess. I stopped pumping at 1 yr - but kept BFing on demand until he became uninterested around 17 months. I plan to do the same this time around.

JumpAroundBucky · October 2012

Sorry, I should've been more clear. I'm not talking about weaning off breastfeeding, I'm talking about introducing solids/other foods (in addition to breastfeeding). BabyLedWeaning.com explains it better:

"* re ?wean?. This is meant in the Brit sense, not the American. In the UK, ?weaning? means ?adding complementary foods?, whereas in the States it means ?giving up breastfeeding?.

Baby-led weaning is, it must be said, a somewhat cheesy term for just letting your infant self-feed. You cut food up into manageable sticks and offer it, they eat. It?s really pretty simple.

The key difference between BLW and traditional weaning, when you think about it, is in the order that children learn to eat. With a puree, they learn to swallow first and then chew, which works fine until they meet a lump. With BLW, the babies learn to chew first and swallowing might come some time later.

It?s ?baby-led? in the sense that you let them do what they need to do while they?re learning, and as the parent you resist the urge to get wound up in knots about how much they?re eating, whether they like the food you thought they?d like and whether it?s smushed into the nearest curtain. The main thing is? it?s all good clean (messy) fun."

PatchChild · October 2012

We were baby led with my son. Basically, because I was lazy. He just munched on what we were munching, as long as it was soft. He was never the gagging type and really just enjoyed the tastes for a long time.

mrsodonnell12 · October 2012

JumpAroundBucky:

Sorry, I should've been more clear. I'm not talking about weaning off breastfeeding, I'm talking about introducing solids/other foods (in addition to breastfeeding). BabyLedWeaning.com explains it better:

"* re ?wean?. This is meant in the Brit sense, not the American. In the UK, ?weaning? means ?adding complementary foods?, whereas in the States it means ?giving up breastfeeding?.

Baby-led weaning is, it must be said, a somewhat cheesy term for just letting your infant self-feed. You cut food up into manageable sticks and offer it, they eat. It?s really pretty simple.

The key difference between BLW and traditional weaning, when you think about it, is in the order that children learn to eat. With a puree, they learn to swallow first and then chew, which works fine until they meet a lump. With BLW, the babies learn to chew first and swallowing might come some time later.

It?s ?baby-led? in the sense that you let them do what they need to do while they?re learning, and as the parent you resist the urge to get wound up in knots about how much they?re eating, whether they like the food you thought they?d like and whether it?s smushed into the nearest curtain. The main thing is? it?s all good clean (messy) fun."

I love this approach! I have friends who skip the purees and start with tiny peices of what they are eating for supper. Baby eats what baby wants. I absolutely love this approach and it is something we are considering... we havent talked about it much since we wont offer any kind of solids until at least 6 months. Thank you for giving me the term to research though!

pghctwife · October 2012

We didnt totally do BLW (and even in the US, technically when you start solids you ARE starting the weaning process! Just slowly and gently )

I did make most of henry's foods (not baby oatmeal but everything else). We did do purees to start but moved on to real foods pretty quickly. I gave him bits of real foods, not "baby foods" (homemade or not). Shreds of meat, frozen peas, pieces of sweet potato, etc. I imagine I will do more of a BLW approach wtih #2 just based on lifestyle.

mz07 · October 2012

A friend of mine does this, and her little girl is so good about trying different foods. Another friend who did not do this has an extremely picky eater. Now, I KNOW that this could totally be a personality thing, and it's only two children so you can't really draw hard conclusions from that, but given that my DH and I are not the most adventerous eaters, I want to give our LO every opportunity to get excited about different kinds of food.

smwiggle · October 2012

I tried making my own purees for like a month, but then gave up because DS was more interested in what we were eating. We gave him bananas, sweet potatoes, and cooked apples at first. Things that were easier to chew and swallow. Slowly we started adding meats and veggies as he got better at eating.

JennV514 · October 2012

Babyled weaning is skipping the purees.
We did purees at 6 months, softer foods like avocados and bananas around 78, and then moved onto solids. Making your own food is pretty easy.
It all depends on what you feel comfortable with, and when your baby is ready.

erkie · October 2012

I am a FTM, but my friends have done baby-led weaning and loved it. The first I heard of it was when one of my friend's daughters was eating tiny pieces of chicken and broccoli for dinner and asked her about it. Her LO was just loving it and I'd never seen a 7 month old eat like that.

Professionally, I am a speech therapist and we do a lot with swallowing and feeding therapy, so I did some research. When you feed a baby a puree, they don't have to manipulate it or chew it in their mouth, they just swallow. Some babies then have trouble learning to sequence the chewing and swallowing when you start introducing solids and its also theorized that's why some get really picky about textures. I plan to try baby led weaning myself, I think its a great idea. If baby doesn't like it, I will absolutely make my own baby food by throwing whatever we are having for dinner in the food processor.

Reyka9 · October 2012

I did baby-led weaning with DS and I blogged about it (with videos) for the first few weeks (https://babyNOMS.wordpress.com if you're interested). It was awesome. I never had to make him something separate for dinner, never had to run the food processor, never had to stop eating my own food so I could feed him. He simply ate what we ate. Just be careful to leave salt out of your food as much as possible, as too much sodium is not good for babies.

Some BLW parents freak out about the gagging thing, but you need to understand the difference between gagging and true choking. Before we intro'ed any solids, DH and I took a baby CPR class and that helped us feel more confident that we would be able to handle a true choking episode. (Which, BTW, we never had.)

I should add that my son is an excellent eater, unlike his baby-food-fed friends and cousin. He eats pretty much everything, and if there's ever something he's unsure about, he will usually try it the next time it's offered.

StarlitRN · October 2012

We did BLWing with DD (and will again with this LO). We loved loved loved it!!! She was EBF until 6 1/2 months when we introduced solids. She never had purees....her first non-BM meal was steamed broccoli stalks and baked sweet potato sticks. I loved that I didn't have to worry about fixing her something different to eat (unless we were doing something super spicy) and she never freaked out at dinner time wanting our meals.

She pretty much played with food (sucked & chewed on it but not ingesting anything) until she was about 8 1/2 months and then all of a sudden she was eating me out of house and home!

We look at solids before 1yr as purely fun & practice so I wasn't worried about her really eating the food in front of her.

In the beginning there are lots of gags (which are fun out in public when people think you are trying to kill your child) but just remember that gagging is part of learning and is very different than choking!

DD has always been a great eater which I credit BLW for. We never had to worry about weaning her off purees and dealing with texture issues. It was normal for her! Even at the stubborn toddler stage she will try almost anything and when she gets picky it is more about a power struggle than not actually liking/wanting what is in front of her.

StarlitRN · October 2012

I did write 2 blogs about it if you are interested:

https://starlitrn.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/its-food-time/

https://starlitrn.wordpress.com/author/starlitrn/page/4/

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