Purees to Baby-Led Weaning: How to Transition to Finger Food

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Well That's Interesting (30s):

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Katie Ferraro (1m 3s):

And if you're feeling guilty that you started with purees or you feel like it's safer to spoonfeed, please hear this. Do not waste your energy beating yourself up. So many parents start there. Purees are familiar, right? They're normalized, they're very heavily marketed. And for a lot of parents, they just feel less scary than finger foods. I get it. But once you realize there's a better path that's more developmentally appropriate, you can make the pivot. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby Led weaning. Here on the Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 57s):

Have you ever looked at one of those baby food Pouches or a jar of pureed baby food and thought, wait, how exactly are we gonna get from this to real food? Because that's the part that nobody really explains. A lot of parents start with purees because it feels safe, it's familiar, it's honestly a lot less intimidating than handing your baby a piece of food and just hoping for the best. But then a few weeks go by and you realize, okay, I know my baby can't stay stuck on purees forever, And I want to do finger foods. I wanna do baby Led Weaning, but how do I actually make that switch? And here's the good news. If you started with purees, you did not miss your chance to do baby Led Weaning, you do not need to stay stuck in spoon feeding mode, and you do not need some long complicated graduation plan from the puree phase, then you don't need to go to the thin ones, to the chunkies, to mash food to tiny bites before your baby can learn to eat real food.

Katie Ferraro (2m 58s):

If your baby is ready, even if you don't feel entirely ready, you can make this transition. So in today's episode, I'm gonna explain exactly how to move from Purees to Baby Led Weaning, what to do if you started the purees a little bit too early, and then how to make this switch in a way that feels safe, simple, and doable. Now, I like to start each of these solo training episodes with a baby Led Weaning tip of the day. And today's tip is you can honor the self-feeding principles of baby Led Weaning and still offer your baby purees. It's true naturally pureed foods like things like oatmeal or full fat, whole milk yogurt or unsweetened apple sauce.

Katie Ferraro (3m 39s):

And we do that using what's called the preloaded spoon approach. So baby led weaning does not mean just skipping the purees and hang tight because I'm going to explain exactly how you do that. So the next time that you're offering one of those easy, safe, pureed foods, you are gonna make it baby lead. And then we're gonna launch you right into the finger foods. So I wanna tell you a quick personal story because I know that there's a lot of moms who are in the exact same spot. But with my oldest daughter, Molly, I started purees too early. I was a dietician. I still am a dietician. I'm a college nutrition professor. At that time, I was teaching college nutrition like I feel I should have known better, but I just did what a lot of moms do.

Katie Ferraro (4m 20s):

I followed the advice I was given. My doctor was like, oh, she's at the four month checkup. You should start solid foods. And I was like, all right. Barely even sitting up on her own. And I remember thinking, this feels off. She was not sitting very well. She was definitely not enjoying it. I was stressed. She was stressed. Mealtimes became this downright battleground where she was rejecting my attempts to spoonfeed her purees. And looking back, I can see that I was trying to force this timeline that didn't fit the baby that was sitting in front of me. And maybe that's where you are right now. Maybe your pediatrician is telling you that same outdated advice to start solid foods between four and six months of age. And so you picked four or five months. Or maybe your mom is saying, oh, we always did rice cereal early and you were fine.

Katie Ferraro (5m 4s):

Maybe purees just felt safer to you. And that is such a common thought. A lot of parents are scared and they just wanna do purees. They're comfortable with the spoon. It feels controlled, right? It feels tidy, it feels familiar. And then at some point they realize, wait a minute, I know my baby needs to learn to eat real food. I don't wanna stay stuck on purees forever. And how do I get there? That's what we're covering today. So the first thing I want to mention is that just because you can shove a spoon of food down the throat of a four month old doesn't mean that we should, right? This is one of the most important mindset shifts, okay? This is the part that gets lost. A lot of babies will accept food before they're actually ready to safely and independently eat.

Katie Ferraro (5m 48s):

But baby Led Weaning is not about getting X amount of food into Y baby. It's about offering food to the baby and allowing them the time and the space and the grace to learn how to feed themselves. And that's a huge difference. So if your baby is under six months of age and they're not showing you the reliable signs of readiness to eat, my recommendation is simple. Pump the breaks, pause the purees, go back to breast milk or formula. Remember, breast milk is sufficient to meet your baby's needs for the first six months of life. Full stop. If you can't or you don't, or you're just not breastfeeding, an infant formula is perfectly fine in place of breast milk.

Katie Ferraro (6m 29s):

And that holds true up until the first six months of life and wait until your baby is truly ready. There's no prize for starting solid foods early. In fact, it can actually increase the risk of joking. Alright? So you don't need to keep going just because you already started. If your baby's not ready. Stopping is not a failure. Stopping is actually a sign of responsive feeding, and that's what baby Led Weaning is down the road. So what if you already started solid foods too early? Then stop. And I say that with zero judgment. If your baby is four or five months of age and you've been doing some spoonfed buress, you can stop and come back when your baby is actually ready. The true signs of readiness to eat involve being six months of age plus when your baby is able to sit relatively independently.

Katie Ferraro (7m 12s):

And keep in mind that not all babies can sit right at six months of age. Some are not ready to sit on their own until six months plus one week or six months plus two weeks, or say even six months plus three weeks. Okay? So if your baby's not ready, stopping and waiting is actually the smartest move. And I know there's a lot of moms listening who feel guilty. I don't want you to think you've ruined your baby's chances of doing baby Led Weaning just because you started with purees. You are not behind. You don't have to undo anything dramatic. You just need a better plan from this point forward. Now, what about those parents who say, but my baby seemed so interested in food, great interest is helpful, but a baby's interest in food is not a standalone sign of readiness to eat, right?

Katie Ferraro (7m 54s):

It has to happen in conjunction with that six month mark. Plus when there are showing the other reliable signs of readiness to eat, namely being able to sit relatively on their own. And babies are interested in a lot of things. Okay? Watching you eat is not the same thing as being ready to safely swallow food. So if your baby's interested yet, there are still things you can do if you haven't gotten to that six month mark, right? There's a lot of pre feeding activities. You can have your baby, you can practice sitting exercises. You can practice that tummy time to help them with that head and that neck control that they're gonna need for a safe swallow. You can get that baby in the high chair sitting at the table with you using oral development tools or teethers or practicing bringing, they have to be mouthing those objects, right? Bringing objects to your mouth is a precursor for learning how to eat.

Katie Ferraro (8m 36s):

So get your baby at the table. Especially those babies that don't like their stroller or they don't like their car seat. We know they're not gonna love their height chair. So practice at the height chair before it's even time to start solid foods. We don't want the first time the baby's in the high chair to be the first time they're attempting to eat solid foods. So get your baby used to the rhythm of mealtime. Let them play with a spoon. Let them bang an empty cup. All right? There's a lot of ways to prepare for starting solid foods in that pre feeding period. Inside of My program, BABY Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. We've got a whole pre feeding section with things you can do at the four and the five month mark to help your baby get ready. So now let's talk about how to actually transition from purees to finger foods. 'cause if your baby is around six months of age or older and showing you those reliable signs of readiness to eat, you do not need to work through a long series of puree stages before offering finger foods.

Katie Ferraro (9m 25s):

That's what baby food companies who want you to buy their baby foods think, and that's what they tell you. Okay? But you don't need to do that. If your baby's ready for baby Led Weaning, you can move to soft, safe finger foods now because Babies can eat so many more foods than we give them credit for. Okay? And this is where I want you to stop thinking like, oh, what texture level are we on? Is my baby at the crawler stage or stage five months? Those aren't real things, okay? Every baby gets ready to eat and progresses through foods at their own pace, okay? I want you to ask yourself, is this food safe for my baby's age and stage? That is the better question. So what does this transition actually look like? Here's the simplest way to think about it. With baby Led Weaning, the baby is the only one putting food or a spoon in their mouth.

Katie Ferraro (10m 10s):

The baby leads the way. It's one of the principles of baby led weaning, okay? And baby Led Weaning is governed by the principle of trust. We have to trust that the baby will be able to feed themselves, okay? So that's the shift. You stop putting the stuff in the baby's mouth if you want to continue offering puree type textures. We do that using the preloaded spoon approach. Okay? That way you're preserving the self-feeding principles of baby led weaning. Okay? The way the preloaded spoon approach works is you put the puree on the baby Led Weaning spoon. You put the spoon in your baby's hand early on, you may have to guide your baby's hand gently to with your hand under their hand, but very quickly they will get the hang of it and they will start to bring the spoon to their mouth by themselves.

Katie Ferraro (10m 53s):

Literally, they've been watching you eat for six months of age. They know how this thing operates, okay? You've gotta use the right type of spoon. We don't use those long handled spoons. Those are for adult led spoonfeeding, a long handled spoon with a large spoon bowl. It's not gonna cut it. Okay? Babies push those spoons into the back of their mouth. They gag themselves excessively. Not to mention that that large spoon bowl can actually be dangerous when it covers the entirety of your baby's tongue. It prevents them from lifting their tongue as they're learning how to eat.

Ezpz (11m 17s):

So personally, I use the tiny spoon from Ezpz. The Tiny Spoon was designed by the easy peasy feeding expert Dawn Winkelmann. She's a speech language pathologist. She also coined the term the preloaded spoon. She teaches that approach. If you want to check out the tiny spoon, they come in a two pack, which is important because heads up, the dog loves those spoons, and the garbage disposal loves those spoons. They disappear. But I love it. They're in a two pack because you also kind of need two at a time. 'cause you're loading one up and putting it in the baby's hand, then you got another backup one ready to go because it's a little bit messy when you're doing this preloaded spoon stuff. But you can get 15% off all of the easy peasy feeding gear with the affiliate discount code BABYLED. And I'll link to the tiny spoons with that code in the description. But if you go to easy peasy fun.com/babyled, you can see all of my favorite easy peasy feeding gear for baby Led Weaning. And the tiny spoons are definitely up there.

Katie Ferraro (12m 7s):

So yes, purees can still have a place, but not as something that you are pushing into your baby's mouth. Instead, they become one texture among many because purees are not the enemy. Okay? Conventional adult-led spoonfeeding is the issue. If that's replacing the baby's opportunity to learn how to self-feed, it's not like journalists love to do this. Call me like Katie, can you report on baby Led Weaning versus spoonfeeding? Which ones better if the baby's the one operating the spoon? I don't have a problem with the spoon. Right? When you're making that transition, here's what we do. Start offering soft finger foods about the size of your adult pinky finger, okay? We wanna make sure that the foods pass the squish test. You wanna choose foods that are easy for the baby to pick up and self feed. And that squish test is if you push the food between your forefinger and your thumb.

Katie Ferraro (12m 51s):

There's a little bit of give. Now I know you're gonna be tempted to cut up the food very small, but that's actually the opposite of what we do for early eaters, because you are six or seven or even your eight month old, they've never had anything in their mouth except purees or infant milk. They don't have their pinch or grasp, so they can't pick up small pieces of food. And even if they could, that very small piece of food is the exact same size that could potentially occlude their airway and they can't get that small piece of food in their mouth, and we don't want you putting the food in their mouth. So we make the food about the size of the adult pinky finger, right? So you let the baby do the work. Our job as the parent or the caregiver is to decide what food is offered and when it's offered, and we give it to the baby in a safe setting, but it's the baby's job to decide how much or even whether they eat, that's responsive weaning, okay?

Katie Ferraro (13m 35s):

That's one of the reasons why baby Led Weaning helps remove so much pressure from mealtimes. Trust me, you're gonna love this process.

KiwiCo (13m 42s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back. Can I be honest? That summer kind of freaks me out, and it's primarily because my kids are home from school, which I love, but also I'm still trying to work and suddenly the days seem so long. Camps are not long enough, and they're super expensive, especially with seven kids. So I'm constantly trying to figure out what can they do that's actually fun, that will keep them busy, and that will not turn into like a screen time free for all. And that is why I've been very grateful for KiwiCo and their summer adventure series. So KiwiCo provides hands-on fun educational kits that come right to your door. So when you give a KiwiCo crate or a kit or a gift set, you are not just giving a toy. You're giving kids the tools to create their own fun. And if you have little kids who are curious, you've got to check out the KiwiCo Make and Play Kit for kids age two to three years old. I love watching toddlers get totally locked in, right? They start experimenting, they get stuck for a second, then they try again without asking for help. And when it finally works, they have that proud little I did it moment. And then they wanna keep playing. It's the best kind of busy because it feels like play. But they're learning and creating. With the KiwiCo Summer Adventure Series, kids get six ands on projects and they get these kits that come to them over six weeks. The themes are so fun. There's Ocean Games, neighborhood fun, alphabet play, little driver space search, my personal favorite kitchen play. So if you want to build the best summer ever with KiwiCo, get $10 off your summer adventure series at KiwiCo dot com slash summer promo code weaning. That's KIW ico.com/summer promo code weaning for $10 off.

Katie Ferraro (15m 36s):

So what are the best first steps when you're switching from purees? If you've been doing spoonfed purees, adult-led spoonfeeding and you wanna transition, don't overcomplicate it. Here is a simple transition or progression. Start with one meal a day if that feels manageable. I like to see babies eating one to two solid food meals a day at the six to seven month mark, offer one new soft finger food a day. Okay? I teach a five step feeding framework. If you don't know which five foods to feed, you can pick one new fruit on Monday, one new vegetable on Tuesday, a starchy food on Wednesday, a protein food on Thursday, and an allergenic food on Friday. My original a hundred First Foods list is divided into those five food categories.

Katie Ferraro (16m 17s):

If you need a copy of the a hundred FIRST FOODS list, I give it away to everybody on my free online masterclass. It's called Baby LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS. This is a one hour video training workshop where you can see all of this stuff that I'm talking about in action, especially with regards to the safe food prep. Everybody on that free masterclass gets a copy of my original hundred First Foods list, so you'll never run out of ideas of foods your baby can eat. Okay? So you give your baby the new food, one new food a day. Perfectly safe. You do not need to wait three to five days between new foods. We wanna let the baby explore. They do not need to eat a whole serving. They're not gonna swallow a lot because early on in learning how to eat, it's all about exploring.

Katie Ferraro (16m 58s):

It's not about how much they eat. And that distinction matters so much, okay? Because one of the biggest reasons why parents go back to spoonfeeding is they panic when the baby doesn't eat that much. But you need to know that that's normal. The goal early on is not high volume. The goal is skill building. We're working towards diet diversity with one new food a day, five new foods a week, 20 foods a month, and in five short months, your baby will have achieved a hundred First Foods and that safe exposure to lots of different tastes and textures. Now, what if your baby only wants the purees and ignores the finger foods? My suggestion, pump the breaks on the purees. It's like the parents will say, oh, my kid only eats fruit. Well, then just stop offering your kid only fruit. While purees are an important texture for your baby to master.

Katie Ferraro (17m 39s):

Sorry, they're not the only texture babies can eat. So let's focus on the finger foods. Put the purees outta sight outta mind, okay? Definitely don't go back to doing all the work for the baby. If your baby's gotten used to the spoon being put directly into their mouth, there might be a little bit of a learning curve here. And it doesn't mean your baby can't do it, it just means that this is a new skill. And babies learn by doing, not by watching us do it for them. So keep offering those safe finger foods. Keep, if you're doing purees it it they show up on the list of foods that you're gonna offer your baby, that's fine. Okay? But just do that preloaded spoon. If you are gonna do the purees, keep the pressure low, trust the process. And remember, practice makes progress. So one thing I really want you to let go of is the idea that purees are safe and finger foods are a risky option.

Katie Ferraro (18m 23s):

It's such a common misconception. The safer option is not the one that feels more familiar to adults. The purees, the safer option is the one that matches your baby's developmental readiness and allows them to learn how to eat real food in the way that babies are designed to learn. And spoiler alert, babies are not anatomically designed to suck sugary sweetened purees out of Pouches, okay? That's what the processed food manufactured baby companies have conditioned us to think. Okay? Research shows us it's actually the babies who've had the least amount of practice with finger foods who are actually at higher risk of choking. Okay? It makes sense, right? If you don't learn how to eat textures, you are going to choke on them, okay?

Katie Ferraro (19m 4s):

It's developmentally appropriate for a six month old baby to start exploring with finger foods. And as a dietician who specializes in baby Led Weaning, I've got a lot of friends who are occupational therapists and speech language pathologists who are feeding therapists and feeding therapists get involved when something goes wrong. And I'll oftentimes joke that my job is to put the feeding therapist outta business because they'll tell you, feeding therapists will tell you that a lot of what they see in the second year of life could have been prevented. Were the child allowed to start exploring with textures and finger foods starting when they were six months of age. So remember, safety is a system. It's not a social media search, okay? It's not about randomly guessing which food shape looks okay? It's about knowing how to tell when your baby is ready, how to set them up safely, and how to prepare foods for your baby's age and stage.

Katie Ferraro (19m 50s):

That's what's gonna give you confidence. Not puree Pouches, not force feeding your baby with spoon. Okay? So if you feel guilty about starting with purees, please don't stop wasting your energy. Don't beat yourself up. Lots of parents start there. Purees are familiar. They've been normalized in our society. They're really heavily marketed, okay? And for a lot of moms, they do feel less scary than finger foods. I get it. But once you know there's a better path, you can pivot. Okay? The fact that you're even listening to a podcast like this tells me that you do care deeply about doing this well, and you want your baby to learn how to eat real food. You want to raise an independent eater, you want to prevent severe picky eating, and you wanna do this safely that matters. You don't need to be perfect.

Katie Ferraro (20m 30s):

It's just time to move forward with a clear roadmap. So the bottom line, if your baby's under six months of age and not ready, stop the purees and wait. If your baby is six months of age or older and showing you the reliable signs of readiness to eat, you can transition to baby lead weaning. Now, you don't need a ridiculously long puree ladder. They personally, I teach a purees for a few days approach inside of my program, and this is for parents that are really anxious about choking and the ones who are super fearful about moving to finger foods. But I get you on Finger Foods in week one that purees for a few days approach. It's a track inside of my program. My signature program is called Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. It's a done for you program complete with my hundred First Foods Daily Meal Plan.

Katie Ferraro (21m 14s):

You literally never have to think about which food and which finger food you are gonna feed your baby. Next, it's got all of the instructions and videos and recipes on how to safely prepare those a hundred First Foods for your baby's age and stage. You can get $50 off that program with a discount code in the description. If you wanna get started today, head to baby Led Weaning co slash program to check it out. So bottom line, your quick win, you don't need to stay stuck in that spoonfeeding mode. You can start offering soft, safe finger foods and let your baby begin learning how to feed themselves. Babies can eat so many more foods than we give them credit for. And once you understand how to make those foods safe, that whole process will feel so much less overwhelming.

Katie Ferraro (21m 56s):

So I'll go ahead and put the show notes for today's episode online@blwpodcast.com/109. A special thank you to our partners at Airwave Media. If you like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from Airwave Media or online@blwpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time. Bye now.