Will Baby Led-Weaning Work for My Baby?

Katie Ferraro (31s):

And so the barriers to success for babies with baby-led weaning, it's not so much due to the baby's physical capability. It's more so about their physiological readiness to eat. And that's why we work ourselves through this decision tree, which is a great way to find out if baby-led weaning will work for YOUR baby. Hey. there. I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weaning here on the baby-led weaning Made Easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 15s):

Hi guys, welcome back. Today we're talking about weather or not baby-led weaning will work for YOUR baby. Like is this the right approach for you to pursue as your baby makes this transition to solid foods? And I like to start each of these many training episodes with the BLW tip of the day. And today's tip is "baby-led weaning can work for many different types of babies, babies of different abilities, babies of parents with different parenting styles". There are actually very few situations where baby-led weaning is not indicated. Hang tight because in this episode I'm gonna walk you through the exact questions to ask yourself to figure out if the baby-led approach is right for you and your family. And the last question is gonna require a little bit of tough love on your part, some introspection.

Katie Ferraro (1m 58s):

So let's go ahead and get started. Now, quick story. As a new mom, I remember really struggling with spoon feeding with my oldest daughter Molly. And I remember feeling like everybody else around me, like all my friends had all this baby feeding thing figured out except for me. I remember Molly like absolutely hated being spoon fed and I felt like she hated me as well as food. And I remember at the height of our feeding frustration, my husband and I found out that we were pregnant with quadruplets. Now we'd been doing fertility treatment, so I knew the possibility for multiples was there. I was not expecting four babies. And I remember the first thing I thought when I saw four babies on the ultrasound, I was nothing. It wasn't normal like, oh, how are they all gonna learn how to drive or how am I gonna pay for college? I remember thinking, how am I gonna feed four babies at once when I can't even feed the one baby that I have at home?

Katie Ferraro (2m 42s):

So fast forward, I ended up giving birth to the quadruplets at 34 weeks, and we spent a lot of time in the NICU and they were growing and getting stronger and friends would come and visit and help feed the babies. And I remember just like whining about how tragic spoon feeding Molly was back at home because she still wasn't eating on her own. She only like, she hated food. She only wanted milk. I remember a colleague who was visiting us in the NICU said, well, why don't you just do baby-led weaning? And I was like, baby-led weaning. What are you talking about? What Is baby-led weaning? I asked. She said, well, it's this alternative to traditional spoon feeding where babies learn to feed themselves that age appropriate wholesome foods provided by their parents. You wait until six months to start, your baby learns to be an independent eater.

Katie Ferraro (3m 23s):

It helps reduce picky eating. It totally takes the stress out of starting solid foods. And I was like, yes, please. But because it sounded like the answer to my prayers, I was like, it's also probably too good to be true, but had a lot of downtime then holding babies, pumping there in the NICU, threw myself into learning everything I could about baby-led weaning because like you, I had to be convinced that baby-led weaning would actually work, that it was safe, that it was evidence-based and that it wasn't just some sort of like woowoo flash in the pan parenting trend. So for those of you also on the fence like this sounds like a good idea, but is it really gonna work? Here's a couple of questions for you now. First off, what Is baby-led weaning? Okay, so some of you drop into the podcast here close to episode 300 and you're like, I don't even know what this is real quick.

Katie Ferraro (4m 7s):

Baby-led weaning is a practical, safe and hands-on approach to starting solid foods. It's an alternative to traditional or what we in Infant feeding called parent-led spoon feeding and baby-led weaning as a practice. It's a centuries old natural approach to letting babies feed themselves. Like honestly, what do we think? Cave mama fed cave baby. Back in the day before there was an aisle of baby food pouches at the grocery store to buy right as a practice. Baby-led weaning is nothing new. But as far as the parenting term and feeding philosophy goes, baby-led weaning is relatively new. The term baby-led weaning was coined by Gill Rapley, pioneer and champion of the self feeding philosophy, co-author of the original Baby-led weaning book, which I highly, highly recommend you read. It was first published in 2008 and then it was revamped for its 10 year anniversary for sure read Gill Rapley's book to understand what baby-led weaning is.

Katie Ferraro (4m 55s):

And I've had the great fortune to have Gill Rapley on the podcast numerous times over the years absolute honor to get to use my platform to help spread her message and work with baby-led weaning. So if you are the type of person who likes to hear it from the individual's mouth of some of my favorite episodes with Gill Rapley, episode a hundred, which is the history of baby-led weaning with Gill Rapley. Episode 102 is the Future of Baby-led weaning where we kind of talk about like where it's going. And then another good one was episode 142 where we debunked some of the biggest baby-led weaning myths with Gill Rapley. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (6m 37s):

But it's a, if someone said to me like Katie, what's the number one reason why you love baby-led weaning? I would say it's because BLW addresses not just what your baby eats, but more importantly how they learn to eat. And as a dietician, I see my own colleagues as other dieticians, both as parents and professionals. We sometimes trust way too much about how much the baby is eating, and we totally ignore the importance of giving the baby time to learn how to eat. Okay, so why are you interested in baby-led weaning? We do a survey of all the parents who take my free one hour video workshop each week and the the workshop is called Baby-led weaning for BEGINNERS and the most frequently cited reasons for wanting to do baby-led weaning. Four of 'em, my baby is six months and needs to start eating real food. We wanna reduce the risk of picky eating.

Katie Ferraro (7m 17s):

I'm a picky eater and I don't want my baby to be the same way. And another one that's becoming increasingly popular. We want our baby to have a healthy relationship with food from their first bites. So does baby-led weaning work as a registered dietician specializing in baby-led weaning. It's my goal to bring you safe evidence-based information about starting solid foods. And I realize there's so much misinformation out there, so much conflicting information, which is why I bring you guys the world's leading feeding experts in interviews on this podcast. Plus a lot of explorations of the latest research that supports your baby's ability to safely self feed real food because baby-led weaning does not increase the risk of choking and BLW, babies are not at risk for growth faltering or nutrient gaps.

Katie Ferraro (7m 59s):

So Will Baby-led weaning work for your baby. Well, there are a few questions you need to ask yourself first. The first one is your baby six months of age or six months adjusted age if born prematurely. If not pump the breaks, hold off and come back when your baby is both the American Academy Pediatrics, the World Health Organization recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life. Your baby does not need anything except Infant milk, breast milk or formula until six months of age plus it's unsafe to offer anything except Infant milk unless your baby is sitting independently. So that leads to my second question is if you're trying to figure out if baby-led weaning is going to work for your baby, is your baby sitting relatively independently?

Katie Ferraro (8m 40s):

No. I share a lot of information about the importance of this sign of readiness to eat here on the podcast, but if you're not sure about the sitting stuff or if your baby's really ready, I recommend listening to episode 284. It's called Postural Support When Starting Solid Foods. I interviewed Emma Hubbard, who's a pediatric occupational therapist, and lots of good info about the sitting stuff in there. The next question to ask yourself if you're trying to figure out if baby-led weaning will work for YOUR baby, is your baby bringing objects to their mouth? Are they mouthing objects and are they interested in what you're eating? Now, this is not an independent sign of readiness to eat. Some parents will be like, oh, my baby's three months of age and they're like watching me with interest when I eat food. So I think they're ready to eat. No, definitely not. Has to come in conjunction with the other two things, which is being six months of age and sitting relatively independently.

Katie Ferraro (9m 24s):

And I know a lot of you are getting pressure to start solid foods early. You'll hear things like you have a big baby, so he needs to start early for extra nutrition. Or you have a little baby who needs extra nutrition. So start solid foods early. If this is happening to you and you're feeling pressured to start early, especially for those of you with smaller babies, go ahead and listen to episode 110. It's called "Catch Up Weight: Why Starting Solids Early Will Not Help Your Baby Gain Weight". And that's an interview with Rosan Meyer who's a PhD pediatric dietician. So who Does baby-led weaning not work for Kate always makes me sad when I see other resources. They list off all these conditions where baby-led weaning may not be appropriate. You'll see things like, oh, babies with cleft palates or cleft lips can't do baby-led weaning. Or those with tongue or lip or cheek ties, can't do it.

Katie Ferraro (10m 5s):

Or babies with down syndrome might not be able to do baby-led weaning. And I know from personal experience, having worked with tens of thousands of families and interviewed hundreds of feeding experts in this point, that in almost every situation there is a modified approach to baby-led weaning that can work with these babies too. And we've made a point on the podcast to highlight babies of all abilities and medical backgrounds who have successfully used baby-led weaning to transition to solid foods. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (11m 41s):

So I wanna highlight just a few here. In episode 148, we did how cleft lip and cleft palate babies can succeed in self feeding. That was an interview with Dr. Vikash K. Modi, who's a medical doctor who specializes in cleft lip and cleft palate. In episode 52, we talked about tongue ties and lip ties. Do these affect baby's ability to feed? This is with Shaina Holman. She's a PhD and dentist who specializes in tongue tie and lip tie and baby-led weaning mom herself. Episode 260. This is for parents of babies with feeding challenges. We talked about the adapted baby-led weaning approach, a BLW, so a BLW for children with developmental delays. And that was an interview with Gill Rapley and Jill Rabin who wrote a book on that topic.

Katie Ferraro (12m 25s):

So for medically fragile babies who are on a feeding tube exclusively for nutrition, those are babies who are likely not going to be candidates for baby-led weaning as long as they are exclusively tube fed. But we also have lots of instances of tube Weaning to self feeding. You go way back in the podcast to episode 50, we did How Tube Fed Babies can become Independent Eaters with Jennifer Berry and Heidi Moreland. These are speech language pathologists who have a tube Weaning program and they are also advocates of baby-led weaning as well. So the limitations to doing baby-led weaning are not so much about the physical capabilities of the baby, but it's really about their physiological readiness to feed. And just a reminder, there's no benefit to starting solid foods early with your baby, right?

Katie Ferraro (13m 6s):

It can be dangerous. And actually because starting to early increases the risk of choking. And I always like to remind parents that it's always safer and certainly more fun to feed a baby who is really ready to eat. So if you're interested in where you can go to learn more, I have a free feeding guide you can Download. It's called Will Baby-Led Weaning Work for My Baby. So this free feeding guide is a visual decision tree map that will walk you through the questions about whether or not your baby is really ready to start solid foods. And if they are, if using this approach will be ideal for you and your family. So if you wanna Download that free feeding guide, work your way through that decision tree map to kind of outline this transition to solid foods.

Katie Ferraro (13m 50s):

If you click the link that's in the show notes for this episode, you can grab that free feeding guide Will Baby-Led Weaning Work for My Baby. In the show notes for this episode, you can look below where you're listening to the episode, or if you head to blwpodcast.com/295, you can download that free feeding guide and figure out by asking yourself these questions on paper (If baby-led weaning will work for YOUR baby). I wanna say a special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that features science and food and using your brain, AirWave Media has some amazing podcast listening experiences for you. Our podcast is on the web @ blwpodcast.com. And thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time.