Katie Ferraro (1s):

Mom picks the baby up from daycare and she wants to dinner as soon as she gets home, but that baby's not hungry because it's been pumped full of snacks and milk right before pickup. It's really hard to engage in responsive feeding. If your baby doesn't have hunger cues because he's not hungry. 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 Made Easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge. You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (43s):

Hey guys, come back in today's episode, we're talking about your baby's hunger and fullness cues. What are hunger and fullness cues? How do you spot them? And then what do you do once you recognize what they are? As I like to do in every episode, I want to start today out with a baby led weaning tip of the day. And since we're talking today about this concept of responsive feeding, which I'll introduce you to in a second, I want to remind you that one thing we want to avoid is "dripping food." What's dripping food, dripping food is when you like take a piece of food and you put it in front of your baby and you wait for your baby to pick it up and they eat it. And then you pick another piece of food and you put in front of the baby and you wait for the baby. It's just like, give and take of like you determining the rate at which your baby eats and how much your baby eats.

Katie Ferraro (1m 27s):

That's anathema to the spirit and the philosophy of baby led weaning. So you got to trust that, you know, your baby best. You've got an idea of how much they might eat and you got to adjust, put it out there and let them figure out how much they're going to eat or even whether they're going to eat. So don't drip the food, try to proportion your baby's food based on what you think they'll eat. And then I'll teach you a little bit in today's episode, all about how you recognize and help your baby respond to those hunger and fullness cues. Because hang tight, you know, adults send a lot of mixed messages, will babies do it too? Okay. Their hunger and their fullness cues, they fluctuate or they change. And they'll change from like day to day or even within the day or sometimes with, even in the meal.

Katie Ferraro (2m 9s):

And like you think you have it figured out and boom, they change it. Your baby's going to keep you on your toes. And that's okay. Throughout the entirety of the feeding experience though, we want to practice responsive feeding. And so knowing what your baby's hunger and fullness cues are and allowing your baby to respond to those, that's all part of responsive feeding. Now, a quick story before we get started, I feel like my entire life of feeding children has been kind of one big social experiment. And I remember when I was doing baby led weaning with my quadruplets, I had struggled immensely with spoon feeding, my oldest daughter. And when I had quads for my second pregnancy, I was like, oh, we're not doing that. It was too traumatic. I want the babies to be able to feed themselves and enjoy eating.

Katie Ferraro (2m 50s):

And more than that, I wanted to enjoy the feeding experience. But every single day with four babies learning to feed themselves was different. And there wasn't even like the time. And I did not have the mental capacity distress about it. Like one day, my quadruplet Dylan, he was the biggest he would eat the most. And then the next day he would eat so little that I was like, oh my gosh, this kid's gonna die. And then my girl, baby, Claire would like quadruple mack. All the boys need so much more food than them. And then the next meal not be interested in food. And it changed all the time. And to be honest, there's no point in stressing about it. You need to roll with your baby's intake, you know, your baby best do your best job at anticipating with what you think they're going to eat and then adjust it as necessary because every baby is different and your baby's hunger and fullness cues, you'll start to figure them out, but they will change as your baby goes through the different ages and stages.

Katie Ferraro (3m 44s):

So let's talk a little bit about this concept of responsive feeding, which for some of you might be a new term. Some of you are like, no, I'm a breastfeeding pro. And I learned all about response to feeding, where I was bottle feeding. And at WIC, they do a great job teaching about responsive bottle feeding. And so you might've heard the concept, but basically before your baby can talk, he or she is telling you things about whether they're hungry or whether they're full. And so it's on us as the parents and the caregivers not to respond to these on the baby's behalf, but really to read the situation and be like, okay, cool. Baby's hungry or, okay, cool. Baby's full. And then what do I do in order to facilitate their ability to develop skills as an independent eater?

Katie Ferraro (4m 26s):

So whether it's being responsive during breastfeeding or bottle feeding or solid food, feeding, responsive feeding allows your baby the opportunity to ultimately meet their feeding milestones that are related to self feeding, like a baby, can't learn to feed themselves. If we're always getting up in their business and interfering with their cues and trying to regulate things ourselves, when they, to be honest, actually know how much they need and when they're full. And we're just kind of like the coach along there for the ride now, responsive feeding also gives our babies the ability to honor their own inborn ability and desire to regulate their own intake. Okay? It's not on us to be like, oh cool. This three ounce jar of baby food, I'm going to put in your stomach in the next 15 minutes.

Katie Ferraro (5m 10s):

It doesn't work like that response. The feeding is cool because you get to bond with your baby. It actually makes meal times easier early on. You might be like, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I promise you down the road, you will not be engaged in those mealtime battles. The parents are very picky eaters are because we know that allowing baby to respond to their own fullness and hunger cues and become independent eaters helps reduce the severity of picky eating and all babies are going to experience some degree of picky eating, usually starting in about the second year of life. But your situation is going to be way less tragic. If you let your baby drive this whole operation early on. And we do that with responsive feeding. So in order to optimize responsive feeding, we want to see at mealtimes minimizing distractions, you don't need an iPad.

Katie Ferraro (5m 55s):

You don't need a phone, keep the dog out of the room. If you can. If you've got annoying family members to meander and mosey in and out and make a lot of comments and you get up in your babies business, keep them out of the mix. If you can too, it's actually best. If you can just allow your baby to eat and peace and quiet for 15 or 20 minutes for a meal, you're there to be affectionate and supportive as needed. But again, let your baby drive the whole experience your baby's in control. This is going to be less work for you. And it's actually how your baby was designed. They know when they're hungry and when they're full, it's not our job to mess up that feedback loop. So one of the lines I love this one is about response to feeding. It's that with responsive feeding you provide and your baby decides.

Katie Ferraro (6m 38s):

So let's talk for a second about hunger cues. How do we know when our baby is hungry? Okay. When the hunger cues don't like change dramatically from breast or bottle feeding to solid food feeding, once your baby kind of gets the hang of solid food feeding, which for most babies, if you start solid foods and baby led weaning at around the six month mark, the first four, six or eight weeks for most babies are gonna be exploratory. They're learning how to eat. They're getting most of their nutrition from breast milk or formula. So we don't stress that they're not eating very much, but usually around the eight month mark is when it all kind of clicks for babies. And when they start eating more, yeah, we drop a milk feed. They're kind of getting into their jam. We're gonna know when they're hungry and they're going to want to eat when they're hungry. So they're gonna like, they're going to be crying.

Katie Ferraro (7m 19s):

They're going to be fussy. I mean, take your cues from breastfeeding or bottle feeding when your baby starts moving their fist to their mouth or sucking on their hands or smacking their lips when they're turning their head like they did to look at the breast or the bottle, they'll start doing that and looking towards the food, like you will be the most popular person in the household. As you are preparing dinner, when your baby's hungry, they're going to be more alert. They're going to be more active around food. There'll be doing things like opening and closing, no mouth. Okay. So some parents are like, oh my gosh, my baby's hungry. Every time I see a hunger cue, should I like have a full blown meal? Ready? No, you're working your way into a schedule where basically by the time your baby turns one, we love to see the meeting modified versions of the same foods at mealtimes that the rest of the family is eating. You do not need to be at your baby's back and call ready to provide food.

Katie Ferraro (8m 2s):

Every time you think they're telling you hungry like a toddler, every time they tell you you're hungry, they're not actually hungry. Okay? You got to get in a routine where they're not just asking you for snacks to kill time. And you're not just providing snacks to keep them quiet. That they're really eating when they're hungry. And that generally takes the form in most families have three set meals. So if we're looking at your job in the division of responsibility and feeding theories that you have to provide what the baby eats and where they eat and when they eat the, when part is at set fail times, okay? Occasionally as your baby gets older, especially past the one-year mark. If you change the schedule up and they're getting less nutrition from them milk at that point, because all their nutrition is coming from food. You may start wanting to be adding snacks in, but it would highly encourage you to not do snacks before age one, give your baby that chance to explore appearance, some hunger at mealtimes, and then respond to that hunger by actually eating all this amazing food that you're preparing for them.

Katie Ferraro (8m 54s):

And what about fullness cues? How do we know when our baby is done? If you are doing traditional spoon-feeding the hunger cue would be the baby turns their head away from the spoon. But with baby led weaning, we're not forcing the baby to be eating off of a spoon. We do a preloaded spoon approach. And then we put the spoon in the baby's hand and allow them to bring it to their mouth. If you're not familiar with the preloaded spoon approach, I'm going to go ahead and link to a previous episode that I did with a speech language pathologist, Dawn Winkelman. She talked all about the preloaded spoon and how your baby can learn to feed themselves with the preloaded spoon that's episode 64 in the podcast. But I'll link it up on the show notes for this episode, which you can find@blwpodcast.com/77.

Katie Ferraro (9m 36s):

So other fullness cues, they're going to start pushing the food out of their mouth. They're going to start sealing their lips. They're going to start pushing the food on the floor and basically playing with their food. Now, especially when we're talking about older babies, like your typical 10 month old baby, they were eating really well at eight and nine months of age. And parents sometimes get shocked. They're like my 10 month old is now not eating as much as they were last month. It's seems counterintuitive. But the rate of growth actually slows down as baby approaches the one year mark. So sometimes they actually even eat less from food at 10 and 11 months than they did at eight and nine months. And that's okay. Again, they're still growing, but the rate of growth is slowing down as we approach the one year mark. And so if your baby starts playing with their food after 10, 15, 20 minutes in the highchair, it's probably because they're full.

Katie Ferraro (10m 19s):

Now, when we talk about older babies who come right to the table at 10 months of age and they immediately start playing with their food, that baby's not hungry. And then we, as parents need to step in and analyze the situation. Okay. Was baby having snacks too close to the mealtime was baby having milk too close to the mealtime was maybe having too big of a snack or too much milk. How can we adjust things so that when the baby comes to the table, they're experiencing some degree of hunger. We don't want to starve the baby out because then that, that backfires on you. Cause then they freak out and then they won't eat. And then you're up reek, but you do want your baby. It is okay for them to experience hunger. And I say that a little flippantly, but some parents really surprised like, whoa, it's okay for my baby to be hungry. Yes, your job is not to prevent hunger throughout the day.

Katie Ferraro (11m 0s):

By pushing her baby full of snacks and milk. Your job is to set established mealtimes and provide wholesome foods and then make the schedule such that your baby does feel some degree of hunger when they're coming to the table so that they eat the food and then are satisfied by the foods that they're eating, but know that towards the end of the meal, their pace of eating will slow down and they will sometimes start playing with their food. But again, if they're playing with their food, especially older babies at around 10 months of age, early on in the meal, you should be analyzing whether or not that baby is actually hungry or maybe they're a little full from snacks or milk or something they've been fed to close to mealtime. That happens a lot, especially here from daycare parents. I did a couple of episodes on daycare and I'll link to those in the show notes as well.

Katie Ferraro (11m 42s):

But a lot of daycare parents will like pick their babies up at five. They go home, they want to eat dinner at five 30 and they're like this, baby's not hungry and they're not eating. And they're playing. And they're like showing me all the fullness cues and there's no hunger cues. Well it's because they got pumped full snacks at four 45 at daycare right before you picked them up. So I've got some strategies for you in the daycare episodes. Again, I'll link to those in the podcast show notes for this episode@blwpodcast.com/77. So hopefully you, don't a tiny bit now about your baby's hunger cues and fullness cues. You are in charge of making sure that you're directing a responsive feeding situation, but at the end of the day, your baby is the one who's really driving this situation. And don't forget in response to feeding you, provide your baby decides.

Katie Ferraro (12m 25s):

Thanks for listening guys. Bye now.