5 Feeding Practices to Avoid for Baby-Led Weaning

Katie Ferraro (1s):

And so the concern about wiping your baby during mealtime will not necessarily a safety issue is that this can become a negative sensory experience, right? And constant wiping of your baby can cause your baby to start having negative associations with food and feeding. So it's definitely a practice we want to avoid. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weening here on the baby-led weening 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 weening.

Katie Ferraro (44s):

Hey guys, Katie here and just sharing a few tips in today's episode about some feeding practices to avoid for baby-led weening. Now, I don't normally like to do negatively themed content like don't do this and don't feed that because I feel like there's already enough judgment and negativity in the parenting space and for whatever reason in particular with baby-led weening. So it's always my intent to highlight the booze that your baby can eat and all the things your baby can do. But occasionally I feel like it's okay to point out some of the practices that might not serve your baby and certainly might not be safe. So that's the impetus for today's episode, which is called "Five Feeding Practices to Avoid for Baby-led Weaning. "

Katie Ferraro (1m 24s):

Now, the first one that I wanna mention is putting the spoon directly in your baby's mouth. Putting anything in your baby's mouth including a spoon, can be a choking hazard. Now, some people mistakenly think, oh my gosh, baby-led weaning, that just means not using purees, right? Well, it actually does not mean that at all. You certainly can honor the self-feeding principles of baby-led weaning and still feed your baby naturally occurring pureed foods like full fat, whole milk, yogurt, and unsweetened apple sauce and oatmeal. And you can do that using the pre-loaded spoon approach. Now, if you've never heard of the pre-loaded spoon approach, this is a term and a technique coined by Dawn Winkelmann.

Katie Ferraro (2m 7s):

She's a speech language pathologist and she's the feeding expert for a company called EZPZ. They make all of the feeding gear that I use for baby-led weaning. I use the products both in my home with my own seven kids and in my infant feeding practice. And Dawn created the first ever baby-led weaning spoon, the tiny spoon for EZPZ. Dawn was on the podcast back in episode 64 teaching about how to preload a baby-led weaning spoon for self-feeding. She's explaining that technique. Again, that's episode 64 if you want to learn more. But for those of you who are here because you're looking to make the transition from purees, it doesn't mean you're gonna be abandoning purees. Purees are an important texture for your baby to master.

Katie Ferraro (2m 49s):

They're just not the only texture your baby can eat. And we have great, great, great advice on how to do the preloaded spoon approach back in episode 64. And if you want to check out some of the EZPZ feeding gear, including their tiny spoon, tiny bowl, that's what I used for the first few days and weeks of baby-led weening. You can get 10% off@ezpzfun.com with my EZPZ affiliate discount code Katie10. So tip number one, don't put the food directly in your baby's mouth. You can put the spoon in your baby's hand and help gently guide the spoon to mouth using the hand underhand approach. But again, we don't put anything in the baby's mouth coz they can do it for themselves. The second feeding practice I think is wise to avoid is wiping your baby during mealtime.

Katie Ferraro (3m 31s):

Now this can be challenging for those of us and I raise my hand here who are type A parents and don't love the mess. But the mess is an important part of learning how to eat right and getting messy is part of the full sensory experience that is learning how to eat. And so while it may be tempting to wipe your baby during mealtime, please don't do it. This can be a negative sensory experience for your baby and can start causing your baby to have negative associations with food and feeding. So I am a huge fan of definitely cleaning up the baby-led weaning food mess as soon as possible when the meal is over. But please don't be constantly wiping your baby during the mealtime if the mess of baby-led weaning mealtime is stressing you out.

Katie Ferraro (4m 12s):

I have two recommendations. Get a baby-led weaning bib that covers the entirety of your baby's front, but that does not restrict the range of motion. A lot of these full coverage or tent like contraption, bibs that we're seeing out there are very restrictive to your baby. And your baby needs to have their entire range of motion including at their shoulders. So I choose a sleeveless bib when babies are learning how to eat, and my favorite bib is from a company called Bapron. Baby. A Bapron is a hybrid between a bib and an apron. It's a pin four style bib, and the Bapron baby company also makes these amazing splash mats. They go underneath the highchair of your baby. The food drops on the clean splash mat, you can recycle it back up to the tables many times as you are comfortable doing, but it helps to cut down on the mess and food waste.

Katie Ferraro (4m 58s):

And both the splash mats and the Bapron bibs are available on the EZPZ website@ezpzfun.com. And again, that affiliate discount code KATIE10 will help you get 10% off if you wanna try them out. But don't wipe your baby during mealtime if you can help yourself. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (6m 27s):

Alright, another feeding practice to avoid during baby-led weaning is dangling feet in the high chair. Okay? Oh my gosh, I see pictures online of baby's feet dangling all over the place. And it's so dangerous because when your baby's feet are dangling, they're not planted firmly in a way that's going to stabilize their core. And so putting the feet flat on a solid foot plate is the best way to stabilize your baby's core and facilitate a safe swallow, right? You've gotta take into account your baby has only had breast milk formula in their mouth up until six months of age. Now you're introducing new textures. They've just learned how to sit up, right? So they're trying to coordinate the, they're sucking and they're sitting and they're swallowing and they're breathing, and now they're eating and they're swallowing.

Katie Ferraro (7m 7s):

We wanna do everything for them to stabilize them during mealtimes. So do whatever you can in order to get that baby's feet resting flat on a solid foot plate. In order to do that, you can select a chair that has an adjustable footplate, or many of you look at your high chairs, you think, gosh, it doesn't have a footrest, but I can DIY a footrest. And back in episode 261, I shared some DIY highchair hacks for safer baby-led weaning. You don't have to go out and buy a fancy highchair if you don't want to. You can implement some of these hacks, so check them out. That's from episode 261. And for those of you who are shopping for a new highchair, the two highchairs that I recommend are STOKKE Tripp Trapp chair and the NOMI Highchair.

Katie Ferraro (7m 54s):

Very different highchairs from an aesthetic standpoint, generational standpoint, design standpoint. However, they have the most important feature, which is adjustable foot plate and an adjustable seat to keep your baby positioned properly and safely at the table. If you guys are shopping the Nomi Highchair, depending upon what time you're listening to this, if they're still in stock, I do have a 25% off offer for the NOMI Highchair. They're changing distributors at the time of this recording, and so they're trying to liquidate some of the chairs that they still have in stock. This is rock bottom the cheapest. You will be able to get the NOMI Highchair 25% off. I have an affiliate discount code and you have to click a particular link to get to that discount offer. And I'll put that in the show notes for you for this episode.

Katie Ferraro (8m 34s):

blwpodcast.com/289. I know the NOMI is an investment, but I'm hoping if you're interested in this chair, that that 25% off discount will help you. All right, next feeding practice to avoid when doing baby-led weaning is I recommend against feeding food off of the highchair tray or the table, especially early on in baby-led weening, we have to acknowledge that early on in baby-led weening at six or seven months of age, your baby does not have their penser grasp. They are not able to pick up foods efficiently on their own if we're putting 'em on the tray or the table and not giving the baby a lip against which they can rake or scoop the foods up, right? Baby is using their whole hand or their Palmer grasp to rake or scoop foods up early on in baby-led weening.

Katie Ferraro (9m 18s):

And so I recommend feeding your baby out of a suction mat or bowl that sticks to the surface. I like the ones from the company EZPZ. They make the tiny bowl and the the mini mats, I think they're wonderful. They're a hundred percent food grade silicone, all developed by Dawn, the speech language pathologist, who is their feeding expert for EZPZ. And the reason why these help promote independent eating is because your baby can use the pliable silicone barrier of the bowls and the mats from easy-peasy. They use that as a barrier up against which they can rake or scoop the food up and out and into their mouth using that whole hand grasp. If we don't put out a suction mat or bowl, what happens is our baby puts their whole hand on top of the food, smashes it around the table, left to right, left to right, left to right, and they never pick it up.

Katie Ferraro (10m 4s):

They never bring it to their mouth because they can't get the food up and into their cute little fat baby hand. And then parents say, oh, baby-led weaning doesn't work cuz my baby's not feeding themselves. And they resort back to force feeding by spoon. So sometimes just having a small amount of the right type of gear is helpful. And I love the suction mats on bowls from EZPZ, very affordably priced, but again, that easy-peasy affiliate discount code KATIE10 will get you another 10% off if you're shopping EZPZ. All right, another feeding practice to avoid the fifth and final one is, I see parents skipping the introduction of allergenic foods because they're scared of allergic reactions. Now, yes, the thought of offering a food to your baby that could potentially cause an allergic reaction is scary. But I want to point out that the only thing we can do as parents and caregivers to lower baby's risk of having an allergic reaction to food is to introduce the allergenic foods early and often.

Katie Ferraro (10m 54s):

So I have lots of content all over the podcast and on social media and in my different resources about how to do these allergenic foods. But if you're feeling fearful about introducing allergenic foods, it also might help to know that death from anaphylaxis in infancy is almost all but unheard of. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (12m 8s):

And actually anaphylactic reactions in infancy are much more mild early on than if we were to wait until the child was older and introduce those foods if they did have a food allergy. So we've got lots of reasons why you should be introducing those allergenic foods early and often. Using my five step Feeding framework, which is the backbone of the hundred First Foods program, we introduce five new foods per week. We do a new fruit on Monday, a new vegetable on Tuesday, a new starchy food on Wednesday, a new protein food on Thursday, and we do one new allergenic food every week starting on Friday week one of baby-led weening. And if you haven't started the Allergenic foods yet, I highly suggest you get started because we think that the protective window for preventing food allergies, that it closes and it closes somewhere around the 11 month mark.

Katie Ferraro (12m 56s):

So we actually had Dr. David Stukus, one of the world's leading pediatric food allergy researchers and educators. He was on the podcast back in episode 227 talking about this idea of the food allergy prevention window. And not to stress you out, but it is important to get those foods in early and often, certainly before 11 months of age and start when your baby's six months of age. If you're not sure where to start or the idea of introducing a food like peanut or tree nut is scary, I highly recommend the PUFFWORKS, baby Peanut Butter Puffs and the PUFFWORKS, baby Almond Puffs, they're two separate ways to introduce your baby to two separate food allergy categories. The PUFFWORKS, baby peanut puffs, I do. First, these are a puff that your baby can pick up cuz they're the right size for baby-led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (13m 39s):

They have no added sugar, just a smidge of sodium, and they use that for preservative. And they're also the safest puff on the market because they're the softest puff on the market. So they dissolve right on your baby's tongue if you're starting these foods before your baby has teeth. And oftentimes we are starting foods before babies have teeth. And side note, your baby having or not having teeth is in no way related to the readiness to eat. So if you're a little bit hesitant about doing the allergenic foods, I think a really nice gateway product is that PUFFWORKS, baby peanut puffs, and you can get a discount if you're checking those out on their website: puffworks.com. I have an affiliate discount code BABYLED. I recommend getting one case of the baby peanut puffs, one case of the baby almond puffs.

Katie Ferraro (14m 22s):

That's how you do tree nut after you've already done peanut separately and you've got two of the big nine allergenic foods knocked out of the way. So to review five feeding practices to avoid, avoid putting the spoon directly in your baby's mouth. What should I do instead? Try that pre-loaded spoon approach. Second tip, avoid wiping your baby during feeding. What should you do instead? Get a good baby-led weaning bib like the ones that Bapron makes, and a splash mat that goes underneath your baby's chair as a way to reduce the mask. But we don't intervene in feeding until it's over as far as cleaning up goes. Third, feeding practice to avoid. Stay away from those dangling feet in the highchair. Do what you gotta do to get your baby a solid foot plate where their feet are resting flat.

Katie Ferraro (15m 3s):

You can DIY that yourself. Or if you're checking out the NOMI Highchair, I do have that 25% off discount code. Fourth tip, don't feed your baby food directly off the tray or the table, especially early on in eating. Also, we have a lot of, you know, sanitation concerns. I see parents doing at a restaurant. I'm like, oh my gosh, did you just put the food on the restaurant table? There's no way that's clean. I love bringing my own clean suction matter bowl wherever I go for baby-led weaning. These are designed to help facilitate independent eating. I love getting messages from parents who are like, all I did was one simple trick. I started using the EZPZ minima or their tiny bowl, and now my baby can pick the food up and feed themselves the last feeding practice to avoid. Don't be shy about offering those allergenic foods.

Katie Ferraro (15m 43s):

Don't skip the allergenic foods, do the allergenic foods early and often. I like those puff freaks, baby peanut puffs and all of the codes for these products if you wanna check them out. We'll be linked up in the show notes for this episode, which you can find@blwpodcast.com/289. A special thanks to our partners at AirWave Media, if you guys like podcasts that feature science and food and using your brain, AirWave Media has some great options. Some of my favorite podcasts are there, and we're so happy to be there now too. We're on the internet @blwpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.