Podcast

Working Parents: Weekend Routine for Trying New Foods

In this episode we're talking about:

  • How you can offer a variety of foods to your baby over the course of the weekend if weekdays don't work for you
  • Why it is safe to offer 1 (or more) new foods to your baby every day and why you should consider doing it
  • What foods to try each week to ensure your baby achieves diet diversity and nutrition from foods

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE

Episode Description

What if you don’t have time to try new foods with your baby during the week? In this episode I’m sharing a weekend routine for working parents who are doing baby-led weaning.

While it is perfectly safe to offer your baby 1 (or more) new food each day, in households with working parents, that might not be realistic. If the weekend is the only time for you to get new foods in, your baby can still safely learn to eat a wide variety of foods.

Here are some of the exact weekend feeding schedules that working families can use to still help their babies eat 5 (or more) new foods each week with baby-led weaning.

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Click here for episode transcript Toggle answer visibility

Katie Ferraro (1m 32s):

If you're heading out with your baby this summer, you need a portable highchair. Right now I'm giving away my favorite portable highchair, the summer infant pop and sit booster to five lucky podcast listeners. These boosters are my favorite for feeding on the go. Like if you're going to the beach or grandma's house through like little camping chairs, they have a tray on them. But you can also affix this booster to your adult chair or your bar stool for safe feeding at home. All you have to do to enter this giveaway is leave a review of the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast on Apple Podcasts anytime now through Tuesday, July 25th. Reviews are seriously everything for helping other parents find out about The show. And I read every single podcast review you write. I love. I appreciate your feedback. So If, you wanna win one of those five portable high shares that are up for grabs.

Katie Ferraro (2m 13s):

All you have to do to enter is leave a written review of the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast on Apple Podcasts. In your review, be sure to drop your Instagram handle as your name on the review so that I can DM you on Instagram and find you when you win. If you've already left a review in the past, update your old review with anything new and you're also entered that way. This giveaway is not sponsored or endorsed by Summer Infant. The ship to address for winners has to be in the United States and all new and updated podcast reviews submitted now through Tuesday, July 25th are eligible. Go find the show, leave a review, get entered to win one of the five boosters and I hope you win. Now let's get on with the show. And for this particular family, Lochlan's parents were both working parents.

Katie Ferraro (2m 54s):

They did not have time to do new foods in the week. Their schedule was crazy. Baby was either with the nanny or at Daycare or they were too tired at night. And I get it, it's a lot. But that baby still deserves the right to learn how to eat real foods. And so we worked on this schedule where over the course of the weekend we did five new foods. We did raspberries, parsnips, spelt beef and soft cheese all in the course of one weekend. And this baby is tracking to eat a hundred foods before he turns one. Even though like a lot of you, both of his parents are working. 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.

Katie Ferraro (3m 35s):

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. How do you coordinate starting solid foods into your already busy parenting schedule when you are also working? Like can Working Parents even do baby led weaning? And if so, how do you do five new foods every week? If you're not the one who's doing most of the meals with your baby because you're working? Hang tight In. this episode I'm going to share a weekend routine for trying new Foods that works great for Working Parents or really for anyone who for whatever reason doesn't get around to trying out all those new foods during the week.

Katie Ferraro (4m 24s):

Now I like to start these mini baby led weaning training episodes with a story. And the reason why I thought about doing this episode because I recently traveled to Boston with my girls. I have three daughters and four sons and I'm gonna be straight up honest with you guys, the girls are way easier. So I was like, how about we go to Boston? And then my husband kept the boys. Now I do sometimes do stuff with the boys but they're a lot harder and there's more of them. But the girls and I went to Boston and we went to visit a friend whose grand baby was starting solid foods, she's my neighbor. She helped me start solid foods and do a 100 First Foods with my twins. Like she's literally been there from the beginning and she's like, if I ever have a grandbaby, will you help him start solid foods or her? I was like, Heck. Yeah, so baby Lochlan getting ready to start solid foods, we go to Boston, but both of his parents work like a lot of families and the mom, Madeline, she's totally on board with doing the 100 First Foods approach.

Katie Ferraro (5m 11s):

She's like, I wanna do this. I have so many friends with really, really picky eater kids. I will do whatever I can to avoid that. But here's my deal. She was the rowing coach for a college in Boston and she worked long hours and her husband worked and the baby was sometimes at Daycare, sometimes with a nanny. But basically they had a schedule that was kind of all over the place. It was a schedule, but the point is it didn't look the same every day. And she's like, Katie, how am I possibly going to introduce five new Foods every week for 20 weeks so the baby can do a hundred Foods? I'm like, you can definitely do this. Because a lot of the parents in our program, the reason why they're in my program is like, like I don't have time to hunt and peck all over the internet for free resources and figure out how to make these Foods. And then half the time the free resources don't even show you the right way to make the food safe.

Katie Ferraro (5m 55s):

Like just show me how to do it all. And I'm like, I can do this, we can do this. And you, you don't have to do it every day. So in our typical program, the way our program works is we do introduce five new Foods a week. And for a lot of families what works best is a new fruit on Monday, a new vegetable on Tuesday, a new starchy food on Wednesday, a new protein food on Thursday and a new Allergenic food on Friday. And then we introduce that Allergenic food twice on Friday, twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday with no other new Foods across the weekend. And that's in order to observe for any potential Allergic reaction as we do multiple introductions of that new Allergenic food. Now you continue to include the familiar Foods from the previous days, right? So in this manner the baby is moving forward with one new food every day, but the meals that you're sequencing are also incorporating familiar Foods from previous days.

Katie Ferraro (6m 37s):

So you're trying a new food every day but you're reintroducing familiar foods because repeated exposure is key, right? Babies may need to see a food 10 or 15 times before they like or accept it. You don't just do broccoli once and like, oh my baby hated it, we never do it. So we're in Boston and I'm like, Madeline, listen, I'm here on the weekend, you're here on the weekend. Let's do five new foods with baby Lochlan. To which she said as many parents do. But my doctor told me I need to wait three to five days between trying new foods. And we've covered this myth numerous times here on the podcast, but please know you do not need to wait three to five days between introducing new foods. If you're concerned about an Allergic reaction, if your baby is going to have an Allergic reaction, the vast majority of Allergic reactions will occur within minutes and up to no more than two hours following ingestion.

Katie Ferraro (7m 22s):

It's not like you offer the baby shellfish and two and a half days later there's a weird diaper and you're like, oh my gosh, they're Allergic to shellfish. It doesn't work like that. The vast majority of Allergic reactions will occur within minutes and up to no more than two hours following ingestion. So it's perfectly safe to offer one or more than one low risk i e non potentially Allergenic food in the same day. We do it all the time in real life out in the wild babies have learned to try a new food for the first time, like two or more of them in the same day. Now I do not in my programs introduce two new potentially Allergenic Foods at the same time. Okay, we treat those allergenic foods separately and we do wanna observe for any potential reaction.

Katie Ferraro (8m 3s):

But if we're starting with five new foods, if we're following my five-step feeding framework, four of those five Foods, the fruit, the vegetable, the starchy food, and the protein food, those are low risk. I e non-allergenic foods. so you could do all four in one day. If, you were so inclined. So what I did when we were traveling to visit Lochlan is they had started with a few simple starter foods things like avocado, banana, and sweet potato. He was about six months plus two weeks when he was sitting up on his own. And I think I saw him when he was six months plus three weeks. So they'd been at it for maybe a week. But we went and picked out five foods from the 100 FIRST FOODS list. I did Raspberry for fruit, I did parsnip for vegetable, I did spelt, which is a whole grain for the starchy food. We did beef as this new protein food.

Katie Ferraro (8m 44s):

This family does eat animal foods. And then we did a soft cheese on day five, which is the Allergenic food.

Katie Ferraro (8m 49s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (9m 45s):

So for babies who are exclusively breastfed, they've never had cow's milk protein, we want to introduce that cow's milk protein early and often and a low sodium soft cheese is a great safe way to do that. If your baby's had formula, the base of commercial infant formula is cow's milk protein. so you've already kind of passed that one. You could definitely do the low sodium soft cheese If you wanted to, but I would recommend starting with another Allergenic food your baby hasn't had yet. So the way we did it was on the weekend when we had a little bit more time, I prepped the five Foods for that weekend that we were going to introduce. So we actually can start with the soft cheese If you want because that's the one that's going to potentially cause an Allergic reaction. so you introduce that and remember you're gonna observe for a couple of minutes up to two hours the baby doesn't have an Allergic reaction.

Katie Ferraro (10m 26s):

We tried it again later that day. We actually were doing two or three Solid food feeds on each of the days of the weekend. I happened to be there on a three day weekend. So we did like two of the new Foods on Saturday, two on Sunday and then the Allergenic food on Monday. But you could really mix it up on the weekends in any order that you wanted to. The key is that you're just really hitting the weekend days hard with the new Foods. So you're prepping those Foods and offering them to the baby during the meals on the weekend. And we made extra so that we could utilize them as now familiar Foods at the next meal. So we start with raspberry. Now Lockland is only six and a half months of age. He didn't have his pins or grass by, wouldn't offer full intact raspberries.

Katie Ferraro (11m 6s):

We worked it into a smoothie that we were practicing open cup drinking out of it. And so he was tasting raspberry. Then for parsnip we did roasted parsnips with lots of added oil gain. We seasoned them with cumin or you can do any no salt Seasoning. So strips of cooked parsnip parsnips are basically like white carrots, If, you've never had 'em before. My friend, my neighbor Mary was like Oh my gosh, these are delicious. They tastes like white carrots. Like absolutely they taste like delicious roasted vegetables with whatever Seasoning you wanna put on them. We just avoid added salt and we cut them about the size of the adult pinky finger so baby locklan could pick 'em up and feed it to himself. For this spelt, we made a porridge that you can offer off of a preloaded spoon. When it cools you can kind of form it into little sticks or logs that are about the size of again your adult pinky finger.

Katie Ferraro (11m 50s):

The baby could pick it up and feed it to himself for beef, I got a beef brisket, totally got hosed on this one one cuz I got stuck in their small town in Massachusetts which only had a whole foods and I like whole foods but I don't shop there all the time cause it's definitely expensive. And brisket, which is traditionally or has been a cheaper cut of meat, but now it's super popular in like the barbecue world. And I was shopping at a fancy whole foods. The brisket was so expensive anyway, bit the bullet bought the baby the brisket, did the brisket in their instant pot with no salt broth. And then we did soft shreddable strips of beef on day four for him, which would've been day four if we were doing it throughout the week. But it was the fourth meal that we did. So we did on Sunday morning. Cool thing about babies, like they don't need to eat traditional breakfast foods.

Katie Ferraro (12m 33s):

We were having brisket and some leftover parsnips and some raspberry pure for breakfast. And then we also pureed some of the meat and did some more practicing outta the open cup. Did some practice off of the preloaded spoon. Then we did do a soft cheese, which could be a potentially Allergenic food. This particular baby had already had formula so we'd already, I knew he was totally fine with cow's milk and the spelt actually is wheat containing. So technically that was an Allergenic food. It also happened to be a whole grain and an iron food. But the soft cheese, because he'd already had introduction to wheat, we just did a little babyled Weaning pancake. You can put some of the soft cheese on that. He was totally fine with that. I know because Hess been having formula, he didn't have any reaction to the spelt. So we actually tried out some peanut puffs that weekend too. So we got like three potential allergens in even though he didn't need the milk.

Katie Ferraro (13m 15s):

So two that were new for him, he got a new whole grain. He tried his first meat, he had a new vegetable with some new low salt seasonings. He practiced open cup drinking with his raspberry puree and some of the puree beef. We practiced using the preloaded spoon off with the pureed beef out of a bowl with the preloaded spoon and then the spill porridge out of a bowl with the preloaded spoon. so you can see like all of the things that this baby was learning in the weekend and like did he eat a significant amount of this food? Absolutely not. Okay. Babies don't eat very much early on. But I was helping the family see, look at all of the different things that this baby is learning, right? He's picking up strips of meat and putting it in his mouth and if he doesn't like how far back it goes, he's in charge. He can pull the beef brisket back out. He's learning how to drink out of an open cup, practicing his open cup technique.

Katie Ferraro (13m 58s):

He was pretty bad at the open cup and they were like, they had a pretty clean house too. And they were like, I think a little stressed about the open cup cause it was making a mess. But like he wasn't great at it. And I was like, you guys trust me, If, you do this five minutes after every meal in two months your baby will be a pro. And they sent me a video two months later, literally an open cup pro, like total party tricked. This kid was like smashing everything out of the open cup when he was just like eight and a half months old. So this stuff works If, you stick with it. And that's the thing that this family has stuck with. They've done five new foods every week, mostly on the weekend because of their work schedule, offering a variety of new foods doing one new food at each meal if that needs to be on the weekend. And then continuing to introduce the familiar foods from previous days. They're building their way towards raising an independent eater and they're gonna hit that a 100 First Foods mark very soon.

Katie Ferraro (14m 41s):

I was supposed to see Baby Lochlan this weekend, but he has hand, foot and mouth disease so they couldn't come out to San Diego and visit. So maybe I need to take my boys back to Austin and visit Baby Lochlan for his hundred first food celebration.

Katie Ferraro (15m 31s):

Hey, we're gonna take a a quick break, but I'll be right back. Thanks for listening. I just wanted to share the way a weekend schedule might work for you guys. If, you need that 100 FIRST FOODS list. I give it away to everybody for free on my one hour online video workshop called Baby led weaning board Beginners. I just rerecorded it. There's actually some footage of Baby Lochlan in there. So If, you see me wearing a red Boston University rowing shirt, that's where mad used to be the head coach at. And she hooked all my girls up with some BU gear and I hooked her up with five new foods for her baby that weekend. If, you want the 100 FIRST FOODS list, it's on the workshop. https://babyledweaning.co Is where you sign up. If you wanna check out The show notes for this particular episode, go to https://blwpodcast.com/353. I'm gonna put some videos and link out to Lochlan's content that we did.

Katie Ferraro (16m 14s):

So you can just see him eating these foods or trying to learn how to eat these foods in his first full week of starting solid foods. Even though both of his parents work. And I know there's a lot of Working Parents listening cuz you guys get a lot done and you're listening to this. Well maybe while you're on your way to work, I hear that all the time listening to your podcast on the way to work or when I pump or when I'm doing my laundry. And I know you guys are multitasking and juggling a lot of things. And even If, you do go to work or your baby does go to Daycare or you do have a nanny or grandma, someone helping you feed the Foods. You still do need to be the primary person who offers the new food. You can't outsource that. I'm all for outsourcing as much stuff with parenting as we possibly can and life in general. But you need to be the one who's introducing the new Foods to your baby. But once you get those foods down, whoever helps you can be involved in the feeding process.

Katie Ferraro (16m 57s):

And don't forget that just because you work doesn't mean your baby doesn't deserve the right to learn how to eat real Foods. So head to The, show notes for this episode, https://blwpodcast.com/353. I'll give you the list for the 100 First Foods at https://babyledweaning.co. And If, you're a working parent whether you work outside the home or you're a full-time stay-at-home parent, which is a huge and massive job in and of itself. Keep up the great work, don't give up. Keep doing five new foods a week. You'll get to 20 Foods a month. You do that for five months and your baby's eaten a hundred foods and you're winning, right? Because if we look at conventional adult-led spoonfeeding, those babies have had at most 10 or 15 Foods by the time they turn one, okay? And If, you lose those 10 or 15 Foods to pick eating in a second year of life, that becomes an incredibly challenging child to feed.

Katie Ferraro (17m 39s):

And while it does feel like a lot of work, If you, oh my gosh, I have to do a hundred foods. It's just one new food a day or one new food a meal on the weekend, If, you're jamming it all in there. And the point is, If, you lose 10 or 15 foods to picky eating at that point. your baby still has 85 or 90 foods. So this approach helps reduce the severity of picky eating. It helps you raise an independent eater, and your baby is learning so many other things that are developmentally appropriate for their age once they're six months plus showing the other signs of readiness to eat. So keep up the great work. You're all doing a great job. I'll see you guys next time. And a special thanks to our partners at AirWave Media. They produce podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain.

Katie Ferraro (18m 19s):

Check out the AirWave Media podcast and you can check us out online at https://blwpodcast.com. See you next time.

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