My friend and I just went out to breakfast at our local bakery after swimming lessons. Her son is 7 months and Edie is now 9 months. E had already nursed but was hungry for some solids. As Edie was eating bits of my breakfast sandwich, my friend and I were discussing how much we love Baby-led Weaning (BLW). Both of us have had the experience of people being amazed at what our babies are eating. After our conversation, I decided now is a good time to write about what my Intuitive-eating self loves about Baby-led Weaning.
So to begin with, what in the world is Baby-led Weaning?
It has nothing to do with weaning at the early stages, so sometimes I call it Baby-led Solids to help people understand it better.
The original book was written by Tracey Murkett and Gill Rapley. I was advised to skip the actual book and just get the cookbook as it has a more condensed explanation in the first few chapters.
My quick explanation is that BLW is a way of introducing solid foods that allows the baby to stay in control of what is being eaten. Generally pureed foods are skipped and the baby starts with easy-to-hold solid foods. The emphasis is not on how much food the baby gets, it’s about letting the baby play around with flavors, textures, and colors of these real foods. Babies at this age still get most of their necessary nutrition from breastmilk…(or formula), so the pressure is off the mama to make sure that they are consuming a certain amount of solid foods.
That’s my definition. For a more thorough explanation, see these posts about BLW. I would have included more research articles, however there is only one study at this point. That one study is a poorly controlled retrospective study, so we only have individual experiences to learn from.
BLW posts: Baby-led Weaning Basics, The gagging vs choking thing, Ideas for first foods, Another great BLW overview, The one and only research study on BLW (video).
From an Intuitive Eating perspective, I narrowed it down to 5 reasons why I love BLW:
1. Mindfulness: I love watching Edie have a truly mindful experience with her food. We do an activity in our Intuitive Eating groups where we take 5 minutes to eat 1 raisin,. We pay attention to how it looks, feels, smells, and tastes. Edie does this intuitively. In the beginning of introducing solids, we gave her a lot of broccoli. Edie would look at the broccoli, feel it in her hands, feel it on her gums, rub it all over her face, and then eventually (over a few months) she actually started to consume it. Watching E’s mindfulness is such a good reminder of how I want to be when I eat my food.
2. No Separate Meals: BLW encourages the parents to feed the food off of our own plate. There is no separate meal for baby. She doesn’t get the pureed food while we eat our meal. She eats what we eat. This turns out to be great motivation for nourishing my own body because it helps me remember to eat a variety of foods knowing that what I eat, she eats. Also, this can be a true exercise in introducing foods in a neutral manner, which can be one of the hardest parts of raising an Intuitive Eater. This truly needs a post of it’s own, so that is coming up next. (And here it is)
3. Baby’s Body Knows Best: When raising an Intuitive Eater, you always want to trust that their body knows what is best. They know when they are hungry, when they are full, when they don’t like the taste of something, and when they want more. As parents, we want to do our best to not add “static” to what they already know intuitively. So with BLW, I love that, starting from infancy, the parent learns to trust the baby’s signals and we learn to not bring our own agenda to the eating experience. (Video of Baby Knows Best)
4. Mealtime is a Happy Time: I love how BLW helps mealtime to always be a positive experience. E eats what she wants off her tray and leaves everything she doesn’t want. I don’t worry about waste because I know that in the long run we’re probably going to save money having her eat whatever we’re eating rather than doing separate foods. She can stop when she’s full. There’s no cajoling, no coercing, no airplane spoon filling her with just one more bite in order to finish off the jar of food. We keep the whole eating experience very positive and I know this will serve her well in the long run.
5. Togetherness: The last reason I love BLW is that it encourages family mealtime together. It doesn’t always work out this way, but mostly we all get to sit down at the same time to eat. Did you know that one of the most effective tools to preventing food issues down the road is to have family meals together? (Study) Although I have much to be grateful for in my childhood, we did not have family meals together. It is a challenge for me to make it a priority, but it’s impossible to ignore the research on this matter. So for that reason, I keep working on making it a regular part of our routine.
Overall, I’m pretty sold on Baby-led Weaning (not sure if that’s blatantly obvious), but I have a few disclaimers.
The authors of the book are always going to make you think that you have to do BLW 100% or it won’t work. I haven’t found that true at all. We do use some pureed baby foods especially when Grandma or a babysitter is with E during a mealtime. It’s just easier for them to not worry about the gagging vs choking thing.
When I feed E with a spoon, I try to stay very mindful of her signals. As I mentioned before, I don’t do airplane spoons into the mouth in an effort to get one more bite in. If she’s not opening, it means she’s not eager for the food, so I trust she’s finished. We also let her spoon feed herself. This often ends up being a crazy mess, but it’s worth it to me.
Ellyn Satter’s website is an amazing resource for learning about feeding babies, children, and yourself. I consult her information several times a week.
Here is our video of Edie’s progression of Baby-led Weaning.
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