My experience with Baby Led Weaning

When my daughter was around 5 months, the anxiety of starting solids for her had begun. Introducing her to all types of food made it exciting while looking forward to this journey. But just like any other mom, I received multiple opinions from doctors, my parents & other new age parents. I was confused about the way forward. 

It was then, my sister in law “Anu”, my sister & a dear friend “Vino” had shared their experiences with Baby Led Weaning. Baby Led Weaning is about letting the baby to feed themselves from Day 1 of introducing solids. It calls for skipping purees and going straight to finger foods usually when the baby is around 6 months old. After listening to their positive experience, I wanted to have more knowledge about it before I introduce Sarah to this. I attended a webinar on this topic & got a decent idea about this type of weaning. 

What I learnt from the webinar ? 

a. Baby Led Weaning is not only about introducing solids to the baby it has more to it. It instills independence in the baby. 

While we always look forward to parent the baby, babies look forward to independence. Have you ever noticed, while you give a hand to your child to help them with walking, they decline your help & just walk forward. Toddlers are little age teenagers, who expect independence in all the activities with minimal help from adults. At times, they fail to communicate this need to us or we fail to understand, that is when they breakdown & we call it a “tantrum”

b. It also paves way for the baby to work on their fine motor skills

At 6 months, the baby starts grabbing finger foods & feed themselves. Around 9 months, they get their pincer grasp, where they pick up small sized food pieces. All these provide an opportunity for the baby to work on their object grasping ability. 

c.It provides a way to explore different foods. Mess is beautiful ! 

The child doesn’t complete the food in one go. They take their own time to explore the food. They use their palms & fingers to smash the food and put it all over their face. The messier it is, the beautiful it is ! We introduce the child to have positive relationship with food. The next time,they come to the table, they are happier because they can explore ! 

d.A strict “No” to force feeding ! 

The baby might go without eating food for 2-3 days in a row, but still there should be no force feeding. This advice was given by my doctor(paediatrician)too. This only establishes a negative relationship with food as early as 6 months. We generally have this tendency to take a cup full of food & ensure that the baby completes the entire cup. Especially as a mom, it feels happy when the baby completes the cup, but it isn’t right for the baby ! 

I once even asked my doctor, “What if she refuses food for a long time ? “ The doctor told me , “ Babies have more energy & they can do all their daily activities even without eating. It’s important for you to find her hunger cues & establish positive relationship with food.” Though hard to implement, it really made sense to me. 

An additional advice was not to include salt & sugar for the first one year. 

e. Difference between Gagging & Choking 

Gagging is a normal reflex as the baby learns to chew and swallow solid foods. It happens because they are learning to regulate the amount of food they can chew and swallow at one time. They will eventually learn to cope with different textures and harder foods. Every baby goes through gagging to learn the size they can chew & swallow. However, choking is dangerous ! Choking happens when the throat is obstructed by the food thereby obstructing the breathing too. The size & types of foods that can lead to choking needs to be known. 

With all this knowledge, we started the journey of Baby Led Weaning for our daughter when she was 6 months old. The plan was to introduce her to all types of food within the first 100 days (including non vegetarian). The most useful website in this journey was solidstarts.com. This website had details of all the veggies & fruits and how they should be cut for babies ranging from 6 months to 1 year. Because, the grasping ability slowly improves & the finger foods need to be cut accordingly. It also has information on foods that have the risk of choking. I remember referring to this website on daily basis till our daughter got her pincer grasp. But still this journey had its own challenges! 

Challenges on the go ! 

The major challenge was to cope with gagging. Though, we knew that gagging was normal, when you see your baby gag, your heart skips a beat ! My mom, hubby & the baby sitter used to hide themselves, unable to see her gag. They all would panic. It was tough for everyone around her. 

Few days into the process,  I didn’t want to continue further. I thought I was putting her at risk just for the sake of other benefits associated with this type of weaning. I wanted to proceed with traditional weaning. Then slowly , I found a mid way. I spoke to other parents who followed baby led weaning. I learnt to present the food to her in a way that reduced the chances of choking. There has been no turning back since then ! 

Now, it has been 6 months into this journey. It has been the most beautiful process that me, my daughter & the entire family enjoyed. More than her eating, we love the way she explores food. At times, she takes an hour to eat 2-3 pieces of steamed apple. Yet, we had to be patient for her to enjoy the process. 

Having said that, I believe, any type of weaning be it traditional or baby led, is the choice of the mother & the family ! We will have to go with the flow & the process that suits us. Nothing can be a panacea in motherhood. A mother knows what suits her baby & her decisions ought to be in the best interest of the baby. This blog was to share my experience with one type of weaning method which might help someone looking for insights into it. 

Sharing few videos of Sarah’s weaning. Hoping you like it !

Nothing as messy as Ragi ( finger millet) 

6 Month old Sarah enjoying steamed pumpkin