Baby-Led Weaning: The Essential Guide to Introducing Solid Foods and Helping Your Baby to Grow Up a Happy and Confident Eater

by Gill Rapley

Spoon-feeding isn’t bad; it’s simply not necessary. And, while many babies who are spoon-fed go on to enjoy mealtimes without any problems, feeding babies this way carries a potential for creating problems that doesn’t exist with BLW. Partly this has to do with the consistency of puréed or mashed food, and partly it’s to do with how much control the baby has over her eating.

Milk feedings are the most important single source of nourishment for a baby under a year old. Solids are much less nutrient-rich than either breast milk or infant formula. If a baby is given too much solid food (which can easily happen with spoon-feeding), her appetite for breast milk or formula will be reduced. As a result she may get less of some nutrients than she needs.

Traditional “first-stage” baby foods often consist of several ingredients, all blended together into one smooth homogenous mixture. This not only means that the baby experiences just one texture but also that she doesn’t have the chance to discover what the various ingredients taste like on their own. This has implications for her diet as well as her enjoyment of eating.

Other people’s worries Dealing with the early fears and doubts of relatives and friends isn’t really a disadvantage, but it can be a problem with BLW. Because it hasn’t been talked about much in the past, many people don’t know about this method of introducing solids, or understand how it works. This means they may be skeptical or worry about it—until, that is, they see it in action.

By the time they are six months old, most babies can reach for easy-to-grab objects, pick them up in their fist, and get them to their mouth accurately. If a baby has the opportunity to look at, reach for, and grab food (rather than just toys), he will take it to his mouth. Although it looks as though he is feeding himself, he won’t actually swallow the food; he’ll just explore it with his lips and tongue.

Between six and nine months several abilities develop, one after the other. First, the baby manages to bite or gnaw off a small piece of food with his gums (or his teeth, if he has any). Soon after this he discovers how to keep the food in his mouth for a while and, because the size and shape of the inside of his mouth has changed and he now has more control of his tongue, he is able to move the food around and chew it. At this stage though, as long as he is sitting upright it will almost certainly fall out of his mouth rather than be swallowed.

It was so different from feeding Evie. She was barely five months when we started solids, and it was horrible. I’m pretty sure I cried the first time I fed her; she couldn’t sit up properly so she was in a recliner chair with purée just dribbling out of her mouth.

If he manages to bite a piece off, he will munch it with his gums, discovering what it feels and tastes like. He is very unlikely to swallow it, partly because he doesn’t want to, but mostly because he can’t.

Key points • A baby’s motivation to put food in his mouth is curiosity and copying—not hunger. • For the first couple of months or so, solid food is all about learning.

It’s only from about nine months that milk feedings begin to be reduced and solids start to take over. If a baby is allowed to determine the start of solid feeding and the pace of its progress he will follow his own natural path toward more solids and less milk.

In an adult, the gag response is triggered near the back of the tongue—you have to put your finger right back toward your throat to make it happen. However, this reflex is triggered much farther forward on the tongue of a six-month-old baby, so not only is it activated more easily in a baby than it is in an adult, it also operates when the piece of food that has caused it is much farther away from the airway. So when babies of six or seven months gag on food it doesn’t mean the food is too close to their airway and it very rarely means they are in danger of choking.

For the first few weeks pretty much all the food you give her will end up in the chair or on the floor, mainly because babies can take food to their mouths and gnaw it before they’re able to swallow it.

The most important thing to remember when you are watching your baby merrily lobbing food over the edge of her high chair is that she doesn’t know it matters! She doesn’t know that it needs to be cleaned up—she is just engaged in the important activity of learning. The more relaxed you can be, the quicker she will learn.

Suction plates that stick to the table can be useful but they tend to catapult out any food left in them when you pick them up!

Parents used to be told (and still are, sometimes) that it’s important to start with one new taste and stick with it for a few days, to make sure that their baby doesn’t react badly to it, before adding another new food. Unless you have food allergies in your family (see page 102), there is no need to follow this advice if you are doing BLW. There are two reasons for this: first, the digestive system of a six-month-old baby is a lot more mature than that of a baby of four months (when solids used to be introduced), so digestive problems are unlikely, and second, a baby who is allowed to feed himself with solid foods will naturally eat only very small amounts at first, and may well try just one or two new foods at a time anyway.

But the most noticeable change will be the smell! This can be quite unexpected when you have gotten used to the smell from a milk-only diet, but it is perfectly normal. Your baby may pass wind slightly more often, too—or it may just be that her farts are more noticeable because they are smelly!

But don’t be surprised if, the first few times, he turns the spoon upside down and loses everything on it—or flings the food across the room when he waves his arm. Your baby doesn’t know this is going to happen until he’s done it a few times—and even then it will be a long time before he understands that it actually matters if food is thrown around! So expect some mess—or, if the weather is fine, let his early experiments with spoons happen outside!

Part of exploring, for your baby, may involve his finding out what can be put into a cup as well as what comes out of it. He may be fascinated to discover which foods float and which ones sink. While adults may not like their drinks to taste of sprouts or fish, this is unlikely to worry your baby. (It’s a good idea, though, to take out any small pieces of food, such as peas, before he drinks, to minimize the risk of choking.) Once he has made his discoveries he won’t need to experiment so much.

There’s no need to praise your child for behaving well or scold him for bad behavior. Young children have a natural desire to copy others and to do what they think is expected of them—if your child senses that he has surprised you by behaving well he will be confused about what he is expected to do.

Not all restaurants clean their high chairs thoroughly, so you may want to take along some antibacterial wipes to use on the chair before you put your child into it—especially if he has not yet mastered eating off a plate. Be aware that it’s not just the tray you need to clean—the child who used the chair last will probably have smeared her dinner in all the places your child finds to put his! Some parents also take along their baby’s own roll-up placemat so that they can be confident he is eating off a clean surface

He can’t be expected to sit still for long periods with nothing to do before the meal arrives or after he’s finished eating. After all, you don’t normally keep him waiting 20 minutes for his food without allowing him to play, and he can’t be expected to understand that eating out has different rules from eating at home. Taking him for a walk around the restaurant or outside will keep him amused—and make him less likely to protest during the meal because he’s spotted something he desperately wants to explore.

Using food as a bribe or punishment presents similar problems. Once you start saying things such as: “If you eat your carrots we can go to the playground,” or “If you don’t finish your sprouts you won’t get any dessert,” your child will very quickly become suspicious of vegetables, be convinced they are absolutely second best to dessert, or see eating them as a chore to be endured before something better comes along.

It can be tempting to give children sweet treats to cheer them up when they’re crying or upset, but in reality all these treats do is bribe them to stop crying. A cuddle and a kiss are what they really need. Repeatedly using food to comfort children risks them confusing the two—and may make them more prone, as adults, to seek out sweet things whenever they feel miserable.

In fact, if a baby ate as much in his second year as he did in his first, he would be absolutely huge!

try not to talk about foods as his “favorites” or ones he doesn’t like. Babies tend to act in the way they think their parents expect them to, so if you keep saying he doesn’t like a particular food he’ll end up believing you!