Assume the Perpendicular

Sure! So the concept behind Baby Led Weaning is really simple, you teach your baby to feed herself instead of spoon feeding her purees. Starting at around 6 months, you give your baby “table foods” (regular adult foods right off of your own plate) that are good for her and easy to grab hold of. The first foods should be things with natural handles, like pieces of broccoli, apple slices, carrot sticks, etc. The baby learns to move the food to her mouth, to take small bites, to chew, and eventually swallow over the course of several weeks. Eventually they go from just playing with food to eating with purpose, but only after several months.

I was drawn to Baby Led Weaning because it seemed simpler than making homemade baby food and cheaper than buying jarred baby food  from the store. Also, because of the emphasis on eating solids as a learning experience rather than eating to be full, nursing (or formula) remains the baby’s main source of nutrition longer. I didn’t feel ready to cut back on Eleanor’s breastfeeding at six months, and I’m so glad that now at seven and a half months she is still (for all intents and purposes) exclusively breastfed. What this means is that I don’t have to worry about how much she is eating. She can pick around and play with her food all she likes, she can eat as much or as little as she wants, because she is still getting all the nutrition she needs from breastmilk. 

Of course the authors of the book Baby Led Weaning: The Essential Guide to Introducing Solid Foods - and Helping Your Baby to Grow Up a Happy and Confident Eater make a lot of lofty claims about Baby Led Weaning (as you can tell just from the title alone). They say that if you allow your baby to explore food via Baby Led Weaning they won’t be picky eaters, they will develop a quick taste for “adult” foods since they eat off of their parents’ plates, and that you won’t ever have struggles getting you kid to eat a good, healthy meal. They promise to teach you how to avoid being the parent with the four year old who will only eat chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and mac & cheese (blue box only!). They claim that babies hate being spoon fed, and if you spoon feed your baby they will develop a mistrust of the entire eating process. The picture they paint is like this: when you give your baby food in a spoon they can’t see what they are about to eat, you just shove it in their mouth. They don’t have the chance to touch it, smell it, lick it, play with it, and learn about it. If they don’t like the food, it doesn’t matter, you just keep shoveling it in there without regard, and they start to fight you at meal time. In contrast, if you put several types of food on your baby’s tray from your own plate, they have the chance to fully explore the food with all of the senses, and then eat as much or as little of as they like. If they don’t like tomato, they won’t eat the tomato you put in front of them, but they’ll go to town on the avocado. So they learn that they are the ones in control over their eating and don’t turn meal time into a battle of wills when toddlerhood strikes. And then of course your Baby Led Weaned baby will become so independent, because you allowed them to feed themselves rather than spoon feeding them, that they will surely be President of the United States. (Ok, I extrapolated that last point.)

Now, that’s a really dramatic scenario. I don’t really buy into it. I’m sure plenty of babies enjoy being spoon fed, and grow up to be completely un-picky eaters, and I’d bet plenty of babies who feed themselves from infancy go on to insist on nothing but PP&J and chicken strips. Nothing with children is that black and white. So let’s just forget those claims and focus on the obvious pros and cons.

Pros:

- Easier. When we go out to a restaurant I don’t have to worry about having special food and utensils just for Eleanor. I simply give her bits of whatever I order (and of course this encourages me to eat more healthy myself). Likewise, I don’t have to worry about what we have stocked up at home. If there is food for me, there is food for her.

- Baby eats at the same time as the parents. Since neither of us have to take time out during our meals to feed the baby, we all are able to eat together at the same time, instead of taking shifts or feeding the baby before we eat and then trying to find a way to keep her distracted while we eat.

- Cheaper. We haven’t spent an extra cent on Eleanor’s food yet. (Ok, I lied, I actually bought her some puffs. But aside from that, not a cent.)

- Reliant on breastmilk for an extended period of time. If you’re like me and really into nursing, this could be a pro. If you’re formula feeding or just ready to be done being your baby’s milkmaid, it could be a con. 

- Teaches babies to take small bites. This might be my favorite aspect. Once I baby sat for a lady who insisted her toddler’s food be cut up into teeny tiny pieces, and that he only be given one piece at a time, lest he stuff them all in his mouth at once and choke. That was pretty crazy. Now, I’m not going to say that I’m so confident in E’s self-feeding ability that I’m not still vigilant, but I don’t worry at all about the size of her food or how much in on her tray. If it’s big, I know she’ll take a small bite out of it. If she takes too big of a bite, I know she’ll spit it out. I know this because I watched her learn how to do it.

Cons:

- The gagging. During the learning process I was just raving about above there is a lot of gagging. It’s pretty scary in the beginning. Those first few days are the worst. You basically have to trust in the gag reflex, which in babies is much further forward in their mouths. But I’m pretty sure your baby will gag a lot when they first start eating finger foods, even if they are 9 or 10 months before they start. I’m also pretty sure babies who are spoon fed purees gag sometimes. It might just be one of those things that can’t be avoided.

- The mess. Baby Led Weaning is really messy. For the first several months the babies eat very little, they mostly just play around and smear the food everywhere and drop it on the floor. The Baby Led Weaning book claims that the mess decreases a lot once the babies start to eat purposefully, but we haven’t reached that point yet. Still, at the same time, feeding babies is pretty messy regardless of the method.

- Few calories are consumed. If you are looking to cut down on formula or nursing, or hoping to find food that will satiate your baby longer, this isn’t the way to do it. The babies actually ingest only a tiny portion of what they are given until they are around 8 months old, so until then they don’t get many calories from their “eating.” 

That all being said, we really like Baby Led Weaning. It’s easy and cheap. It makes meal times fun and stress free, and so far Eleanor has yet to act like she dislikes anything we have given her. She handles food really well, gags very seldomly, and enjoys it whenever we put her in her high chair. Although I do think the Baby Led Weaning book makes a few grand claims, it contains a lot of useful information and really is worth reading if you plan to go this route.

For the record, here are two other posts I wrote about Baby Led Weaning:

Baby Led Weaning: The Start 

Baby Led Weaning: Three Weeks In

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