Baby-Led Weaning with Real Food Littles
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When planning to start solids for Yitzchak doing baby-led weaning (BLW) was the natural decision for me. I never had purees myself as an infant so finger foods were always the norm for me. I know for a lot of people though the idea of doing BLW is somewhat foreign to their experience and can be a bit nerve-wracking.
To answer some of the questions I get frequently about baby-led weaning I spoke with Christiana of Real Food Littles. Christiana has a background as a health-focused personal chef and Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. She recently launched a course with everything you need to know for starting solids and how to raise an adventurous eater.
First, some background on the intersection of baby-led weaning and Montessori.
Baby-led weaning is popular in Montessori circles because it fits well with the philosophy. It is an approach to introducing solids that embodies following the child and freedom within limits. We as adults choose what to serve but our child, from the beginning, chooses what to eat. Not every Montessori family does it, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it is definitely popular.
One aspect of our baby-led weaning journey that was a bit more Montessori is we used real plates and cups from early on. In Montessori (and now with modern research on speech and dental development) it is recommended to skip sippy cups and go straight to drinking from the open cup. In Montessori that open cup is generally glass. We went straight to small glass cups. Six months in and we have only broken one. Honestly, using breakable glass has been cheaper than buying kid’s cups that tend to have short lifespans. We did start with suction plates because I found it was easier for Yitzchak to scoop his food without the plate moving but we quickly switched to ceramic plates as well.
It is worth noting that Montessori recommendations for starting solids tend to also reflect the culture at the time. Newer Montessori books such as The Montessori Baby recommend baby-led weaning. Older Montessori books offer outdated feeding advice, sometimes including, for example, weaning a child completely from breastmilk very early. They also often recommend the introduction first of very bland foods. These aspects represent the culture at the time they were written when our understanding of baby-feeding, both in terms of milk and in terms of solids, was different. While Montessori definitely played into how we started solids, I would not recommend fully following Montessori books on this aspect of parenting. Research changes all the time which is why I decided to speak with someone who stays constantly up to date on the newest research on solids introduction.
Here is my interview with Christiana.
Could you tell me a bit about your background? What brought you to teaching others about starting solids?
My background is as a health-focused personal chef and a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – I’ve always had a passion for the intersection between cooking and nutrition and helping families gather for dinner and enjoy a healthy, homecooked meal. I have worked extensively with families of young children struggling with picky eating, food allergies, etc., and have seen first-hand how these challenges with food can make it nearly impossible for families to eat together. I’d always make progress with picky eaters, but I found that the taste preferences start early – VERY early. It’s so much easier to teach a baby to love healthy flavors than it is to try and change the mind of a toddler who only eats pasta and goldfish. That started my passion for baby-led weaning and getting away from the bland, sweet flavors that dominate the baby feeding world. I started Real Food Littles as an Instagram account when my twin boys started BLW at 6 months and it has grown to include an online course which takes up all my work time when I’m not parenting!
Can you tell me a bit about your approach to starting solids?
My approach is that the sooner at/after 6 months a baby can start finger food (i.e. baby-led weaning) the better. Typically developing babies are capable of self-feeding at 6 months, so there really is no need to ever put a spoon or piece of food in a baby’s mouth. The other big piece of the picture is palate development - a baby who does BLW with pancakes, cheerios, etc. will have a very different outcome from one eating meat, vegetables, spices, eggs, avocado, etc.
Why should we wait until 6 months to start solids? My pediatrician recommended at 4 months. We waited though as we heard 6 months everywhere else.
The WHO and AAP recommend babies not be introduced to solids (that includes purées) until 6 months. These guidelines have been in place since 2003, so I’m honestly not sure why some pediatricians are still telling parents 4 months for all babies based on the research we have on the drawbacks of starting too early.
A lot of people I speak to are worried about choking and gagging when starting solids, particularly with BLW. Can you talk a bit about those risks and how to mitigate them?
There is SO much fear, but the more education a parent has around choking/gagging, the safer the baby is, and the more relaxed the parent is. It is our responsibility as parents to know infant CPR to save our baby in the extremely unlikely but serious event of a true choking incident and to know what gagging looks like so we don’t interfere unnecessarily, potentially causing more harm. In terms of what to feed, there are foods that seem safe but are actually dangerous and seem dangerous that are actually safe. Education is key here and I go into this in-depth in my course because it’s such an important topic. Only feeding purées for months due to fear is a huge disservice to a baby, because strong oral motor skills are their BEST defense against choking. The longer we wait to introduce finger food, the longer we delay a baby developing safe eating skills.
If someone is not comfortable with BLW and starts with purees what is the expected path towards finger food?
The most important thing is that if a parent chooses to start with purées, let the baby self-feed with a preloaded spoon. Babies will absolutely eat less this way, but self-feeding is such an important skill. Purées really should just be for a few days, MAX a few weeks, not months as was previously common before BLW gained traction. The other nuance is that some parents want to do BLW, but are limited by daycare restrictions – preloaded spoon purées or pouches can bridge the gap in those situations and you can do finger food at home.
How vigilant should we be about avoiding salt?
This is such a loaded topic because for years we have lumped salt and sugar together as both being “no-no’s” for babies. They are vastly different – we as humans would die without salt, but would thrive never eating sugar. My favorite resource for this topic is Lily Nichols’ research brief. She is an RD who is passionate about cooking, real food, and evidence-based research and this brief demonstrates the no salt recommendation for babies is weak at best. We should be way more concerned about the excessive sugar in childhood than scant amounts of salt for babies.
What is the most important thing to do for your baby’s eating journey in the first year?
The most important thing is to let baby self-feed, introduce a wide variety of tastes and textures (including hard-to-like ones), and to foster a positive relationship with eating – I designed my course around these three pillars since they are all so important and interrelated.
You recently launched a course! What can people expect in your course?
Yes! It’s called The Real Food Baby and it goes into depth how to raise an adventurous eater through baby-led weaning. It covers all the details you need to get started such as gagging vs. choking, introducing allergens, fostering a positive relationship with food, etc., and also goes deep into palate development and how to cook foods from the various food groups when you’re feeding a baby. I personally found “feed the baby what you eat” to be painfully simplistic and challenging advice, so this course shows you how to adapt your cooking so you can introduce your baby to over 150 foods before 1 through family meals that the whole family can enjoy. It also includes a list of 150 foods, meal plan, recipes, troubleshooting guide, and a private Facebook group for questions and support. It’s the one course you need to start solids from 6-18 months and will help you get it right, so that you never need another course to feed your child again. You can learn more about it at www.realfoodlittles.com/course.
Thank you to Christiana for speaking with me. You can find her at www.realfoodlittles.com and on Instagram at @realfoodlittles
