Once Upon a Dance (0s):
This episode is sponsored by Once Upon A Dance. One thing I've learned as a mom is that kids do not always need more stuff, but they do need more opportunities to connect, imagine, and to move their bodies. And that's exactly what Once Upon a Dance brings to story time. Once Upon a Dance creates award-winning interactive children's books that turn reading into an experience. So these are interactive dance along stories that take storytelling to a whole new level. So kids don't just listen, they imagine they move, they twirl, they leap and they become part of the story. So I didn't grow up doing dance myself, but all of my girls did. And I saw firsthand how formative it was for them because dance gave them confidence. It taught them to keep practicing, to stand tall, to work through challenges and to express themselves. And I love that Once Upon a Dance makes those same ideas feel accessible right at home through books. The stories feature themes like friendship, family, kindness, empathy, perseverance and self-acceptance. They're whimsical and kid friendly with characters and adventures that appeal to young children who love animals, magic, imagination and movement. So for those of you who are listening with a baby, this might be something to tuck away for the toddler years or if you already have older kids at home, this can be a really fun way to make reading more active and engaging. Swap screen time for connection. Get your kids off the couch and into a story. Jump twirl and leap over to Once Upon a Dance dot com or find Once Upon a Dance books wherever you buy books online. That's Once Upon a Dance dot com.

Cove Pure (1m 39s):
You've put serious thought into every food that goes into your baby's mouth. But there's one ingredient in almost everything that most parents have never looked at and that's water. And it's why my family and I switched to Cove Pure to purify our water. And I know as parents, especially when you're starting solid foods, there's already a lot to think about, right? Is this food safe and did I cut it the right way? Is my baby getting enough iron? Are we doing allergens correctly? But then you start thinking about how much water is actually involved in what we do every day, like water for drinking and cooking and rinsing your produce and making your tea or your coffee and water for bottles if that's part of your routine. But here's what the research shows. 176 million Americans have drinking water that is tested as positive for PFAS or Forever Chemicals. Those are the manmade chemicals used in food packaging and non stick cookware and fire fighting foam. And scientists call them forever Chemicals 'cause once they're in your body, they stay there and they don't break down. And what I didn't know until recently is that PFAS crossed the placenta during pregnancy. They passed through breast milk and a recent study found that by the time a baby ISS 12 months old exposure to these chemicals, it's already interfering with how babies build immunity. Now If you have one of those picture filters at home, that's a start. But standard picture filters, don't remove PFAS. You need something more powerful than that. And that's exactly what Cove Pure is. It uses clear wave reverse Osmosis Technology Lab certified to remove up to 99.9% of contaminants PFAS lead fluoride pharmaceuticals. It filters out particles far smaller than a strand of hair. And it sits right on your counter. So no plumber, no drilling, just plug it in. And something that I love is that Cove Pure lets you select whatever temperature you want. So if that's hot water for tea or warm for bottles or cold water for the gym, you just tap a button and honestly, the water just tastes cleaner. 'cause you know when water has that little like tap water taste and you don't really notice it till it's gone. That was the biggest difference for us. You're already doing the work to give your baby the best possible. Start Your water is part of that. And in honor of America's 250 Birthday Cove Pure is giving our listeners $250 off right now. For a limited time, go to Cove Pure.com/weaning. That's C-O-V-E-P-U-R e.com/weaning to get it now.

Katie Ferraro (3m 52s):
And that's one of the reasons why I actually really do not like portion guides because portion guides are set up to make you feel like a failure, right? It's an arbitrarily selected amount of food that some like dietician just picked out of thin air that in no way matches exactly the amount that your baby's going to eat on that day. And you are automatically going to feel bad if your baby didn't eat the one ounce of black beans or the two ounces of meat portion guides are not grounded in reality, but here's how we can avoid the alternative, which is dripping. And we really don't drip food because it is not conducive with the baby led weaning philosophy. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (4m 39s):
Here on the Baby led weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge you need to give you baby a safe start to solid foods using baby Led Weaning. Have you ever caught yourself sitting in front of your baby and you've got a plate of food on your lap and then you put out one piece of food at a time, like one strip of avocado and they eat it. So you put another strip and then they eat that and you put out another piece. It feels helpful, right? Like, oh, look at me. I'm keeping things calm. I'm controlling the mess. I'm preventing the baby from overt stuffing and grabbing too much food. But here's the problem. When we feed babies that way, we're drifting out of our lane.

Katie Ferraro (5m 21s):
That practice is actually called dripping food. And even though it usually comes from a very well-intentioned place, dripping is not what we wanna be doing with baby Led Weaning because baby Led Weaning is not just about skipping purees or cutting food into strips, okay? It's about allowing your baby to be an active participant in the feeding process. If we're the ones deciding when each piece of food appears, then we're the ones driving the pace of the meal. So in today's episode, I'm gonna teach you what dripping is, why it's not ideal for baby Led Weaning, what you wanna be doing instead, and then how to stop stressing about exact portion sizes because spoiler alert, there is no perfect baby Led Weaning portion size.

Katie Ferraro (6m 1s):
Now I like to start each of these solo training episodes with a baby Led Weaning tip of the day. And today's tip is you do not need an infant portion guide when it comes to food. All right? I know that feels frustrating. 'cause like I love a chart. I mean, you're talking to the person who invented the hundred First Foods chart. I love a chart as much as the next person. But here's the problem with portion guides. They are simply made up. Arbitrary portion guides don't help parents, they make parents feel bad. You start thinking, my baby's not eating enough. Am I doing this wrong? Maybe this is why baby Led Weaning is not working. In the early days of starting solid foods, remember your baby's learning how to eat. They don't need to eat a whole x, y, or Z size portion. Infant milk, breast milk or formula is still their primary source of nutrition.

Katie Ferraro (6m 42s):
Okay? So today's tip, stop looking for the perfect portion size and start looking for safe, consistent opportunities for your baby to practice eating real food. That's the win. All right, let's start out with what is dripping. Let's define dripping. Dripping is when you put out food one piece at a time, your baby's in the high chair, you got the plate of food in your lap or on the counter off to the side, you put one piece of food in front of your baby, they pick it up, maybe they eat it, they drop it, they smash it, then you put another piece and then another piece and then another piece, right? You're dripping it. And I totally understand why parents do it and you're like, I don't want my baby to shove the food in their mouth. I don't wanna waste the food, I don't wanna overwhelm them or this just feels safer. But with baby Led Weaning, we need to trust the baby.

Katie Ferraro (7m 23s):
We need to remember that the baby needs the experience to see the food, to reach for the food to decide which food to touch first. And most importantly, to regulate the pace of their own exploration. So when we drip the food, we become the gatekeeper of every bite. And that makes the meal more parent led than it does baby led. Alright? So what's the drawback of dripping? The biggest drawback of dripping is that it interferes with your baby's autonomy. You are deciding when the next piece appears. You're deciding how much is available, you're deciding the pace. Okay? Baby Led Weaning is built on the idea that your baby should get to participate in this process. Now, of course, babies aren't in charge of everything. Don't give your six month old keys to the kitchen, right?

Katie Ferraro (8m 4s):
We've got adult jobs, right? We decide what food is offered. We decide when the meal happens where the baby eats. We decide that the baby's seated safely. We decide that the food is prepared safely. We're the supervisors. That's our job. But it's your baby's job to decide how much or whether to eat right? This comes from Ellen Satter. It's her division of responsibility in feeding theory, which is such an important concept for feeding children. And so as parents and caregivers, we're providing structure and safe, appropriate foods, but the child is deciding how much or whether they eat. And so with babies, yeah, this looks different because they're still learning how to eat, but the concept still matters. Okay? If we're always controlling the piece of food, then we're doing some of that baby's job. The other drawback is that dripping interferes with the visual learning process of eating.

Katie Ferraro (8m 49s):
'cause eating's not just about taste, right? Eating's also about seeing that food, smelling that food, touching the food, hearing the sounds of eating and feeling the texture and learning what happens when food moves from the tray to the hand to the mouth. So when your baby sees a small amount of food in front of them, they begin to learn what food looks like as part of the meal. They can see like, oh, here's the avocado, here's the sweet potato, here's the strip of chicken. They decide, I wanna touch this one first. They do the exploring. They compare. They can go back to a food, they can ignore a food. They can engage with the whole meal in front of them. So when you hide the plate in your lap and you release one piece at a time, your baby does not get that same visual experience of seeing the food that's available and then learning how to navigate it.

Katie Ferraro (9m 30s):
And this matters over time because we want the baby to become a more responsive eater. We want them to learn how to recognize those feelings of hunger and fullness and interest and disinterest. And no, your baby's not gonna master this skill at like six months plus one day, right? But these early feeding experiences, that's where those skills

KiwiCo (9m 48s):
begin. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back. One of my favorite parts of summer, even when we're wrapping it up, is that there's time for kids to be curious. 'cause I know during the school year, it feels like we're always rushing from one thing to the next. But the summertime is when there's space to slow down and really explore things together. And that's what I've loved about Kiwi CO's Summer Adventure series. We were traveling a lot this summer and we worked on one of the projects together. We took it on a road trip. And I know my kids were not asking, are we done yet? But they kept asking like, well, what do you think if we did it this way? And I love those kind of questions because you can actually see their curiosity takeover. I love that the Kiwi co projects don't feel like homework. They just feel like fun. But while they're building, experimenting and creating, they're learning without even realizing it. And then afterwards, they're really excited to tell everyone else what they made and how it works. The Kiwi Co Summer Adventure Series includes six hands-on project kits over six weeks. So they have activities that get kids creating and exploring all summer long. There are projects for kids as young as two all the way through teens. And as a parent, I appreciate, sorry, Kiwi Co is doing all that planning for me. Everything shows up ready to go so we can spend more time making memories together instead of figuring out what to do next. So build the best summer ever with Kiwi Co. Get $10 off your summer adventure series@kiwico.com/summer promo co weaning. That's $10 off your summer adventure at KIWICO.com/summer promo code weaning.

Katie Ferraro (11m 38s):
All right, studies that show mindless eating. This is up next. I wanna zoom out for a second. There's a lot of research in older children and adults that show that eating is influenced by what we see. So we eat differently depending upon what's in front of us, how the food is served, how much is visible, how large the plate is, and how much control we have over the environment. So you might have heard the phrase mindless eating, okay? I'm not saying that your babysitting there is making like complex adult decisions about portion sizes, but the general concept is helpful, right? These visual cues matter. The eating environment matters. What's available matters. How the food is presented matters. So your baby's learning more than like, oh, this food tastes like sweet potato. They're learning, this is food.

Katie Ferraro (12m 18s):
It's available to me. I can reach for it, I can touch it, I can bring it to my mouth and I can decide if I want more and I can turn away if I'm done. All right? So we don't want the parent controlling and the baby performing. That's not what we're going for here. So what's the alternative to dripping? It's pre portioning. What do we do instead? We pre-portioned. Pre portioning means you put out the amount of food you think your baby might eat at the beginning of the meal. I can't tell you how many parents like message me like, but exactly how much. It's like, dude, do you know your baby best? And you're gonna figure out real quick, but I don't wanna waste food. I know you don't wanna waste food, but I don't wanna give 'em too little. But you'll start to learn if they want more, you don't put a huge amount out, not an adult portion, not a giant plate of food that's gonna overwhelm them.

Katie Ferraro (13m 0s):
Just like a small, manageable amount of safely prepared food. So that might be like a few soft strips of one food when you're just getting started and as your baby gains experience, there might be a new food alongside two familiar foods. Okay? My program, we start that on day three. We move in with three foods, a small portion of the new food of the day with two small portions of familiar foods from the two previous days. Okay? You're not putting out tons of food and then you know saying, go ahead and go to town with this. You're just putting out a reasonable amount of food. Now what if you don't know how much to feed? A lot of parents are panicking about that. You're not gonna know it first. Remember, that's normal. You are learning your baby's feeding cues just like your baby's learning how to eat. So my best judgment, keep the portion small.

Katie Ferraro (13m 41s):
Some days your baby's gonna eat everything and want more. Some days they won't touch a single thing. Some days they're gonna love a food at breakfast. And then act like personally betrayed by that same food at dinner. That does not mean you did anything wrong. Okay? This is normal infant feeding. So if your baby finishes what you offered and then they're still engaged and calm and reaching for food and leaning toward the tray or showing interest, then you can offer more. Proportioning does not mean, oh, this is all the food you're allowed to have. It just means I'm not going to control the meal one piece at a time. Okay? And on the other hand, if your baby is turning away, fussing, crying, arching their back, pushing away, losing interest, they're telling you the meal's over. And you gotta pay attention to those cues too, right?

Katie Ferraro (14m 21s):
Food is practice. Remember, food is learning, food is exposure, food is sensory experience. Our goal is not to like get the baby full of sweet potato. We just wanna give a safe, repeated opportunity to learn how to eat. Okay? And you will learn. That's my next message. It's the encouraging part. You're gonna get better at estimating how much to offer. You're gonna start to be able to much better trust your baby's ability to feed themselves. Trust is at the core of baby Led Weaning, okay? You're gonna learn by doing, your baby's gonna learn by practicing together. You guys are going to build confidence, okay? It's one of the reasons why I absolutely despise rigid portion guides. They make it seem like there's one right amount for every baby. They're literally like are just made up.

Katie Ferraro (15m 2s):
Please remember that every time you see a portion guide, some, usually it's a dietician somewhere. Just made it up. Okay? Babies are not robots. Some days they're teething, some days they're tired, some days they're distracted. Some days they're working on a new motor skill. Some days they're gonna be interested in food and some days they could not care. Less. That variability, it's not part of the problem, it's part of the process.

Ezpz (15m 21s):
So a couple of tips. What you can do. I personally love to use a mini mat or a small portion surface. Okay? I use the mini mat from ezpz. I've been using it since the day it came out. Ezpz. Makes the original silicone suction mats. I mentioned that in our program, we do one new food every single day. Five days a week I take a meal. We do meals, 20 minutes, a 20 minute meal at six to seven months. You offer foods one to two times a day. At eight to nine months, we bump that up to two to three times a day. At nine months we're feeding, or 10 months rather around three times a day. The meal's 20 minutes long. For the first 10 minutes, you do the new food of the day. I generally do that in a suction bowl. Either the easy peasy mini bowl or the tiny bowl, depending upon what food I'm feeding. But then for the second 10 minutes of the meal, I swap in a plate and that plate has the new food of the day plus two familiar foods from previous days. And that way I'm continuing to offer one new food a day with the reintroduction of the familiar foods from previous days. If you haven't checked out the ezpz feeding gear, the code baby lead works for 15% off. That is an affiliate discount code. The ezpz stuff. They, I have like a massive product line at this point. So I lined up my favorites for baby Led Weaning at ezpzfun.com/babyled. So that code will automatically apply. All my baby led weaning stuff is up there. But the mini mat is the best for pre portioning. It's two, two ounce pockets and a four ounce pocket. I just said I don't like portion sizes, but I'm just telling you like those are really small portions.

Katie Ferraro (16m 47s):
If you know anything about portion size, which is good because it's a visual reminder to two things, keep the portion small and offer a variety of foods alrighty. So quick win. I want you to try this at your next meal. Instead of putting a piece of food out one at a time, I want you to choose one safely prepared food. I want you to put a few strips of it in the suction mat or the bowl, and then I want you to sit back. I want you to sit on your hands so you do not, as my friend Marsha Klein, the renowned feeding expert says, do not excessively cheerlead. 'cause I used to say, these moms are always micromanaging these babies. Marsha, just don't say micromanaging, Katie. They're just excessively cheerleading. Sit back and let your baby interact with that food. Let the baby put that new food. Spend 10 minutes exploring that new food on its own.

Katie Ferraro (17m 29s):
You will be amazed. Try not to wipe their face. Don't narrate every bite. You don't have to jump in and intervene. Every time the piece of food falls outta the bowl, they're gonna play around and try to pick it up. The one thing I will do, especially because we use a splash mat on the floor underneath the high chair, is if it falls on the floor, I will recycle the food back up to the plate. 'cause obviously they can't go on the floor and get it themselves, okay? But if it, it falls outside of the bowl, I'm gonna let them play around with their whole hand, their palmer grass to rake and scoop that food back up and into the bowl if they can. Okay? And if they've totally run out of food, I'll put a few more strips back in there, okay? But observation is the skill that you are building and your baby is learning the skill of learning how to eat. All right? So let's recap drippings. When you put the food out one piece at a time and you're controlling the pace of the meal, okay?

Katie Ferraro (18m 10s):
Baby Led Weaning is about the baby controlling the pace of the meal. So the alternative is proportioning. You put out a small amount of safely prepared food at the beginning of the meal and let your baby explore, okay? You don't need an exact portion guide. You don't need to fill the plate. You're gonna learn how much to offer over time by watching and responding to your baby's cues. If you want more help with the intricacies of how to start solid foods with baby Led Weaning, come check out My program, BABY Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro teach you all sorts of interesting things like how to deal with overt stuffing that's gonna come next. Once your baby gets really into eating, and I'm there to help answer all the questions that you might have in real life, go to baby Led Weaning.co/program.

Katie Ferraro (18m 52s):
Use the discount code in the description to take $50 off when you get started today. I'm gonna put the show notes up for today's episode@blwpodcast.com/133. A very special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science, and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave Media. We're online@blwpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time.