Gill Rapley (0s):

liIt was about feeding being done by the baby, not to the baby. What most people saw was no spoons or no purees, because that was what it looked like in practice. But it's always been more than that. It's about trust between parents and child.

Katie Ferraro (16s):

I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, college nutrition professor, and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weaning here on the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, feeding you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning. Hello, welcome to a very special episode of the baby-led weaning made easy podcast. This is our 100th episode, and there's nobody on the planet that I have wanted more in life to interview on this podcast than the founding philosopher and creator of the baby-led weaning movement.

Katie Ferraro (1m 3s):

And that's Gill Rapley. Now nearly every one of you listening has read Rapley's baby-led weaning book. It's called baby-led weaning the essential guide, and we all owe her a debt of gratitude for making baby-led weaning a thing. And as she's going to share in this interview, Gill Rapley did not invent baby-led weaning, and she does not claim to up, but she gave it a name. And of course, she opened our eyes to the reality that when it comes to feeding, our babies can do so much more than many people give them credit for now. The interview you're about to hear is certainly the most compelling argument for baby-led weaning that you will ever hear it because it is coming directly from the mouth of Gill Rapley. Again, the founder of the baby-led weaning movement.

Katie Ferraro (1m 43s):

I would encourage you to take notes. I know we all listen to podcasts when we're like folding laundry and driving, but pull over, get your notebook out. This interview is just dripping with valuable insight about all of the reasons why baby-led weaning is exactly what your baby was intended to do. So when the going gets tough, you're gonna want to check these notes because you're going to be frustrated. Your baby's not eating enough, or you're not sure if you're doing baby-led weaning, right? But when it comes to starting solid foods, I want you to remember Gill's words from this episode in her assurance that allowing your baby to drive the feeding experience is what your baby is not only able to do, but what they were intended to do. So I split the interview with Gill Rapley up into two separate interviews.

Katie Ferraro (2m 23s):

The first part that you're about to hear is about the history of baby-led weaning and how rapidly made it a thing. In part two, we're going to be chatting about the future of baby-led weaning and where Gill sees things going with the movement in the future. So with no further ado, I am beyond honored to welcome Gill Rapley. The founding philosopher of the baby-led weaning movement to the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. Well, Gill, thank you so much for being here on the podcast today. This is an incredible honor to have the opportunity to interview you.

Gill Rapley (3m 0s):

I'm delighted to be here.

Katie Ferraro (3m 2s):

Well Gill, every parent and caregiver who stumbles upon or intentionally learns about baby-led weaning, they immediately come to know your name as being synonymous and responsible for the entire philosophy of baby-led weaning. However, I was wondering if you could tell us what you did before you came to be known as the founding philosopher of baby-led weaning, essentially, how did you get into this line of work?

Gill Rapley (3m 24s):

Well, I started off as a nurse, got out of school and then I qualified as a health visitor and health visitors, like a public health nurse. In the UK health visitor undertakes the kind of work that in many countries is done by a pediatrician. So the health visitor is involved with immunizations with child developmental checks and surveillance and an awful lot to do with feeding. So I was seeing many, many families throughout their feeding experience and introducing solids presented quite a challenge for many of them. Then I became a mom myself. And while I did all the usual things that I was expected to do and fed my kids purees, by the time I got to the third one, I really don't remember bothering with all that with her.

Gill Rapley (4m 11s):

And of course that's how many parents come to baby-led weaning. I also became particularly interested in breastfeeding as a result of my experiences as a mom and I qualified as a breastfeeding counselor and they chose the lactation consultant and I was struck by how clever babies are, how much they are able to do from the moment they're born, typically in relation to finding the breast and feeding themselves. And I quite quickly decided that if I was going to be where the action was in terms of helping moms with breastfeeding, then I really should become a midwife. So I trained as a midwife, but wasn't able to pursue that for very long because the working hours really weren't conducive to a young family.

Gill Rapley (4m 53s):

So I then went back to health visiting and then I started work with UNICEF, the UNICEF UK baby friendly initiative, which relates to standards for breastfeeding in hospitals and community facilities to support breastfeeding moms and babies. And then to a lot more about breastfeeding during those years. And in particular at that time, the thing that was still quite new in the UK when I first began that work was skin to skin contact at birth. And when I saw how much that impacted on the breastfeeding experience, and again, how much babies knew what to do on their biological drive to find their mother's breasts. I really began to be interested by that.

Gill Rapley (5m 34s):

And it made me ask the question, well, if babies are born and I'm talking about babies who are born on time and don't have any medical issues or whatever, but if they're born able to access the breast and feed themselves essentially, then why do they suddenly lose that ability? So that from whenever we introduce solids onwards, we have to do it to them. And it was becoming clear to me that it might be to do the fact that we were introducing the solids too early, because by about six months, as I knew from my health visiting experience, babies could reach and grab things and take them to their mouth. And that seemed to be a logical time to, for them to move on to solid foods.

Gill Rapley (6m 14s):

I was also struck by how much they needed to use all their senses to feed while at the breath and thought about how that might impact on their learning about solid foods and this strong instinct for survival, which as the baby grows, becomes apparent in the way in which they want to explore their environment and how they use all their senses to do that. So I gradually built a greater and greater admiration for babies and belief in their ability.

Katie Ferraro (6m 43s):

Can I ask you health visiting where the guidelines at the time prior to the world health organization saying six months, was it commonplace to introduce solids at four and five months or what was happening in that era as far as the timeline for introduction of solids, for babies?

Gill Rapley (6m 58s):

Yeah, since the mid seventies, it had really been four to six months. And that's interesting in itself because the implication was that as long as you take to time between four and six months, everything would be fine. So in general, we were encouraging parents to start at four months. I mean, why not? You know, go ahead. Why not bear fruit when in fact what that meant was, and we now know it was slightly mistaken, but what it was intended to imply was that at some point between four and six months, your baby will be ready now for some babies that would have been near a full month. But of course, as we now know for the vast majority, it wouldn't have been till six months or even later, but the idea that there was this window and yet you could pick any time in there and it would all be fine.

Gill Rapley (7m 41s):

Really didn't take into account how babies developed differently.

Katie Ferraro (7m 44s):

The baby-led weaning book that you co-authored, it is a must read and without sounding dramatic, it's certainly considered to be like the bible of the baby-led weaning movement. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the process of turning your research into a book a little bit more maybe about what the environment in infant feeding was like back when you wrote the first edition?

Gill Rapley (8m 4s):

Well, I guess the first thing to say is that really my research was very minimal up to that point. It depends how we define research. I hadn't done any formal research except a very small piece for my master's degree, which was around the time that the six months kind of rule was coming in 2001 or 2002. And so I qualified my master's. I think it was 2005, but it was a very small part that what I had done was accumulating a full lot of, of information and anecdotal stories and reports from parents and my observations of babies. But as you've said, the environment at the time was very much, we would starting at four months.

Gill Rapley (8m 44s):

And so we weren't thinking of six months as being anything other than a step along the way. And the book wasn't actually the start of things. It may appear that in kind of other countries, that that was the case, but actually it was already in the UK. And in fact, in the Netherlands, interestingly from late 2001 and 2002 onwards by word of mouth by internet and so on, the book was actually something that came a bit later. By that time I had a lot of parents emailing me with questions that I was answering individually. They were also telling me that they were struggling because what happened when the recommended age changed the guidelines for how to go about it, didn't change accordingly.

Gill Rapley (9m 27s):

So as one mum put it to me, I've been given this leaflet by my health visitor, I think. And she said, it's sort of about how to introduce solid foods, but I swear, they've just gone through it with a word search and wherever it said four to six months, they've changed it to six months, but most of what's written it doesn't refer to my six month old. She doesn't want to be spoonfed. She's pushing you to side. She wants to grab the food and sure enough, that seemed to have been the case. So there was this mismatch between the guidelines and what parents were discovering if they went until six months, which had never really been addressed before all those six months had always been there as an option. Nobody had really looked at how things might be different if you waited until the baby was that old, because after six months, the time and a half the age, they are at four months, then babies mature incredibly quickly, as we all know.

Gill Rapley (10m 16s):

So I was getting these questions and queries from parents, and several of them were saying, you really should watch a book about this. I thought, well, maybe I kind of had a half-hearted attempt with another collaborator. I knew I couldn't do it on my own. Then somebody actually said to me, if you didn't write this book, I will. So I thought, well, I've probably got to get on with it. Then, then I had a phone call out of the blue from a journalist called Tracey Murkett. And she had learned about baby-led weaning while she was on maternity leave with her own baby and thought it was absolutely the best thing and was feeling pretty much evangelical about sharing the information with other people. This, she thought she'd stopped by pitching a, she was an independent journalist to pitch a piece to a magazine or newspaper about baby-led weaning.

Gill Rapley (10m 59s):

And she felt she'd better interview the person at the heart of it all, which was me. And she asked me, are you writing a book about this? I'm like pause for a bit and said, well, no. And then there was a kind of felt like several seconds of silence. And then I said, you wouldn't want to write a book with me once you Tracy. And she said, well, you know, I might. And basically that was it. We'd never met. We didn't know each other. We then met a few times kind of tentatively to sound each other out and kind of the rest is history. It was an amazing one. It just one of those moments that you even grab as it's passing or, or it's gone.

Katie Ferraro (11m 33s):

I love that. Sorry, I've never heard it. And I love that you described Tracey Murkett as being evangelical about sharing the message that you started. And I can completely identify with that. Like once you have that confidence and you see your child doing what they were designed to do, you just kind of want to shout it from the rooftops. So I'm so glad that she connected with

Gill Rapley (11m 54s):

You when it came to actually to write the book. I didn't really know where to start, although I'm quite good with words. I've not, I hadn't tackled anything that big before. So we started off with me just sending her lots of the emails that I've had and the answers that I'd given to parents. And then we expanded that to come up with all the questions we could think of that anybody might want to ask. And I would write a one paragraph answer to each question and she then assembled it into something, resembling a coherent book. And then we went to and fro all, not on it after that. And in fact, we still, whenever we write together, we are very picky and detailed about it. We have to agree the very last comma and we two and throw it.

Gill Rapley (12m 34s):

So it's absolutely a collaboration between the two of us and we both play it completely equal part in it. So without Tracy, there wouldn't be any books. I'm absolutely certain.

Katie Ferraro (12m 42s):

Well, when you first wrote the book and it started to pick up traction, what do you think was the biggest divergence in your approach to starting solids compared to what had been happening in the mainstream infant feeding world prior to the publication of your book?

Gill Rapley (12m 59s):

Yes. The biggest diversion was the difference between trusting babies and not trusting babies. It was believing in baby's autonomy and their capabilities and the need for them to explore food and come to it in their own time, using all of their senses. It was about feeding being done by the baby, not to the baby. And that I think was quite a big shift. It was in line with what we were learning about breastfeeding, but it hadn't kind of permeated into the later aspects of feeding. Of course, what most people saw was simply a no spoons or no purees, because that was what it looked like in practice, but it's always been more than that. It's about trust between parents and child.

Gill Rapley (13m 40s):

And the other thing is what I mentioned before. I don't think there have been any recognition that we were often making, eating so miserable for babies, and then having to try and undo that. Quite a lot of the literature I looked at in the early days was around toddlers and older children, picky eating and food refusal. And so on and time, and again, I came across this golden rule, which was give the control back to the child, that's the way forward. And I just thought, why ever did we take it away in the first place? Maybe we just, rather than self-feeding being an answer to the sort of problems I saw as a health visitor, maybe it could be the way to start. I already had that thought before I wrote the book, sorry, I'm kind of jumping backwards and forwards, but this idea that the control rested with adults was still very dominant when that book came out.

Katie Ferraro (14m 26s):

I remember the first time I read the original version of your baby-led weaning book. And it was so struck by the anecdotes, like as a new mom, I loved the stories of other parents, which were real life stories. I can tell you did not make them up. And there were stories about how these families were making self-feeding work in normal families. Like I could see myself in those stories. And I was just curious if you keep in touch with some of the original babies who are now, full-blown adults that you featured in the first edition of the book.

Gill Rapley (14m 54s):

There's one or two, we have several of them were friends of Tracy's, for example, but bearing in mind that I was already a fair bit older than the age group of most of the moms. They were more likely to be friends with traces than they were of mine. But I think again, what I would come back to is that they will not be early adopters necessarily. They were people, some of them, the stories were taken with permission from the people who had been emailing me over the years, but they were just a selection of an awful lot of parents at the time. It's not quite the same as those being the first few, in which case we might have felt more cohesion within that group. It was already huge before the book came out. And so those folks are just a smattering of, of those who were already engaged with it.

Katie Ferraro (15m 37s):

Can I ask you about the baby on the cover? I've noticed it's the same baby on the original version. And then you did the updated version for the 10th anniversary. Is there a story behind that baby? Or is it just a stock?

Gill Rapley (15m 48s):

It's not a stock photo. No. We asked for the first, but we actually asked parents to send us their photos. All of those photos came from parents. We had a terrible job choosing between them, of course, because they were all adorable, but we very carefully selected photos that we thought exemplified and displayed the key points that we were trying to make. And Felix, the baby on the cover, his photo was sent to us. Now, I'm just struggling to remember where he's from, but it's not the UK anyway. And his mum submitted the photo and we just chose him for our cover because it just seemed to exemplify what we were trying to be.

Gill Rapley (16m 27s):

What we were about. There is an interesting anecdote actually concerning the photos. And that is that when we whittled down to a shortlist, we had stuck them all up on the wall, in Tracy's house where that was a blank wall. And we just pasted all his photos up and mold them over and whittled it down. And when we got to the, what we thought were the final few that we would use for the book, we invited Tracey's partner to come in and give his opinion. And he said, well, it's wonderful, but none of the babies are smiling. Oh no. Oh, that's awful. Oh my gosh, what have we done on? And then we realized, because they're not smiling, they're focused, they're focused on the food. You don't smile at food. You smile at people, all the images. We have a baby smiling as well.

Gill Rapley (17m 8s):

They're being fed or in between mouthfuls, of course, if they fed feeding themselves, but not while they're actually engaged with the food, I didn't smile at my food and I wouldn't actually expect to baby too. And so that was a huge moment for us to realize just how different this was and how different it looks because no longer is this about make eye contact with your baby and get him to smile so that you can put the spoon in. This is about respect for the baby, exploring something and being engaged with it and not interrupting him. So that was a huge moment.

Katie Ferraro (17m 38s):

And Felix, the baby on the cover, it's hard to describe a picture on a podcast, but so many of you listening have this book, he's bringing a strawberry to his mouth. And as you say, he's not necessarily smiling, but he's certainly concentrating on engaged in about food, but I love just the autonomy. He is the one bringing the food to his mouth. And it really is. I think, you know, the picture that launched for many parents like, oh, that's what it is. A picture really does paint a thousand words. So the information in the book is so helpful, but the picture on the front really drives it home.

Gill Rapley (18m 10s):

I mean, for the front cover, we really, it was nice to have a baby. Who's looking at the camera and smiling. That's engages people and makes them want to buy the book. But yeah, he's clearly enjoying what he's doing. I think it's actually a red pepper. Now. I remember it is a red pepper. You're right. But yeah,

Katie Ferraro (18m 24s):

Sorry. It is a red bell pepper that looks nice and soft and safe for babies to eat.

Gill Rapley (18m 28s):

And the majority of the other pictures in the book, I'm just looking at it. Now, most of the babies are not looking at the camera. They're not particularly smiling. And so that was an interesting learning thing for us.

Katie Ferraro (18m 41s):

As someone, myself who relies heavily on evidence and research to guide my work in infant feeding, it's actually now a super exciting time to be working in this field because there is this real, incredible body of research that does support a baby's ability to self feed. But I'm wondering if you can take us back to the year of the first publication of your baby-led weaning book, like back before everyone was interested in comparing traditional spoonfeeding with the baby-led approach, how did the lack of peer reviewed publications in like the specific area of baby-led weaning at the time? How did that shape your career? Like how did you support these ideas theoretically, when you had a lot of anecdotal evidence, but there wasn't a lot of specific research done. I mean, you really stuck your neck out there. And for that, we're grateful, but I can imagine that it was not easy.

Gill Rapley (19m 23s):

You're right. There were difficult moments. In fact, I'm almost glad that social media wasn't really a thing or it wasn't in my life back then because now I see just how Twitter can get quite nasty. I'm almost glad that I wasn't engaging with it back then because I didn't have the confidence if you'd like, I felt quite vulnerable, but it's interesting that we talk about the critical body of research. There was another study, there's a credible body of research to support baby-led weaning, not actually for baby-led weaning. So I think the buzz phrase nowadays is evidence informed rather than evidence-based. So we knew for example, that babies are six months could bring things to them hours. We knew they were beginning to choose from that's age.

Gill Rapley (20m 5s):

We knew from fossil evidence that babies thousands of years ago were probably chewing, quite tough things. From around six months, we had already evidenced that shared mealtimes and modeling of eating behaviors and showing what foods are good, encouraged young children to eat more. There was some evidence that playing with food, help children to eat more. We knew the importance of offering a variety of foods and sometimes paired baby foods. Didn't have that. We were beginning to talk about responsive feeding. We knew that prolonged mouth time, in other words, time spent choosing food rather than just swallowing. It immediately meant that we tend to eat less.

Gill Rapley (20m 46s):

We have a more awareness of all that when we're feeding full satiety appetite control. And the other biggie was that think of foods were always encouraged them around six months. The only thing that was different with baby-led weaning was that there wasn't a preparatory for a phase or pureed foods. I often wonder if we just could get rid of our legacy and the history of the whole four to six months thing and younger still in years gone by at course and started from now, okay. When a baby's ready for solid foods from around six months, and then we looked at what babies can do at that age, why would we have a dream of mushing foods up and shoveling them in on a spoon? We wouldn't, we would see what babies can do.

Gill Rapley (21m 28s):

And we would go along with that. So there always was a body of evidence that supported the theory. It just hadn't been tested in the way that is so revered by science nowadays. Having said that, of course, and again, I began to realize after being challenged many, many times, where is your evidence and sort of saying, well, I haven't really got a lot, but then thought, hang on a minute where earth is the evidence for spoon-feeding. And so I would turn the question around on people and say, where's your evidence? You know, we've been doing spoonfeeding and purist for so long that it just become custom and practice, but it's never been tested. And I think kind of on analogy that's perhaps worth, may seem a bit extreme, but imagine that we routinely put all babies into a baby walker, you know, thing with wheels when they are about six months old so that they could start to propel themselves around.

Gill Rapley (22m 20s):

And then we kind of every waking moment, more than less, they were in these little baby Walker. And then we finally took them out at about, I don't know, 12 months, 18 months or something so that they could walk on their own. We would completely by pass crawling. And if somebody then suggested that you could get babies to walk without using one of those walkers, it would be seen as, as really old, because we would be so used to doing it that way. And that's the way I felt really about the whole spoonfeeding thing we had just become accustomed to it and to have to justify doing it a different way, a more natural way, a way that a baby would surely do by himself. Anyway, seems so strange. It's just as ridiculous to have to prove that breastfeeding is superior to formula feeding.

Gill Rapley (23m 4s):

That's not sort of formula feeding. We need it for the occasions when breastfeeding is not appropriate or not wanted, or for whatever reason can't happen. But the idea that we have to prove that it's superior is just a nonsense. We're looking at something that a baby would normally naturally do. We're going to have to look at other mammals to see that there aren't any others that put things in a blender and then spoonfeed it to their infant. They take their infant with them to where the food is. They demonstrate by feeding themselves what can happen and the infant copies, no reason why that shouldn't apply to human mammals. So once I started to getting the confidence to turn the question around to people and say, well, what is your evidence for what you're doing?

Gill Rapley (23m 46s):

I found that it quietened down a little bit, but the other thing that think's important, what was important for me was that parents got it. They understood what this was about. Those who tried it immediately saw how it worked. There are not many who've tried baby-led weaning who don't find it amazing far more, who have tried spoon-feeding and then gone the other way, much like yourself once you've seen it. And you believe it, it's just huge. So I focused my energies on speaking to parents on writing for parents because they were the best advocates at the time. Professionals were a little bit slower to get on board. I could talk a bit more about that, but always grateful to the fewer academic folk who did get it.

Gill Rapley (24m 30s):

So a prime example would be professor Amy Brown, who herself to baby-led weaning with her babies and has since taken out the gauntlet and conducted a lot of excellent research around it. But it was in that order. It was parent led first. And they, it was the parents who kind of pushed the professionals into taking notice and recognizing that this wasn't just a fad that was going to go away. But I've often felt, especially in the early days on the one hand, slightly vulnerable, but also I have found it amazing that people couldn't see what I could see if you like, that sounds a bit arrogant, but actually I felt like the little boy who is trying to say, hang on a minute, the emperor hasn't got any clothes on because to me it was so obvious that there was something fundamentally wrong with what we were trying to do to babies, but I was staggered that other people couldn't see it.

Gill Rapley (25m 18s):

I think I've hoped that when I started talking about everyone would say, oh yes. Oh gosh, you're right. Okay. Let's do it that way. Then that was so naive. But yeah, there was some scary time

Katie Ferraro (25m 29s):

And you mentioned Professor Amy Brown, she was on the podcast talking about the evidence behind baby-led weaning for echoing of course, many of the same things that you're saying. And what really struck me was her passion. When she said, it's just asinine that we have to even be defending the idea of why should we even be researching this? Like the people that make the baby foods should have to be doing the research to show that, putting it on a spoon and shoving it in the baby's mouth is good for baby development. That's never been done. It's just the assumption because it's the generally recognized practice.

Gill Rapley (26m 0s):

Yes. And I've heard some academic folk describe a bit of twinning as an intervention, which needs to be proven. And I'm thinking, how can that be an intervention, surely picking up an instrument and using it to put something into baby's mouth, that's the intervention. And that has never been tested. And it's lovely that someone like Amy come out and say that so strongly, she very rightly has the respect of academic and professional communities. And so she's a wonderful person to speak for baby. They're doing in that area.

Katie Ferraro (26m 32s):

I said, she makes such a nice point of, she does all the important research so that everyone can understand the evidence informed evidence-based, but she says it is kind of ridiculous at the end of the day that we even have to do this, but she's doing the work. So, so back when you began for speaking and presenting and writing about baby-led weaning, you touched briefly on this in addition to the, well, where are the evidence sort of people? What were some of the hesitations maybe outside of the academic, but inside of the medical and parenting communities that you ran into?

Gill Rapley (27m 1s):

Worries about whether babies would eat enough, would they eat the right things? I remember being quite challenged as well by colleagues who felt that full families, whose own diets were really quite poor. I don't mean poor in terms of monetary things, but not good choices about what to eat and not eating a balanced diet, perhaps relying heavily on processed foods. They felt that actually those babies would be safer having a commercial jar purees. And I could see that point, but I said, the thing that worries me is when is it going to be okay for the baby in that family to eat with the rest of the family and eat whatever it might be focused on pizza, every meal, if it's not okay at six months, is it going to be okay when the baby is a year or maybe 18 months or two years old, or three years old or eight years old, at some point we have to address that problem and have a discussion with that family about their diet.

Gill Rapley (27m 58s):

And we may or may not be able to improve it. But the introduction of solids is a brilliant moment at which to start that discussion. And I've certainly come across many, many parents. Who've said the introduction of sofas to our baby gave us a springboard to really look our own diet as well, because we wanted to be able to share our meals with our baby, but we wanted it to be good food. So yes, there are always going to be people who can start so all less than ideal and even quite inadequate, but children in those families are eating those diets. And yes, for a small proportion, maybe during baby infancy, it might be safer for the baby to have pureed foods, but it's not a long-term answer.

Gill Rapley (28m 40s):

And whereas I think baby-led weaning. If parents engage with that, it can be a long-term answer to the dark, the whole family.

Katie Ferraro (28m 46s):

What about pediatricians, perhaps who are still problematic? Sometimes, I guess...

Gill Rapley (28m 52s):

I haven't had a huge firm with pediatricians in the UK, mainly because they don't undertake the same role as they do in so many other countries. So for example, the regular discussions about feeding and when to start introducing solids. And so on, those happened with a health visitor in the UK. Usually you only see a pediatrician if your child has an illness or some problem. So those discussions where I kind of didn't need to have in the, in the UK, but they have happened elsewhere in the world and sure enough, pediatricians can be a gateway to baby-led weaning or a barrier to it. I think that's the case for all of those whose work focuses really on young children, baby-led weaning tends to divide opinion.

Gill Rapley (29m 33s):

So what I have tended to do is work with people who are keen and interested to doll, basically on board with the concept rather than just beached out myself or other people in a fight with those who disagree because in the end, the proof is in the pudding. And when you see it working and you get it, then you can be converted. And so comes back to the whole working with parents thing because it's parents who have persuaded that pediatricians, that health visitors, not me because they've demonstrated what it can do. I guess the other big issue that has got people worried, whether they be parents or health professionals, is the issue of choking the risks of choking.

Gill Rapley (30m 16s):

Now we do have research, which is showing us that there's no greater risk with baby-led weaning than with conventional feeding, but that was a big one to tackle. I think we have a big fear about babies and choking. I'm not suggesting it doesn't have a basis. In fact, of course it does, but I think we've perhaps assumed that things work differently from the way they actually do. I see babies choking and gagging on purees as well as on solid foods. Now that might not be so life-threatening to choke on a mouth for the, is on say a great, and we do need to be careful to avoid foods that are known to be choking risks. But the assumption that if we start with purees, babies are going to be fine.

Gill Rapley (30m 58s):

It's not born out. And as I say, finger foods were always being recommended from around six months, even when we were starting to as at four months and get people panicking about babies choking that panic seemed to come along with baby-led weaning. And I'm not entirely clear why. I think I sort of shook the ground underneath a lot of health professionals. The people who straight away understood what I was saying tended to be the breastfeeding community, the breastfeeding counselors, so that patient consultants, midwives who were well-versed in breastfeeding and pediatricians and any others who, if they were really understood breastfeeding, they understood the concept of a baby feeding him or herself, but for others whose whole approach, especially a lot of therapists whose whole approach revolved around the use of purees and spoons.

Gill Rapley (31m 48s):

I think it rattled them a lot because it pulled the rug from their understanding of the way things had to work. Plus a lot of professionals were actually reacting to the change to six months rather than to baby-led weaning itself. Because two things kind of happened around the same time. I got a lot of the flack, which was actually directed at the change in age. So I learned quite quickly to differentiate that when people would tackle me about baby-led weaning, I could steer the conversation to try and clarify what actually was their problem. Was it babysitting themselves or was it actually starting solids at six months? And very often it was the latter, but they had taken baby-led weaning as a kind of symbol of that.

Gill Rapley (32m 32s):

And so attending to attack that in appropriately.

Katie Ferraro (32m 33s):

When you mentioned the research, I think some of the most compelling of Amy Brown's research is that data that shows that infants who are most likely to choke are actually the ones who are given finger foods, least frequently. I see parents eyes light up when we talk about those studies and students in my courses, when they learn about them, because they think, gosh, that does make sense. We don't say practice makes perfect, but practice makes progress. And if the children are never even allowed to experiment with other textures on their own outside of purees, that's where the choking risk may actually come in. And that is kind of what makes it click for parents. And you make such an important point that once the parents get it, they oftentimes then become the conduit of the message to the pediatricians. And I also think the grandparents are a huge group when you can convert the grandparents who at first with my own mother is a registered dietician, and I'm the oldest of six kids.

Katie Ferraro (33m 21s):

And when I was doing baby-led weaning with my quadruplets, she would say, this is all fine and good, but I spoonfed all six of you and you guys are fine. And then I caught her on the phone one time bragging to her friend, oh, one of the quadruplets Claire. I was there today and she was eating sardines and she was eating beets. And even she was converted a tutor originally kind of scoffed at the idea. So converting the pediatricians is one thing, but converting the grandparents, that's a real win.

Gill Rapley (33m 44s):

Absolutely. As you say, those who are the kind of born again, baby-led, weaning advocates are just great. And they're so proud and so amazed at what their babies can do. And so many of them say, I do wish I'd known this before. Go back another generation though. And actually kind of those who have great-grandparents now would often say, well, actually, this is what I did.

Katie Ferraro (34m 2s):

You just call it something different. That's what they always

Gill Rapley (34m 6s):

Say. Absolutely. And people like yourselves with several children have often discovered it for themselves and that's still going on today. So, and another challenge I got in the early days was you didn't invent this, you know, and I, no, no I don't claim to have all I really did was give it a name and develop a theoretical base for it so that it could be talked about one of the lovely things now is that we can actually have a debate. You parents would ask each other, are you doing spoonfeeding or are you doing baby-led weaning before it had a name there wasn't that discussion? You either did spoon-feeding or you did something that you didn't really tell anybody about because it wasn't official. And it didn't, wasn't recognized. So I love the fact that we can have a debate now.

Katie Ferraro (34m 48s):

It has been so gracious to share your time with us today. And I know my audience literally is going to eat up every single word you just said, we're actually going to be recording a second part to interview where we'll be talking more about the future of baby-led weaning as you see it and where it's going. But before we end today, could I just ask you about the role of spoons in baby-led weaning and perhaps how your outlook on spoons and infant feeding has maybe changed or evolved since the original publication?

Gill Rapley (35m 17s):

It's a nice question. I don't think my outlook has changed actually, probably the way I articulate things has changed, but it was never really about the spoons. It was about doing feeding two babies or babies feeding themselves. And the spoon is the obvious, practical difference between the two. I don't have a problem with spoons and I don't have a problem with purees and they kind of together anyway, I'm not sure which came first. Was it the desire to feed babies actively? In which case a spoon is quite a good instrument to use. In which case a puree is the right sort of texture to use, or is it, we thought babies needed purees because they couldn't chew. And actually to scoop up a puree, you really need a spoon.

Gill Rapley (35m 58s):

I don't know. But none of that, as I've said, really applies at six months. Anyway, it's not necessary. The thing was spoons is perfectly appropriate. I have no problem with babies using spoons themselves, but what we don't need to do is postpone in the baby's mouth for him, which is why I love some of the spoons that are around now that I actually baby size, so that it's for the baby to use. But so much of what we understand about how babies eating develops revolves around the spoon. And there doesn't need to be a, this food. I use spoon for certain foods. It's all about the consistency of the food. So if we're offering a baby pureed foods and why not because they can have those consistency as well, then it's reasonable to offer them a spoon to use with it either just to dip, if they're very new to it or to have preloaded, and then quite quickly, they learn how to scoop effectively themselves, probably much younger than we used to think they could, of course.

Gill Rapley (36m 54s):

So a spoon as appropriate for certain types of food. And that's the end of it. That's two for adults and for babies. But the other interesting thing is, again, people imagine that I think it's not appropriate to offer babies any pureed food. And that's far from the truth as well. All of us eat some foods purees, or is the sort of semi-solid consistency, except that as somebody pointed out to me, there isn't any naturally occurring food that is into your eye form. Even something like a yogurt has actually been created from milk naturally occurring foods are all, I think I've yet to be persuaded. Otherwise they're all either liquid or solid.

Gill Rapley (37m 34s):

They might be quite soft, like a raspberry, but effectively they pick up a bubble. So there isn't a naturally growing food that would require the use of a spoon fingers were made before forks, but they were certainly made before spoons. So I simply don't see the need for a spoon, all the need to offer babies to aged foods. But if we want to, then that's fine, but let's give the baby the spoon to hold. What I have found as I've explored this more is that spoons do seem to have a big place in the sort of treatment or therapy of babies with eating or feeding problems, whether that be anatomical or developmental.

Gill Rapley (38m 15s):

And so therapists, speech, language therapist, or official mycologists, occupational therapists do talk a lot about using spoons and enabling babies to learn to clear the spoon with their lip and so on. And I think unfortunately it's assumed that that's part of normal development of oral skills and that babies need the experience of a spoon in order to be able to develop normally. But I really struggle to see how that can be the case for a neuro-typical child, because firms are a man-made invention. They're not something that occurs naturally. I find it hard to believe that babies won't learn to close their lips, just make sounds like, but if they don't have experience of being spoonfed and certainly there's nothing in the reports I hear from parents to suggest that babies are in any way compromised by not having the experience of being spoonfed when they're very young.

Gill Rapley (39m 7s):

So I think we need to reassess what the place of spoons is and how important they are in a baby's development and general experience of eating. The other thing I suppose it's interesting is that when it does come to introducing tools, the babies to eat with many, many of them manageable quickly and easily with a fork than with a spoon. Because again, if you're following baby-led weaning, and you're not really offering puree consistency foods, but are offering pieces of food, then logically a spoon is not the thing that you would use to pick up that type of presentation. You would use a fork to spirit with. That's much easier than scooping, certainly for something that's folded little piece.

Gill Rapley (39m 50s):

So I think we need to rethink how essential spoons are in infant feeding, but that's not to say that that they aren't ever appropriate because they can be.

Katie Ferraro (39m 58s):

Thank you so much. This was wonderful. And I am ecstatic that we had the opportunity to have this conversation. I am grateful to you for obviously setting the stage for this wonderful field of work and for us as parents, to be able to have the opportunity to allow our babies, to do what they were designed to do essentially. And I am so excited to speak with you in part two of our interview a little bit later about the future of baby-led weaning.

Gill Rapley (40m 22s):

Well, thank you very much, Katie. It's been a pleasure.

Katie Ferraro (40m 26s):

Well, it's official interviewing Gill Rapley was everything I would have hoped for. And more, I normally try to summarize what we just talked about in the previous podcast when I did these algorithms for you guys, but I'm not even going to go there today. There is nobody who can elucidate the entirety of a revolutionary movement like baby-led weaning in an interview other than the founding philosopher. She just did it. I'll be linking some of the research and the resources that we were discussing in this interview on the show notes for this episode with Gill Rapley, that's going to be at blwpodcast.com/100. Thank you guys so much for listening. Gill's going to be back in part two of the interview talking about the future of baby-led weaning. And I hope you listen to that as well, because she's got a lot to say about things like social media, about baby-led weaning skeptics, and then more importantly, where she sees the direction of the field going.

Katie Ferraro (41m 14s):

So thank you again for listening to this episode, all about the history of baby-led weaning with its founding philosopher, Gill Rapley.