Gill Rapley (0s):

Baby led weaning is about trusting baby. Actually, we all eat pureed food. We cure it in our mouth with our teeth or our gums and babies can do exactly that. And that's what they're practicing in the beginning stages of baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (15s):

Hey, there I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietician, college nutrition professor and mama 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, leaving you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Welcome back today. Today, I am very excited that Gill Rapley is back on the baby led weaning made easy podcast. Gill Rapley is if you're not familiar with her or her work, the lady who basically invented baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (56s):

She's very humble though. She actually doesn't like to say that she invented it. She says I just gave it a name, but Gill Rapley has done so much more than that for the world of infant feeding. Dr. Rapley is a coauthor of the original baby led weaning book. It's called Baby Led Weaning The Essential Guide. And again, I know she doesn't like to be called the inventor of baby led weaning. So I always refer to Gill as the founding philosopher of the baby led weaning movement. And today's episode is really cool because I spend the entirety of my professional life teaching about baby led weaning. And I couldn't have done this if it wasn't for the work that Jill did. And as I know, every industry has some more so than others, but there's a lot of misinformation out there about baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 38s):

And there are so many well-intentioned, but you know, incorrect Instagram posts and Facebook group comments. It's like this tsunami of misinformation out there sometimes. So what I wanted to do was ask Gill Rapley to come on the podcast to help set the record straight about debunking the biggest baby led weaning myths. And we spent a lot of time before this episode going back and forth, putting the myths together. Like it was actually kind of hard to limit them to just 10, because there's so many, but it was actually Jill suggestion to group the myths into what we call legacy myths. So those that have been around since she published the first edition of her book in 2008, then we also go through some current baby led weaning myths. These are the ones that are cropping up more recently. And every single myth that we went through when we did the interview, like it always started with her response would be well, this myth stems from the time when we used to start solids with babies before they were six months of age and just realize again, how important waiting until six months of ages.

Katie Ferraro (2m 31s):

And so it's actually why we made national baby led weaning day. And it's the first annual national baby led weaning day was July 1st of this year, if you go two episodes back, Gill was also on that episode. And I was, I was explaining why I created baby led weaning that it's based on the premise of her work, which is waiting until six months of age. And so July 1st is six months into the calendar year. If your baby was born on January 1st by July 1st, they would be starting to perhaps show the other signs of readiness to feed. But certainly not before that. And so baby led weaning day kind of arose out of this episode in this interview that we had done talking about the myths. So this is kind of an extension of that episode. If you haven't listened to episode one 40 about national baby led weaning day, please do because we really drive home the importance of waiting until six months of age, but it's the underlying premise for all the myths that we cover in this episode.

Katie Ferraro (3m 22s):

So with no further ado, I want to bring on Dr. Gill Rapley, who's going to be talking all about debunking the biggest baby led weaning myths. Here's Gill Rapley. Well, Gill, welcome back! Thank you so much for joining me today.

Gill Rapley (3m 37s):

I'm really excited to be back with you, Katie.

Katie Ferraro (3m 40s):

So Gill, as the coauthor of the original baby led weaning book and the founding philosopher of baby led weaning, I've already given you a huge introduction and I'm pretty sure most people know who you are, but could you just give us the quick background on how did you get involved in baby led weaning and come to create this incredible movement?

Gill Rapley (3m 56s):

Well, it kind of goes back to my days as a health visitor. Health visitors don't exist in every country. But essentially it's a little like a pediatric nurse. Although in the UK, a health visitor undertakes a lot of the checks and a surveillance and immunizations. And so on the other places have their pediatricians do. So I basically saw a lot of babies. I gave a lot of information and justice about feeding and dealt with a lot of issues with parents. And I just found that the introduction of solid foods seem to cause so much difficulty and worry so often, and parents were talking about the fact that the baby didn't like foods, but actually when I watched these babies, I thought this isn't about the food this is the baby, not liking, what's being done to him.

Gill Rapley (4m 44s):

He doesn't like being fed. He doesn't like having something poked into his mouth. And when the recommended minimum age for solid feeding changed from four months to six months, that was the chance to say, Hey, hang on a minute that this age, these babies can pick food up and take it up themselves, why would we need to spoon feed them? Why would we need to pureed it when they're beginning to be able to chew? And so the concept for the baby could lead the way with the introduction of solid foods was born. And I started speaking about it and it kind of took off

Katie Ferraro (5m 14s):

And the rest is history, as they say, right?

Gill Rapley (5m 16s):

The rest is history.

Katie Ferraro (5m 17s):

Well, one thing I think is as a mom, myself, when I was going and setting out to learn about baby led weaning is that there are so many confusing points. So many myths, I guess you could say. And so one thing I've always wanted to do is ask you the coauthor of the original baby led weaning book, the baby led weaning guru. I want to go through a list of some of these myths and just pick your brain, like from your own mouth. How do you feel about them? So we've been chatting back and forth about the myths because narrowing them down to a reasonable number has been a little bit challenging, but I think we'll break it up into the legacy myths, like the ones that have been around for a long time and then some of the, be the more recent, but certainly current myths about baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (5m 58s):

The first myth I want to ask you about Gill is one that I hear all the time from parents and they'll say, I need to start out with one meal a day and gradually work my way up to three meals a day.

Gill Rapley (6m 9s):

Yeah, that was to me, the, the ones that I like to call the legacy ones are that actually still around. But the point is that date back to before baby led weaning was being spoken about. So for example, the idea that you should start with one meal a day and work up gradually to three meals a day that just rests on the idea that it's all about nutrition and the food, getting into the baby. These things date from when food was being introduced to babies, who we now know, we're too young to have it anyway, 4 month is too young. Don't need it. Then they aren't really developmentally ready to cope with it, but it also dates back to an approach where the parent was the one in charge, the parent was pushing the food into the baby.

Gill Rapley (6m 50s):

And if we're going to be the ones making the decisions, then we have to be absolutely sure the baby is ready and we have to take a very gradual approach. So starting with one meal a day and building up gradually to three made sense when the parent was the one, trying to get a certain number of teaspoon, fulls of food into the baby at any one meal. When we do, by the way, gleaning where babies are just presented with food to pick up and explore and squish and lick and sniff and so on and maybe eat. Then they're the ones in charge. So whether we offered them the opportunity to do that, once a day, three times a day or five times a day, it doesn't really matter if we think of it in terms of playing and learning about their world.

Gill Rapley (7m 31s):

Well, would we say to parents, okay, when you get a new toy for your baby, you must only give it to him once a day initially. And then gradually you build out till eventually he's allowed to play with it three times a day. That would be complete nonsense.

Katie Ferraro (7m 44s):

One thing I always worry about for new parents though, is that it can seem so overwhelming this transition to solid foods. And I don't want them to think that, okay, we have to disrupt the entire schedule now and have three set meals. So I sometimes suggest a gradual buildup just as a way to work. This idea of a change in your baby's schedule is that inappropriate recommendation for parents who are feeling overwhelmed by the idea of having to introduce solid foods, how do you respond to that pain point for

Gill Rapley (8m 12s):

Parents? I don't think that's inappropriate. And I think that can work for some people. But I think if we get away from the idea that this is about the baby eating, then that actually releases us from a lot of the worry. So the baby at six months is going to carry on having his or her formula feeds, breastfeeds, whatever, just the same way as they have been. And all we're doing is inviting them to share our meal times as well. So these are not the baby's meals. This is about the baby sharing what we're doing. And a lot of them are already showing an interest anyway, and many parents have their baby sat up while they're eating a meal with them. All they're doing now is offering a little bit of food, which is suitable for the baby to let them have a go with it.

Gill Rapley (8m 52s):

So it's only, I think overwhelming if we think of it as this whole start of something new like, you know, the edge of something that we can't go back from when all we're really doing is inviting the baby to share. And by the same token, just because we started and we may have done it once or twice on the first day, if we then skip a day, it doesn't matter because the baby's not relying on this for food. So actually if I think if we present it like that, hopefully there won't be too much pressure.

Katie Ferraro (9m 21s):

What do you think about this idea that babies must be able to swallow food and pass what some people call the tongue thrust reflex test to qualify as being ready to eat like this. Rather prescriptive notion that there's a test about the tongue thrust reflex. What do you think about that?

Gill Rapley (9m 39s):

I really struggled with that one, because again, it relates back to a time when we were giving food to babies from four months and sometimes even younger. And at that stage, a lot of babies do still have this reflex to push food out of their mouth for six months. It's almost always gone anyway, except perhaps in developmentally challenged babies, who, in any case, we'll have an adapted approach to their solid food production. For the typical baby, there is no issue to about tongue thrust at six months, it's gone, it's been and gone. And so there's no need to complicate things with that. The other reason that that one worries me is because we have to test for it. And she said, and how can we do that?

Gill Rapley (10m 19s):

Except by putting food into a baby's mouth. Well, baby led weaning says you don't need to do that. You shouldn't be doing that. So the test itself is at all. It's the idea of testing is ultimately baby led weaning. The other thing that accompanies that in the UK, anyways, that the baby needs to be able to swallow the food. Otherwise they're not ready, not ready for what. There are plenty of babies who are absolutely ready to start handling food, pick it up, munch on it, throw it around, you know, squish it and whatever. They're certainly ready to do that. And when they're ready to swallow it, they will swallow it. We don't have to test for that before we allow them to play with it. We don't have to test that a child can pass grateful piano exam before we let them play on the keys.

Gill Rapley (11m 1s):

You know, it's all around the parents being in control of that mindset. And we need to get rid of that. The other thing that I have an issue with over the tongue thrust reflex is that I've had quite a lot of parents when they've introduced the baby to solid food from around six months. One of the things the baby will do is pick up the food and sniff it and lick it and seeing the baby sticking his tongue out to lick the food. They said, oh my God, we've made a mistake. He's not ready. This is the tongue thrust. No, it's not the tongue thrust went a couple of months ago. This is your baby licking food. And of course it's fine. So I think it just complicates things unnecessarily. It's completely irrelevant at six months to typical babies and not something that people worry about.

Katie Ferraro (11m 42s):

So I know personally, this next myth is one that gets under my skin because I hear it every single day, I teach a hundred first foods approach where we introduce five new foods at a minimum a week to a baby. And parents inevitably will say, but I've heard or my pediatrician says we need to introduce only one new food at a time and wait three to five days between foods. How do you feel about this statement?

Gill Rapley (12m 5s):

I think you know, I'm going to say by now this long really legs again too. And we've been giving babies food when they were really too young to have it when the systems were very immature. So yeah, you would want to be cautious. And especially if the parent is the one deciding how much to give and which food it should be. So we're going to be careful under those circumstances, not to overload the baby's system, but apart from families where there's a strong history of allergy and babies who may need particular care with allergenic foods in general, we shouldn't have to take that cautious approach. Babies are cautious enough. They pick up a new food. They don't just stuff it straight in. They lick it, they sniff it, they look at it, they take care and they certainly don't swallow huge quantities right off the bat.

Gill Rapley (12m 48s):

So there's no need to wait for three days to watch your reaction in a baby of six months old, even the idea of one food at a time. You know, that's a fairly boring way to still, why not put two or three different kinds of foods on the baby's tray so that he actually has an opportunity to compare them and make discoveries about texture differences and so on. That's so much more fun. Plus there's almost, there's much greater chance that one of them will be to his liking. And he might actually want to eat it

Katie Ferraro (13m 17s):

Absolutely. And I think parents are so fearful. I know we both experienced, as you've heard parents, their concerns about allergenic foods and allergic reactions. And if we remind them that an allergic reaction to a food, although it's also very rare, if it is going to occur is going to happen within minutes. And certainly not any longer than up to two hours after the falling of the ingestion of that potentially allergenic food, it's not like you eat a strawberry. And three days later, the diaper looks different. You're like, oh my gosh, this is a reaction to the strawberry. It just doesn't work like that for a baby who's six months of age plus showing the other signs of readiness to feed. We're being unnecessarily cautious and building in these huge gaps between foods, which is taking away the baby's ability to achieve that diet's diversity, that all of the research shows us our babies need.

Gill Rapley (14m 1s):

Absolutely. Yeah I couldn't agree more. The other thing that bugs me about things like this, that parents get told early on is that no one tells them when they can stop doing that. As one mom said to me, if I'm going to wait three days between every food he's going to be 18 before I've introduced all the foods I want him to eat. So it's just one of those crazy things, instructions that we give to parents, I think to make life more difficult, no wonder they feel so overwhelmed when they have so many rules to follow.

Katie Ferraro (14m 26s):

And I don't know in the UK it's the same, but in the United States, I mean, I love and respect our pediatricians. And so many of them do such wonderful work, but the American academy of pediatrics in their manual for nutrition for pediatric says, wait a few days between introducing new foods. And so pediatricians are the ones perpetuating this myth, although there's absolutely no research that shows we need to be waiting. Quite the opposite, all of the research shows a greater variety of foods and flavors and textures early and often is what we want. And yet we're teaching our pediatricians in this country to teach parents wait a few days. So it's no wonder that the parents come back to the feeding experts and say, but I thought I was supposed to wait three to five days.

Katie Ferraro (15m 6s):

So we do have certainly that problem, as far as at least in medical education here, is it the same in the UK?

Gill Rapley (15m 12s):

It's similar, except that I would say pediatricians don't tend to see healthy well babies. They, they are, maybe we'll refer to them when there's a problem. There are community pediatricians who may do some routine developmental surveillance, but even they rarely get into the issues of feeding that done by the health visitors. And for the most part, I think the health visitors are fairly clued up in the UK and they all get kind of up-to-date information, but you're right in the minds of so many professionals, never mind parents and grandparents, they still have the sense that there's a baby at four months that they're talking about, without realizing that a baby is six months is time and a half the age of that one much. It's just a different child.

Katie Ferraro (15m 52s):

Okay. So Gill, the next legacy myth is, and I think this is such a confusing one for parents. They think that the first foods should be cut in very small pieces. The notion being, if I cut it up super small, there's no way the baby can choke on it. What's wrong with that statement?

Gill Rapley (16m 8s):

Well, if we're looking at babies feeding themselves at six months, a baby can't pick up a very small piece of food. He needs a decent chunk that he can wrap his fist around and it needs to stick out from the top of his face so he can munch it. Again, this goes back to our experience of starting with interiorize and then gradually take care and then mashed food with a few lamps. And eventually in small chopped pieces. Really bad baby led weaning! The other way around, the small pieces will come when the baby's dexterity has reached that level, or he manages a spoon or a fork. Incidentally, I hear from colleagues in speech and language therapy world that they're encountering babies who are on pureed for an extended amount of time.

Gill Rapley (16m 49s):

And then I'll give them chopped small pieces, perhaps because the parents are very frightened of choking. And what happens is those kids don't chew at all. They're just so used to swallowing everything without chewing that they, they do that with these pieces of food. Now that surely must be a risk of choking. And yet, of course, that's exactly what the parents have been trying to avoid. So baby led weaning, we start big and we work smaller according to the dexterity of the baby.

Katie Ferraro (17m 14s):

And certainly, if you look at Amy Brown's research regarding choking risk, we know that the babies at the greater risk of choking are those who are introduced or allowed to eat finger foods, the least frequently. So parents sometimes think, oh, I'm doing my baby a favor by not allowing them to pick up these foods on I'm controlling everything, but actually potentially increasing choking risks because baby needs that experience to practice. But as you, so correctly pointed out, it's the baby that should be the one driving that action and not the parents

Gill Rapley (17m 39s):

And parents get worried when the baby will put a big piece of food in his mouth and then gag on it. And the gag reflex is very sensitive that's six to eight months and gradually becomes less sensitive as the baby gets older. But actually waiting until that gag reflex has become a sensitive, is not doing the baby any favors either. He needs to have that reflex triggered when the food is not way back in his mouth. And we wanted to learn how not to stuff his mouth full. In my days as a health visitor, I often saw babies who were not allowed to feed themselves for the first few months when eventually they were say eight, nine months, they would just stuff them out. They have no idea that anything was supposed to happen in between the food going in and it being swollen.

Gill Rapley (18m 20s):

And they would fill them out like a little hamster because there wasn't the gag reflex wasn't sensitive enough to stop them doing that. And that's another argument for the large pieces. If a baby puts a piece of food into his mouth and gags on it, he just pulls it out again. No problem. Whereas little pieces can really get caught in all the crevices and in the throat, but they will come to those later, by which time all his skills would have been improved. So we should be definitely leading those smaller pieces to later on.

Katie Ferraro (18m 46s):

Now, our final legacy myth, before we move into the current ones, this is what I was laughing about yesterday. Though we had been chatting back and forth about these and I'm actually studying for this big pediatric nutrition certification exam here in the U S and I was reading the study materials and you can't help, but laugh out loud if you do infant feeding every day, is that it said that fruits and vegetables are the ideal starter foods for babies. Why do you disagree with that statement, Gill?

Gill Rapley (19m 12s):

Well, yes, again, it goes back to when we were starting much earlier, babies of around four months seemed to do better on fruits and vegetables, and then gradually work up to including meat and eggs, fish and so on, probably from around about six months. So the, the, the legacy that we left with is that somehow meat and fish and eggs and protein foods shouldn't be introduced until two months after they started solids. When actually it wasn't anything to do with the timing of starting. It was to do with the age of the baby at six months, the most likely nutrients babies are going to be short of if any, are iron and zinc, and those are found most frantically in proteins of animal origin.

Gill Rapley (19m 55s):

So meat, fish, eggs, so on, but also in lentils and pulses and other vegetarian foods. So those should be the ones that we focus on. And anecdotally, I hear often from parents that those are the foods that children seem to gravitate towards in the early weeks of baby led weaning and not particularly the vegetables and certainly not the fruits. So it's kind of all turned around because we're looking at what the baby might actually need at that age. Not at which of the most easy ones to introduce if you're going to puree them on a spoon.

Katie Ferraro (20m 24s):

Certainly. And I know for parents, if they're aware of the emerging research, that really supports the notion of introducing allergenic foods earlier and more often, if you look at those foods, especially here in the United States, we have the big eight allergenic food. Sesame was just added. These foods are primarily protein foods, half of the big eight foods of animal origin. So parents, I think, are starting to get the message that these animal foods, if the family does eat animal foods, it's important to be incorporating the foods, the rest of your family eats. I mean, I know me, I don't sit down and eat avocado banana and sweet potato day in and day out two and three times a day. The point of baby led weaning is to eventually be allowed to have your child participate in the meals with you. So I always encourage parents to try to make that reflective of the meals you're eating.

Katie Ferraro (21m 8s):

And it probably is something besides fruit and vegetables in it, right?

Gill Rapley (21m 11s):

Yeah, absolutely. There's nothing wrong with fruits and vegetables, but there's absolutely no need to be that you have to start with those before the baby can progress. Again, we're talking about a six month old baby. They've got a robust digestive system and they're really interested in all sorts of foods. And those are the ones that they're actually going to need most likely.

Katie Ferraro (21m 27s):

Can I ask you as kind of a side myth off of this notion that we start with fruits and vegetables? Parents sometimes worry that they can't feed their babies fruit. They'll say, well, I've heard if I ever use fruit before vegetables, it will cause my baby to have an affinity for sweet foods. And so then they are, they're fearful of offering fruits, which of course we don't want either, but could you speak to that notion about fruits before vegetables not being a good thing? Cause that's certainly something that's still taught in the United States, even though it's incorrect.

Gill Rapley (21m 55s):

Yeah. That's also told in the UK that the general false analysis seems to be vegetables first. And I can see that, that, that makes a lot of sense babies perhaps, and trying to have a sweet tooth, but again, why offer just one food? Why not offer a strawberry alongside a green bean? What difference does that make babies make choices, in the end, the adult is in control of what the baby gets offered and the baby chooses from among them, but to restrict them on necessarily and not have a fruit seems unfortunate. I think part of the problem is that in our heads, we see fruits as desserts, and you have to kind of earn desserts. You have to eat your greens or your meat first, and then you're allowed to have something sweet. If we can get away from adding that layer of emotion onto our foods and just let them be food, then babies can choose.

Gill Rapley (22m 43s):

But again, if they're offering, we're not restricting babies to one food every three days, then we don't run into that problem. And them only having fruits for the first six weeks, because we actually going to expose them to more foods.

Katie Ferraro (22m 54s):

And later on, as the baby gets older and all babies will experience some degree of picky eating generally starting in the second year of life. Sometimes your parents say, oh, my baby only wants fruit. And I kindly remind them if you're only offering them fruits, your baby will only eat fruits. And it certainly is easier to peel a banana and put it out on the plate than perhaps to prepare some brussels sprouts in a way that's safe for the baby to eat. So sometimes there is education I think, needed on the part of the parents to try to offer as many vegetable exposures as fruits or at least be cognizant of that. So you don't get in the habit of only offering fruits to your baby. So can we switch gears now and talk a little bit about some of the more current baby led weaning myths of, we have five of these that I wanted to ask you about starting with this notion that, you know, is there a set amount of time?

Katie Ferraro (23m 36s):

Some parents will say I've heard that babies need to be able to sit for X amount of minutes or seconds unsupported in order to qualify as being ready to eat. What do you think about putting a time limit on how long babies should be able to sit by themselves before they're allowed to eat food?

Gill Rapley (23m 52s):

I don't actually know where this notion came from, but it's certainly very common out there on the web and social media. I guess it's the safety measure someone has introduced just to kind of be on the safe side, but the fact is that actually most babies can't sit without any support for any length of time, until they're more like seven and a half, eight months, you know, sitting in the middle of the floor, for example, that it's not common for babies of six months to be able to do that. The criteria we're looking for is cannot babysit and hold his head in his trunk, stay upright so that he can eat safely. And is he stable enough that if he reaches forward or reaches sideways for a piece of food, he's not going to fall over or slump forward or whatever.

Gill Rapley (24m 35s):

So if he needs a little bit of support around his hips to pat out the space in the high chair, for example, in order to achieve that, or if he's sitting on mom and dad's lap, just for them to hold him round his diaper, there's nothing wrong with that. That's just providing stability. The point is that he's able to engage with the food in the safe way. Now, contrast that again with a baby of, let's say four months who very, very rarely would a baby, a four month be able to hold their head and trunk erect and reach out and grab something and bring it to their mouth. They would be turning to slump sideways or forwards so that clearly not ready to engage with food in any meaningful or safe way. But most babies are at six months and it doesn't matter if they can't sit alone for any particular length of time.

Gill Rapley (25m 20s):

Okay, Gill. Now what about this idea that babies learn to chew before they learn to swallow? I can't even say it with a straight face, but could you tell me your thoughts on that one? Ya, this is another one I hear quite often. So excuse me. How did the baby get to six months without being able to swallow? They can swallow. The point that's really being made is that they, and I also struggle with the word learn in this context, babies don't really learn to chew. They become able to chew from about six months. They spontaneously are making chewing movements. Now show they get more skilled at it. So one could argue in that sense, they're learning, but they're really just perfecting and developing something, which is a natural developmental skill contrasted, actually with learning to eat off a spoon, which is very much a learnt behavior because it's something that's required by the task at hand, I let mental skills develop in response to an environment that is conducive.

Gill Rapley (26m 21s):

They're not required in any way because the baby develops them spontaneously. So what happens in chewing and swallowing is that from my observations and from what I've read, it seems that babies from about six months are making chewing movements and beginning to move food around in their mouth. A very commonly that food falls out because what may come to create a bolus of food and we move that towards the back of the throat purposely in order to swallow it so they can swallow. Sure. But what they can't easily do is get the food to the back of the throat and then swallow it, so often it will fall out and that's perfectly normal. And that makes absolute sense. It makes complete sense for the baby, who was able to chew food up before he tries to swallow it.

Gill Rapley (27m 2s):

And if he's not very good at chewing yet, and it falls out. Well, that's great because that allows him more practice. So a better way to describe it is that the chewing abilities for the ability to form a bolus and move that to the back of the throat.

Katie Ferraro (27m 17s):

Now Gill, this is my favorite questions to ask you because I love when people put words in your mouth and I'm sure you don't love that, but you know, as much as anyone that there are so many people who say baby led weaning means no purees and no spoons. And if your baby has a puree or has a spoon, they're not doing baby led weaning. True or false?

Gill Rapley (27m 37s):

False, but with a caveat. So any of that goes, as long as it's in the hands of the baby, what we don't do is puree all baby's food and give it to them in that format. And neither do we spoon it into their mouth for them. They can experience it themselves. Baby will learn to use a spoon initially just to dip into something or to be given to them preloaded with something. They can manage that. And they can also absolutely cherish there are a lot of foods that we enjoy as puree or that kind of come-ready puree like yogurt or whatever. So there's no reason why they can't have those foods. It's just that they don't need them spoon into them by an adult. So it's spoon-feeding that it's not part of baby led weaning.

Gill Rapley (28m 20s):

And the idea of offering all foods is pureed, but within the variety and within the baby led and the self-feeding approach, then both of those things are absolutely fine.

Katie Ferraro (28m 28s):

One thing you said, I remember we were chatting once was someone brought it to your attention. I love this, that there's no foods that are naturally pureed. So what about yogurt? Well, yogurt technically comes from cows milk. What about apple sauce? Well, it used to be apples and it's kind of an interesting thought. Like if we look at, you know, historically, and from a, you know, a biological standpoint, there are really no pureed foods that naturally exists.

Gill Rapley (28m 52s):

Yeah, absolutely. So the only way babies would come to them in babyhood is if that pureed for them and then, and then I'll put it to them. So, yeah, but I like eating apple sauce. I like eating yogurt. So I generally use a spoon to eat it with

Katie Ferraro (29m 4s):

But there are other foods you eat. That's what I always would say, parent, you know, puree are an important texture for your baby to master. They're just not the only texture your baby can eat. And certainly within the first few days, you should be doing a variety of different textures cause your baby wants to and can experience and enjoy those.

Gill Rapley (29m 23s):

One of the things that I know has been queried is actually how easy purees are to eat. If you try to chew them and babies are six months seems spontaneously to want to munch on foods instead of just sort of slurping it, which is really just an extension of drinking, which is what very young babies do with purees. And unless you've ever tried putting a puree in your mouth and then applying a chewing movement, it's absolutely impossible to manage it. Just splurge is a lot of the inside of your mouth. And certainly you can't gather it together and then swallow it easily. Whereas foods that require chewing seem to be what babies, not very hard food, soft enough to chew, but they won't maybe seem best able to manage it six months.

Gill Rapley (30m 4s):

So if anything, I think the purees come later rather than first, actually we all eat pureed food. Okay. We cure it in our mouth with our teeth or our gums and babies can do exactly that. And that's what they're practicing in the beginning stages of baby led weaning is how to get food into a smooth enough consistency. Then make it into a bolus, take it to the back of the mouth and swallow it and then need lots of chances to practice that back to that whole one, one meal a day thing. Why restrict that chances to practice this wonderful new skill. If they're getting ready for walking, do you limit them to once a day to practice this new skill? Absolutely not. So we need to get away from the whole idea about this being about eating and instead of looking at it as an exploring and learning.

Katie Ferraro (30m 49s):

Gill, what about the biggest fear for parents when they're starting solid foods is the fear of choking? I mean, rightly so, babies only ever had breast milk or formula in their mouth, and now we're expecting them to know what to do with these different textured foods. Could you speak to the notion that parents ask about which is, does baby led weaning increase the risk of choking or they'll say, pediatricians do it all the time here in the U S oh, I don't recommend baby led weaning because it increases the risk of choking.

Gill Rapley (31m 13s):

There's absolutely no evidence about that. If anything, it's the opposite. As you mentioned earlier, there've been studies which show that there's either no increased risk of choking or possibly a reduced risk of choking. Again, we have to think about these babies, who are so used to swallowing, the minute something appears in their mouth. Those are the babies in my view that are at risk of choking. Especially if we then add the small pieces into the myth, you can see how all of these myths kind of come together as one huge one about the way babies eat. And in fact, babies who are allowed to explore foods in their own time, spend a lot more time studying foods, trying it out, showing it in the front of their mouth, letting it fall out, they don't just shovel it in and expect to swallow it.

Gill Rapley (31m 56s):

I think part of the reason we have this idea that babies are more at risk of choking if they are eating pieces of food is because that's what we've seen with babies, who have been raised on purees. If we take purees and spoon feeding out of the myth, I really think we need to investigate what the process of the development of all skills looks like without spoon feeding and purees in there. What we're training our babies to do is to take something off a spoon in a completely different way, from what they would take it from their hand or from a fork using their lips and sort of sucking it in and then pretty much swallowing it instantly. And then they try and transfer that those actions to something solid or small pieces.

Gill Rapley (32m 37s):

Well, of course there's a risk of choking, but if we didn't subject them to that learning in the first place, it can look completely different.

Katie Ferraro (32m 45s):

It reminds me of something Amy Brown always says, which is, if we're looking at the way baby led weaning studies should be designed. Baby led weaning should not be the intervention. Spoon feeding or purees, which is an incredibly unnatural experience that should be the intervention that we're comparing against the control, which is just letting babies eat food when they're ready. And we have to go through this whole rigamarole to prove that baby led weaning is safe. And perhaps we should be proving that traditional spoon feeding or purees is what's unsafe.

Gill Rapley (33m 10s):

Absolutely yeah. We need to turn the whole thing around and recognize what is the, as you say, the interventional the new practice in all of this, and it's not baby led weaning that's as old as the hills. And as one researcher said to me, once, if it was dangerous, we'd know by now, you know, it's actually been going on forever and there are so many grandparents and great-grandparents who say, well, actually, that's what I did. I challenge myself when I'm asked by health professionals at time, where's your evidence? I say, well, where's yours? Excuse me, you know, for the spoon feeding and the purees that you're doing, that's not evidence-based. But I also asked them to just have a word with people who have, let's say three or more children, because they do baby led weaning.

Gill Rapley (33m 52s):

They couldn't be doing with all the fast purees and spoons by the time they got to the third or fourth or whatever. And they say, yeah, just let him do it himself. And as this research has said to me, we'd know by now, if that was dangerous, the think it's safe.

Katie Ferraro (34m 6s):

Gill, I'm interested to know your thoughts on this one because I'm seeing more and more people talking about, well, I don't really want to do baby led weaning, but I really don't like the idea of spoon feeding. So I'm going to do a combination. So what do you think about this notion of, can you successfully combine traditional parent led spoon-feeding with baby led weaning? Is that a thing?

Gill Rapley (34m 26s):

It sure can, but it's important to explain that because a lot of people, as you say, pragmatically, they find they want to do a mixture of methods. But what they're doing is combining two methods, they're doing some spoon-feeding and some, the baby feeds themselves. And that's absolutely fine if that works for them. But the point is that's not the baby led weaning because it's not truly baby led. The important thing to grasp, I guess, is that baby led weaning is an approach. So first of all, it doesn't just allow self feeding. It's also about offering healthy foods, sharing mealtimes that the baby decides when he's had enough or what he wants to eat in smaller order. So it's not just the difference between spoon-feeding and self feeding, but that's what it gets narrowed down to quite often when it's spoken about in the media or in social media.

Gill Rapley (35m 13s):

But if people want to combine self-feeding with spoon-feeding, fine as far as it goes. But I guess if I'm, if I take it back to the kind of bare minimum, baby led weaning is about trusting baby. Parent weaning is about not quite trusting babies. You can't really trust your baby one minute and then not to get not the next, or trust him at one meal and not at the next one or just in one day and not the next day. So in that sense, you can't combine two approaches, but you can combine two methods. It's important though, that I think we may like we have to be careful what we call it in that case. If we want research to tell us whether baby led weaning is a good thing or not, then we need to be clear what, what baby led weaning is and define it appropriately.

Gill Rapley (35m 55s):

We don't have clear definitions, then we can't do good quality research. So we will never have those answers. So that's why I'm a little bit of a pedant when it comes to what we call baby led weaning, and search go on to the web and social media accounts and so on what one person describes and calls baby led weaning is not the same as what another person described when they define baby led weaning. So from research purposes, we do have to be a little bit clear and also because people are learning from each other on the web. And so I'd rather, they knew actually what baby led weaning means before they decide whether they're going to go with that or not

Katie Ferraro (36m 31s):

Which is exactly why I'm so excited that we could have this conversation.

Gill Rapley (36m 38s):

Yeah, I think one other useful point about combining or what people think of is combining traditional spoon-feeding with baby led weaning is actually nobody's really described what traditional spoon feeding looks like. If you start at six months, because when we were starting at four months or younger way back then, what we were doing was, was starting with the purees. But actually parents were advised to start introducing finger foods and let the baby begin to feed himself from around six months. So the fact of giving finger foods doesn't make it baby led weaning. That's actually still traditional spoon-feeding, it's just that at some point you are always going to move over to not only spoon feeding that child.

Gill Rapley (37m 19s):

So what so many people are describing when they're saying they're doing a bit of both is actually just traditional spoon-feeding the way it would normally progress. The point of baby led weaning is that it's baby led from the beginning and that's what makes it different.

Katie Ferraro (37m 31s):

Well, Gill, thank you so much for sharing your insight and your thoughts for all of these myths, because I think it is so important to hear it directly from your mouth. Like this is your interpretation also based on the research, based on your experience and for our audience members who want to learn more about your philosophy to the approach of baby led weaning, where do you suggest they go to find your resources?

Gill Rapley (37m 55s):

Well, I would have to say the books that I've written with Tracy Murkett. I do have a website I'm in the process of trying to update it and produce a better one, but I'm not very tech savvy. And actually it's not my forte. So that's going to take a little while by all means the conceptual media share ideas with other people. But if you could come back to our books for the low down on actually what baby led weaning looks like and what it means, then I think that would be helpful. And then we all know what we're talking about instead of getting these distortions that go as messages, go from mouth to mouth.

Katie Ferraro (38m 29s):

Thank you so much for your time. It was wonderful chatting with you again.

Gill Rapley (38m 32s):

Thank you, Katie. It's really great to be back with you.

Katie Ferraro (38m 36s):

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed getting to hear it from the horse's mouth. As she says, Dr. Gill Rapley, helping us to debunk the biggest, baby led weaning myths. I'm going to link up all of her resources on the show notes for this episode, that's at BLW podcasts.com/142. I think it's important to be hearing it from the person who created the movement. So please do not forget to read Gill Rapley's book- Baby Led Weaning The Essential Guide that she co-authored with Tracy Murkett.

Gill Rapley (39m 4s):

I also have had her on the podcast episode. 100 is all about the history of baby led weaning, where she explains why she created it and all of the beginning things about baby led weaning and an episode 102 was about the future of baby led weaning. She talks a little bit about social media, a lot about the misinformation that's out there. People kind of putting words in her mouth had about baby led weaning, etc. She also was on an episode 140, when we introduced this concept of national baby led weaning day to support her work that she's done to help establish six months, really as the point when we should start thinking about starting solids with babies. And now she's in episode 142 debunking the biggest BLW myths with Gill Rapley.

Gill Rapley (39m 44s):

If you want to check out all those other episodes again, I'll link them all up. Show notes for this episode, and you can find that at BLWpodcast.com/142.

Katie Ferraro (39m 54s):

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Gill Rapley for coming on and sharing with us all about the myths that somehow keep persisting, but we're all working hard to debunk these myths, take care. See you guys next time.