Yana (2m 3s):

We started off with feeding in once, then twice, and we've been on three meals a day. Morning, lunch and dinner and my baby's loving it and we are loving it too. It's just so incredibly easy.

Katie Ferraro (2m 17s):

Hey there, there I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian 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, leading you with the competence and knowledge. You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Hey guys, hope you're doing well. I've got an episode today for the parents and caregivers of babies who are 12 months of age. I've got some sample feeding schedule ideas for you and all month long on the podcast, I've been doing different ages and stages and ideas about feeding schedules.

Katie Ferraro (3m 0s):

So we started with babies who are six to seven months of age, did an episode on sample schedules for them. Then we did eight to nine month old babies. That was an episode 187 episode, 189 with sample feeding schedules for 10 to 11 month old babies. But I don't want to leave the parents and families of 12 month old babies hanging because this is kind of the culmination of baby Led Weaning. So what do we need to be aware of when our baby turns 12 months of age and what are some ideal feeding schedules? There's no right or wrong schedule, but I do just want to share some tips with you in this episode, all about 12 month old babies with some Sample BLW Feeding Schedule ideas. All right.

Katie Ferraro (3m 40s):

So when your baby turns 12 months of age, there are no longer a baby, right? They're technically called the toddler. I know they're always going to be your babies, but we need to recognize that the way we feed a six month old or a nine month old is very different from the way a 12 month old. And when I say we feed, we know the babies can feed themselves, but by the time your baby turns, 12 months of age, our goal is that baby is sitting at the table, eating modified versions of the same foods. The rest of the family does. So hopefully you have a highchair that you can pull up to the table, incorporate your baby in the family meals. And the big thing that changes is that around 12 months of age, the expectation is that your baby can now get most of their nutrition from food and not from milk right early on in Baby Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (4m 26s):

We're like, don't stress about how much your baby's eating. And I don't want you to stress it on how much they're eating. But I do want to acknowledge that at 12 months of age, most of the nutrition should now be coming from food with a little bit of it coming from milk. If you are making the transition to cow's milk, this is for families except those of children who are either vegan. If you don't eat any animal foods, you wouldn't do cow's milk. Or if your baby has cow's milk, protein allergy, but everyone else, if your family drinks, milk, babies switches to cow's milk. And I want you guys to remember the range 16 to 24 ounces. Trust me. One of the biggest things that sabotages the 12 month old diet and beyond is too much milk. Parents. Health is huge that pickups with milk and the babies are drinking milk all day long.

Katie Ferraro (5m 8s):

Parent's like, oh, but it's healthy, but too much of a good thing is not a good thing. So make sure you really keep that milk intake tight. I found in my own experience from my own kids and with the families that I work with, actually even a tighter range of 16 to 20 ounces works a little bit better. I like to do milk after meals so that baby doesn't fill up. Cause they still have tiny tummies at 12 months of age. And I don't want it full of milk when it's time to eat food. And some kiddos, they really love drinking milk. So if they see it, then they won't eat the food. So you might have to wait a little and continue to do that milk between meals maybe as they're between meals snack. If you're interested on how to make that transition to cow's milk. If you go back to episode 113, that's called transitioning to cows milk: how do I do this?

Katie Ferraro (5m 49s):

I share more about that transition from formula or breast milk to cow's milk and some recommended schedules there. Now what if your baby's been bottle feeding? Okay. If we happen, bottle-feeding great, but it's time to make the move to the open cup. So hopefully you've been practicing with some open cup training, if not, not too late to start, but I would really, really encourage you not to incorporate a sippy cup. Okay? The one-year-old babies are mobile. They're walking around, but we don't want them drinking out of sippy cups for a whole bunch of reasons. If you're not familiar with those reasons, episode 40 is called six reasons to skip the sippy cup. And that's an interview I did with Dawn Winkleman. She's a feeding therapist. She's the designer of the tiny cup. That's the open cup that I use for baby LED WEANING FOR babies six to 12 months of age.

Katie Ferraro (6m 33s):

Dawn's the feeding expert for EzPz. So she designs all of their products. That's a really great episode. Number 40: six reasons to skip the sippy cup. If you are using the EzPz products at 12 months of age, we also size up. So maybe you were using the tiny spoons and the tiny cup, but it's time to size up to the mini line. We start incorporating the fork. At 12 months of age, the EzPz mini utensils have a fork and a slightly larger spoon that's appropriate for 12 months and beyond. And their mini cup is a little bit larger and it's a little bit of a different shape for the 12 month old babies and beyond. So again, the many line meaning utensils and mini cup is where we want to go. If you're using the EzPz products, my affiliate discount code for EzPz.

Katie Ferraro (7m 15s):

If you're interested in getting some one-year-old feeding gear, that's Katy 10 and that's redeemable at ezpzfun.com. Now another issue that kind of B sets the one-year-old crew, our snacks, there's this temptation of like, Hey, I did a hundred foods, my baby to baby Led Weaning. We're done. We're just going to go eat all the whole bunch of kids' food. Now, not all of you do that, but I'm really surprised how many families plus their tails to get their baby, to eat a hundred different foods. And then when they turn one, they just kind of give up and resort to like, you know, typical kid's menu foods, diamond shaped chicken nuggets and Mac and cheese, apple juice. And you know, those foods in small amounts with the exception of juice, we don't want any juice for babies or toddlers on occasion. Those foods are fine, but continue to offer your child the variety of foods that you did, even when they were a baby.

Katie Ferraro (8m 0s):

A lot of you have done my a hundred FIRST FOODS program. Your baby has a hundred FIRST FOODS under their belt. You don't need to resort to a crappy kid food, okay? Your baby should and can continue to eat modified versions of the same foods. The rest of the family does. I have more detail on kind of the typical pitfalls that happened to the 12 month old in episode 139. It's called my BLW baby at 12 months old: what comes next? As far as feeding schedules for your 12 month old baby goes the way your baby eats. Now at 12 months of age, it should really reflect the way the rest of the family is eating. If you guys do three meals a day, your 12 month old can do three meals a day, you can continue to use milk as your in between meals snack.

Katie Ferraro (8m 42s):

We really do want to transition baby off of the bottle though. So we talked about the limitations of the sippy cup and hopefully you're moving to the open cup. Okay? The guideline is somewhere around 12 months of age. We want baby off of the bottle. I always give myself a grace period. There's a lot going on at 12 months of age, you got to have a birthday party and celebrate et cetera. So I give myself 15 months of age to make sure that baby's off that bottle. But when I see babies walk around at 17, 18 months of age with a bottle in their mouth, almost certainly they're going to have delayed speech development. They're also going to be drinking too much milk. We know your baby's good at drinking out of a bottle. At 12 months of age, they need to get good at drinking out of an open cup. And don't stress that they drink less out of an open cup.

Katie Ferraro (9m 22s):

That's the point. We don't want them to drink too much milk and 12 month old babies can eat in response to hunger. So it's totally fine to allow your child to feel a little bit of casual hunger when they come to the table at mealtime, most of you know, your family schedule, you know, when you can get meals on the table, certainly there's times when we're off our schedule and snacks might become necessary in certain instances. But I would really encourage you guys to try to avoid the snacks pitfall where baby is just eating snacks all day long. I would say milk and snacks are the two biggest saboteurs of the toddler diet. So just keep an eye on those. If you're not familiar with snacks and why babies that don't need snacks, go listen to episode 35.

Katie Ferraro (10m 5s):

It's called snacks: why early eaters don't need snacks. A lot of people disagree with me on this one, what works for me, but it might not work for you. But I do want to let you know that you are the boss of your own household. You are the one who determines whether or not there's snacks. You can also determine what's next and whether or not there are snacks at daycare. You're the one paying the bill for childcare. You're the one paying the bill. Use the rules. If you decide you don't want to have snacks in your household, you can make that work. If you have a time meal schedule where your baby is, maybe eating every five hours with some milk in between, the milk can serve as a snack in, you do not have to do snacks. All right?

Katie Ferraro (10m 45s):

I have two moms who so graciously left me a little message about what their 12 month old baby is doing. And I want to share that with you. So first up is Yana. And I want you guys to notice how many meals per day she's feeding her baby, but it took her a little bit of time to get there.

Yana (11m 4s):

First of all, I'd like to say you've been a huge mentor and inspiration on my baby led weaning journey. My baby is turning 12 months and we started off with feeding him once then twice. And we've been on three meals a day, morning, lunch and dinner, and my baby's loving it and we are loving it too. It's just so incredibly easy.

Katie Ferraro (11m 29s):

All right. Thank you, Yana. And next up is Brittany. I love Brittany's comments. If you guys are listening here, she's going to share, I think this future pacing idea of this is where your baby can be at 12 months of age. You might not all be there, but it can happen. And she's encouraging you guys to stay with the variety too, as you move into toddlerhood here's Brittany. Hi, my son Wyatt

Brittany (11m 53s):

Has been baby led weaning since six months. And I have to say that this has been the best thing we have chosen to do for our son. He thrives at eating. He's had over a hundred foods. He loves being in his high chair, ready to eat our meals. This podcast has truly helped me become more confident in feeding him and giving him different foods to try. I just really would recommend this to anyone who has a baby for the future, because this has been such a positive experience. And I think our son really loves all the different types of food that we have to offer for him. And we always get compliments on, wow, he's such a great eater and it's all because we did baby led weaning i continual practice.

Brittany (12m 36s):

So thank you, Katie, for always giving great advice and for having these resources available to us parents.

Katie Ferraro (12m 44s):

Thank you, Brittany. I love providing all of this content before you guys here on the podcast. I'm so glad you find it helpful. I second, what Brittany says, keep up the consistency with continuing to offer foods. And one thing that I want to say as you move into the second year of life is please be conscientious of, and about mobility early on in Baby Led Weaning your baby couldn't walk. Okay. They always sat in the high chair to eat babies. Don't choke. If they're seated properly in a high chair and fed age appropriate foods, when choking risk goes through the roof is when babies start moving around while they're eating and you guys are more confident in feeding now. And so it's more likely that you might be letting your baby roam around while they're eating.

Katie Ferraro (13m 27s):

But if I can encourage one habit to definitely set in place for family feeding is to make sure your child is seated safely in their chair at all times when eating, okay. Things like grapes and tomatoes, we continue to have those at the one-year mark. So, you know, we cut them in quarters like cherry tomatoes and grapes up until age one at about age one. I started to cut those in half for toddlers, for blueberries. I still smashed them. If I'm not entirely certain, you know, if they're going to be okay with those little round objects, but 100%, these foods are much safer to feed when the baby is seated down. So don't lose your guard. Don't let your guard down. Don't let your babies walk around and eat because choking risk goes through the roof.

Katie Ferraro (14m 8s):

It's a good idea to continue to reinforce the notion that we sit at the table. We sit together. There's a start time and a stop time, two meals, right? This is all Ellyn satter's division of responsibility. In feeding theory at play you as the parent, you have three jobs and this continues to be your job, even though your baby is turning into a toddler, you're in charge of what your kid eats. You're in charge of where they eat. And you're in charge of when they eat your child, ultimately determines how much or even whether they eat based. So we have to stay in our lane. We have to remember our job, our job, again, what they eat. Keep up that variety of wholesome foods, where they eat, make sure they're seated safely in their highchair when they eat, make sure you have set meal times when they start and they stop.

Katie Ferraro (14m 50s):

That is in response to your child. And it's okay if they have some casual hunger coming into the mealtime, but we don't want child grazing throughout the day. If you take care of the what and the where, and the, when we can trust that our toddlers at 12 months of age can take care of how much they eat or even whether that weight and there'll be days where they don't want to eat and don't go make them a separate meal. You don't need to do that. Okay? Your child can eat in response to their hunger and your child is very smart. So if they know that if they forfeit or boycott that meal, that you're going to turn around and get them a pouch or a dollar of the peanut butter or a banana, they're going to become conditioned to expect that. So stick to your guns, the same principles that applied for baby Led Weaning work really well in toddlerhood.

Katie Ferraro (15m 35s):

And if you do come upon a situation where you're like, listen, my kid is really picky. I want you to remember that picky eating is inevitable, and there is some degree of picky eating that will set in when your child turns 12 months of age and beyond. That's just inevitable. There's no way to prevent picky eating, but for babies that have a huge variety of foods, the severity of that picky eating is significantly less than if they only have 10 or 15 foods like traditionally spoonfed kids are. So keep up the variety with the foods. It will help reduce picky eating, but know that a lot of children will have picky eating, going into the second year of life. And that you didn't do anything to make your child picky.

Katie Ferraro (16m 15s):

And you didn't fail your child. If you are concerned though, about very picky eating or what's sometimes called extreme picky eating go listen to episode 36. This features Dr. Katja Rowell, she is the author of the book, helping your child with extreme picky eating and inside of that episode, which is about picky eating. She talks about how to identify what's extreme or problematic picky eating versus what's the typical picky eating that we would experience for 12 month olds. So in the, like your darkest days when you're like, oh my gosh, my kid's not eating anything. Go listen to episode 36. And Dr. Rowell will set you straight. All right. Thanks guys for listening. It was a pleasure sharing a little bit about the 12 month old baby for baby Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (16m 56s):

I'm going to go ahead and link to, I mentioned a lot of other episodes in this episode, I'll put them all in the show notes, which you guys can find@blwpodcast.com/191