Winding Down the Baby-Led Weaning Podcast

Katie Ferraro (0s):

Let's say you're interested in Baby-Led Weaning, but your baby goes to daycare. What if I work and my baby goes to daycare? What does that look like? Or what if they tell me that they're not gonna do Baby-Led Weaning at daycare? Well, you are daycare childcare providers. They are allies with you in starting solid foods. They're not your adversary. But I also get that it can be hard to have the conversation with daycare where you're like, so, okay, we're not gonna be force feeding our baby pureed food by spoon here. If you want the exact scripts of what to say and how to talk to your daycare respectfully and in an informed way about Baby-led Weaning, I have a free feeding guide called How to Be a Baby-Led Weaning Advocate at Daycare.

Katie Ferraro (41s):

This free feeding guide is packed with practical and actionable tips about what to do and what to say when it comes to helping get your daycare provider on board with Baby-Led Weaning. So you can be like the mom who wrote to me that her daycare said her baby is the best eater in the infant room. You can download How to Be a Baby-Led Weaning advocate at daycare and all of my other free feeding guides, they're all on my website, babyledweaning.co/ resources. Today I got a holiday card from one of the families that I worked with on their babies 100 First Foods almost three years ago, and they said that that former baby, she's now riding a two wheel bike. And I had to text the mom right away because one of my twins just got rid of training wheels at age six, which is also a friendly reminder not to compare your baby or child to anyone else's because it doesn't matter.

Katie Ferraro (1m 28s):

But wow does time fly? Kids grow so fast and they're always changing, and the feeding gear that you're using right now, it's gonna be totally helpful if you save it if and when you decide to have another baby or babies. But your current baby is going to be sizing up in feeding gear soon too, and I have a great way for you to save some money if you're starting to look at toddler or bigger kid feeding gear.

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Katie Ferraro (3m 12s):

And this mom was commenting in the chat, oh my gosh, I listened to that podcast. But I went all the way back to episode one and started from the beginning and I realized that the farther we get or the closer we get to like 500, the farther away people are getting from the beginning of the podcast, which is really the foundational information about giving your baby a safe start to solid food. So that's why we're wrapping it up at 500, but it doesn't really mean that the podcast is over. We're restarting it in a new way. Hey 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 with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to Solid Foods using Baby-Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (4m 6s):

I mean, guys, I'm Winding Down the Baby-Led Weaning Podcast. I feel like 500 episodes is a good place to wrap it up with this podcast. This is episode 495, but I just wanna explain how I'm winding it down at the end of the year, but then how I'm also gonna keep the Baby-Led Weaning content flowing for you if you're just starting out with Solid Foods. Now I like to start each of these mini solo training Episodes with a Baby-Led Weaning tip of the day, but I couldn't really think of one other than I don't think the world needs more than 500 Episodes about starting solid foods. Like we've covered pretty much any topic now, hang tight 'cause I'm gonna explain how I'm actually going to go back to episode one and what's changing a little bit.

Katie Ferraro (4m 48s):

So if you have input on ideas for future Episodes, as always, the best place to leave them is in a review. If you can go to Apple Podcasts and review the Baby-Led Weaning Podcast, drop your idea for future Episodes in there because that's where I get my best ideas from. But thank you guys for listening. I'm gonna share a little bit about what's happening, Why I'm ending the podcast, but how you can continue to learn more if you, you literally just can't get enough baby-led weaning content. I still got stuff coming out for you. So with no further ado, here's episode 495 about Winding Down the Baby-Led Weaning Podcast. So I wanna start out by saying that we're wrapping up when we get to episode 500. I am a type a super dorky dietitian.

Katie Ferraro (5m 28s):

I like things very neat, symmetrical At the end of the year, we're coming up on 500 Episodes. So the last episode, which is gonna be right before the new year is gonna be the last one, but then in January I'm gonna restart back at episode one. And here's the reason why. Because what we found out from looking at, there's not as much data that you can get about your podcast compared to like some of the other social platforms. Like we look at our YouTube numbers and I'm like, why can't I know this much about my podcast as I do about my YouTube channel? But sometimes too much data's not a good thing. We know that parents go back to episode one. And so the further we got away from episode one, it was harder to go back and back and back and back. We actually did a trial in the earlier part of 2024 where we re-release Episodes one to 20 on like the very basic stuff about starting with not Episodes, one to 20 numbers.

Katie Ferraro (6m 15s):

And the downloads were like incredible. So we're like, wait a minute, let's get back to basics on this. It was funny because another podcast, which is a very well respected podcast that they didn't ask to interview me, me in their episode about Baby-Led Weaning. They didn't actually know anything about Baby-Led Weaning or interview anyone, but they snark on my podcast like, oh, she goes like more than 200 Episodes. And I was like, at that point I was like, we have more than 400 Episodes. Like if you're gonna snark on someone, at least get your facts right. But I do think like 500, we've kind of covered all of the topics and doesn't really make any sense to keep coming up with new topics. Now as far as the history of the podcast goes, I launched this podcast because when I was pregnant with my quadruplets, I was not bedridden. What's that called when they put you on bed rest? I didn't have that, but I just voluntarily put myself on like butt rests and I just sat down the entire time because I did not want to jeopardize my already super high risk pregnancy at any point.

Katie Ferraro (7m 4s):

And I listen to podcasts like nonstop and I was like, when every time I try to learn something new, I know some of you go to TikTok or some people go to YouTube, I just try to find a podcast on it because I'm inevitably doing dishes or making dinner or doing laundry and I like to do two things at once. So this show is really for people who wanna learn about Baby-Led Weaning. I know you're doing something else right now. You're driving, you're watching your kid, you're who knows what. Hopefully you're not also working, although I know we have some working moms who listen, they say they listen on their commute, which is great. I started the podcast in the first episode, dropped May of 2020. It was probably the best time to launch a podcast because it was right at the beginning of the pandemic. We started the planning in early part of 2020. So at the end of 2019, I'd already been teaching baby-led Wing exclusively for almost three years.

Katie Ferraro (7m 46s):

It's like the world needs a podcast on this topic. Kind of laid it all out with the launch plan then pandemic hit. I had really good plans for like a super fun podcast launch party that all got scrapped. And I remember we were just like in this beach house that my brother had rented in San Diego and like two people that I had invited could come and the only restaurant that would cater was Chipotle. Like I remember the specifics of it like it was yesterday, but May 4th, 2020 was the first episode. I remember we were working with this consultant, he's like, you should launch with three Episodes. I was like, that seems dumb. I'm launching with 20. So we did 20 Episodes right out the gate. The podcast was originally called Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy. We did a big rebrand in 2023 with the business and the website, the URL.

Katie Ferraro (8m 29s):

So rebranded, the podcast Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. But if you need to look up any content, I know sometimes really hard to search on your podcast player, if you go to our podcast website, which is blwpodcast.com, you can search there, you can search up playlists, you can search the name of any expert or topic that you're looking for, all the show notes with all the links, everything there. It's again, fairly well organized. If I do say so myself, I personally wrote all of those show notes. This is all pre ai. I do have to say that the advent of AI has made having the podcast a lot more streamlined. I love it, especially for helping like massage my questions or fine tune my descriptions or do the outlines for this. But at the end of the day, there's 500 different pages, one for each episode.

Katie Ferraro (9m 13s):

So if you go to blwpodcast.com/495, that's where you'll find the show notes for this episode. And we're really working on playlists and kind of aggregating it 'cause different people want different things. We have dietitians and doctors who come here to learn about like the healthcare professional side of starting solid foods. We have parents who wanna learn about allergies. We have parents of babies with GERD who wanna know about gut stuff. So really, really working hard in the future and in making the playlists more searchable for you. As far as looking at some of the numbers I was kind of looking at like what our most downloaded Episodes are consistently, and I've said this throughout the show, the number one most downloaded episode is episode 20 about vomit. What if my baby vomits when eating? I don't know why parents love vomit so much, but that one is heads and tails above everything else.

Katie Ferraro (9m 56s):

Another, the second most downloaded episode is about Trader Joe's episode 317. Trader Joe's 10 Baby-Led Weaning Foods to buy from Trader Joe's. I will say whenever we do Trader Joe's content on social, it goes crazy. But usually what does really well on, especially on Instagram and on YouTube shorts does not always do well on the actual podcast. But Trader Joe's is an equalizer. You guys, everyone loves Trader Joe's. That's episode 317. If you wanna check it out of something that I thought was funny was earlier this year in 2024, we had the opportunity to work with Pauline Lauti who is a documentary filmmaker and she's working on a project of documentary about starting solid foods. So she had me and a couple of other feeding experts, basically my friends from the infant feeding world. We were all together in San Diego filming these expert interviews for it.

Katie Ferraro (10m 40s):

And I got to witness a conversation where Gill Rapley, who's the lady who wrote the original Baby-Led Weaning book, and Marsha Dun Klein who's like the OG feeding therapist, she wrote the book on pre feeding like the two biggest ladies in infant feeding. Were having a conversation about what their favorite episode of this podcast is. Now, they've both been interviewed numerous times. They both agreed that episode 259, the pasta water cooking method for making rice lower in arsenic was their favorite. And they each knew the episode number. Like, I don't know the episode numbers, I have to look it up on my big old Google sheet about the podcast, but I thought that was really cool. And they said that they both really enjoy having a free resource where they can send parents and other people in the feeding space to learn about kind of obscure topics.

Katie Ferraro (11m 23s):

Like how do you make rice lower arsenic? Well, that's in episode 259 if you want to check it out. I also did kind of a recap episode in episode 400. I did A Few Surprising Things About this Podcast. So if you want to hear more about the history of the show, but it's been my most fun part of this line of business. I did not get into infant feeding to make short form videos about starting solid foods, but unfortunately that's what I spend a lot of my time doing. But at the end of the day, I think the podcast is an incredible resource for parents. So many parents have said, I just did a talk for, I speak for a lot of the different state WIC associations and last week I was speaking for North Carolina and in the q and a I saw moms chatting like, Ooh, I listened to her podcast when my babies were little. It was so helpful for starting solid foods.

Katie Ferraro (12m 4s):

Go back to episode one and listen from the beginning, that would be too much because there's 500 Episodes. But I do love that it's a resource that's out there for parents who are starting solid foods. It's free and it's filled literally with expert advice from credentialed feeding experts around the world on any topic that you can think of about starting solid foods. So when I started the podcast and I decided nobody wants to hear from just me two times a week and I want to do every other episode an expert interview, I made a list of my dream guests. So I went through the dream guest list the other day to see like who I didn't interview. I guess maybe what should talk about don't be negative. Who did I get to interview? Gill Rapley was obviously a dream guest. I remember being so nervous to contact her when we were coming up on episode 100.

Katie Ferraro (12m 45s):

I knew she knew about the podcast, but I was like, oh, I hope she likes it and I hope she doesn't think I'm like stealing her idea. I'm like trying to honor her work and and elevate it in this new space, which is, you know, social media as well as the podcast. She was awesome. She came on in episode 100 about the history of Baby-Led Weaning. It was such a good interview. We had to split it into two parts and we did episode 102, which is the future of Baby-Led Weaning. She's gonna be on in episode 500, the very last episode of the show, talking about from niche to norm, the whole evolution of Baby-Led Weaning. So she was definitely on the dream guest list. Marsha Dun Klein, who's become like my mentor over the years. I had always wanted to have her on. She's been on I think eight times at this point. She's gonna be the second to last interview.

Katie Ferraro (13m 27s):

She's gonna be talking about taste training. And then I think the other, the three most important people in infant feeding I think are Marsha Dun Klein, Gill Rapley, and then Dawn Winklemann, who's a good friend of mine, a speech language pathologist who is a specialist in Baby-Led Weaning who helped me so much when I was getting started in this field. She's definitely been on the show the most because we hang out the most. She's been on the show 18 times. So tons of different Episodes about gagging and choking and open cups and why the 360 cups are not good and how you help your baby do the preloaded spoon. So it was so cool to be able to help develop this show, but also at the same time, it helped me develop my professional relationships with a lot of these people who have admired for years, who I now am fortunate enough to call friends.

Katie Ferraro (14m 7s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

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Katie Ferraro (15m 56s):

Looking at the I Dream guest list who I did not get. Bob Moore from Bob's Red Mill. I tried really hard. I'm a huge Bob's Red Mill fan. Been to the factory in Oregon a couple of times, got to meet Bob back when he was alive and doing factory tours like pre pandemic. And the older he got his PR, people just kind of like shut it down. But we promote a lot of whole grains in the program. You know, one fifth of the 100 First Foods list is Phil Starchy Foods and Bob's Red Mills are really affordable and accessible way to get access to these. And I wanted to hear Bob's story. I'm a huge admirer of his work and his whole, like people before profits approach with his company. But sadly, he passed away in 2024, so I didn't get to interview him. The other one that I didn't get to interview, you guys are gonna think this is weird, but the gymnast Sean Johnson, like I've been a huge gymnastics fan my whole life.

Katie Ferraro (16m 40s):

She has three kids at this point, but at the beginning of the podcast, her oldest was a baby. She was talking about Baby-Led Weaning. And I was like, but before she was like massive on social media. I was like, I gotta get like, here's a mom who's just starting out and trying to figure it out. I've, and also I just really wanna talk to her, but never managed to get her on the show, which was kind of a bummer, but had a lot of other really, really fun guests over the years. I mean, I think they're fun, but a lot of them were like very, very niche areas of feeding and nutrition. But the, you know, the leading researchers, I think Carina Venter who developed the egg ladder that so many parents use, if your baby's been even told your baby's allergic to eggs and you'll never eat egg again, she's like, Hmm, here's the validated approach of how we're gonna reintroduce your child to eggs so that they can eat egg even though they have an egg allergy.

Katie Ferraro (17m 22s):

Like getting to talk to those people was really cool. And actually because of the interviews with Karina and her colleague Marian Gro, I actually went on to do some advanced pediatric allergy training with them, which was really cool. So as isolating as working online in the very short window of time when my kids are at school has been, it's been so cool to meet other people. And so I've gotten to do more in-person events as the world's kind of opened up after the pandemic. And I do also just love that I do not have to get dressed for camera ready for my podcast. Everyone's like, why don't you do video? I actually do record all of the Episodes. We just don't have the bandwidth to do anything with them. And we do have like an RSS feed that goes directly into YouTube, which does help our YouTube channel growth numbers.

Katie Ferraro (18m 3s):

And surprisingly people listen to podcasts on YouTube and maybe that's where you're listening right now. I do not have a fancy setup where I would ever be like recording myself to like highly produce the show and have guest interviews where they're sitting next to me. Most of the people that I work with, we don't have the time or the budget to do that. So doing Zoom has been perfect for me. As far as the audience goes, I have always made the podcast for new parents, primarily caregivers, but also healthcare professionals who want practical, safe, and approachable guidance for starting solid foods. We have a lot of daycare providers who listen to the show working on a lot of content and certifications for daycares. But the intent is just to support families around the world who want to give their babies a safe start to Solid Foods with Baby-Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (18m 43s):

73% of our audience comes from the United States, followed by, not surprisingly a lot of the other English speaking countries. 'cause again, I don't have the bandwidth to, you know, do any translation. But Canada, Australia, uk, Germany, Singapore, which I think is cool, is an ex New Zealand, India, Ireland and Egypt are where most of our listeners come from. I had a couple moms like message me like, wait, why are you stopping at 500 Episodes? Because I do truly feel that I've covered every topic imaginable when it comes to Baby-Led Weaning. And I do wanna assure you that the content that I'm keeping on the show as I restart it will be evergreen. So we did a lot of covid specific stuff during the pandemic and it's just not relevant. No one listens to those. I wanna tweak some of those topics.

Katie Ferraro (19m 25s):

There are some new interviews that I would swap out, like as research has changed, I wanna get updates from some of the researchers. So I will be personally listening to and working with our editor on the edits of the Episodes as they're re-released back at number one, the foundational principles of Baby-Led Weaning Do Not Change. Okay? So I hope that the information that you find here will always be valuable. I know the content I theoretically doesn't change. Like literally the way you make an Apple safe to feed a baby in 2020 is the same as this can be in 2025 and 2035. But there's always new stuff to talk about. Things that have changed. I know we've had a little bit of shift. It used to be like almost entirely Apple podcasts for downloads at the beginning. Right now, about 73% of our downloads come off of Apple Podcasts, 15% off of Spotify.

Katie Ferraro (20m 10s):

I mean, Google Podcasts went away in the time that since this podcast has been out of Chartable, which we used to use really heavily, we, we used to rank really highly in the parenting on the chartable charts. So I was kind of sad when Chartable went away. We did start doing the streaming on YouTube, which I don't know if that's helpful or not. We need to probably dive more into those analytics. I went through a few different editors early on to find the right person. Used to get a lot of feedback from you guys. Oh my God, your, your ads are so loud or the the sound is inconsistent. About six months into after we launched the podcast is when we finally connected with our current fabulous editor, Emma, I believe Emma started in Nigeria, is now in South Africa. We have had a great relationship.

Katie Ferraro (20m 51s):

So Emma, thank you to you and your team for producing our podcast. Even when I get a little bit behind, you still always get stuff back on time. I wanna say thank you to our podcast manager Jedi. She was originally located in the Philippines, has now relocated to Qatar. She just recently had her own baby. She's like, I'm so happy I get to use all this information on my Oh baby. So Jedi Baby will be starting solid foods soon and I'm really excited for that. So thank you for listening to every one of these Episodes and then to every intern and everyone else on our team who's had to help with the podcast over the years, I really appreciate you. As far as what's coming next in 2025, I will start releasing two Episodes a week, beginning back at number one. So we're tweaking like a little bit of the intro, the outro, the call to action is a lot more kind of streamlined in our shows.

Katie Ferraro (21m 36s):

Now I've got two things for you. If you're just starting out Solid Foods and you know nothing about Baby-Led Weaning, I would encourage you to take my free online workshop called Baby- Led Weaning FOR BEGINNERS. It is about one hour, I redo it a couple times each year. It's really visually heavy, kind of showing you how to make the food, showing you how to do the allergenic foods, showing you what the finger foods look like, and everybody on that free workshop gets a copy of my 100 First Foods list, so that you'll never run out of ideas of foods your babies can eat. So be sure to sign up for the Baby-Led Weaning FOR BEGINNERS workshop. If you haven't done it yet or you don't have a copy of my original 100 First Foods list, you can do that at babyledweaning.co/workshop. If you have a list and you're ready to start taking that 100 First Foods challenge and helping your baby eat five new foods each week.

Katie Ferraro (22m 22s):

My online program is called Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. It's the most comprehensive online digital platform for Baby-Led Weaning. It's got my 100 First Foods content library. We've got all the recipes and instructions and videos that show you how to make all the foods as well as my 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan. It's 20 weeks of meal plans with menus and recipes, everything done for you. So you literally don't have to think about which food your baby can eat next. So I'm gonna continue to put out content related to starting solid foods. I know we get feedback like I wish you wouldn't do so much stuff just on starting solid foods, like why don't you do toddlers and school age stuff? And it's called the Baby-Led Weaning Podcast. And the goal here is to help your baby transition starting at the six month mark where all of your baby's nutrition is coming from infant milk.

Katie Ferraro (23m 6s):

And I wanna help you transition to the one year mark where by 12 months of age, most of your baby's nutrition can be coming from food. But learning how to eat takes about six months for most babies to get there. Babies don't wake up on their first birthday and magically know how to eat a hundred foods. There's lots and lots of little micro steps along the way, which is why I've made lots of, lots of little pieces of micro content along the way in this podcast, which I hope you will continue to enjoy. So I'll continue to be polishing and updating Episodes where necessary releasing two shows each week. One on Monday, which will be a mini solo, Baby-Led Weaning training episode that I do. And then every Thursday will be a Feeding expert interview.

Katie Ferraro (23m 46s):

All of the Episodes are online at blwpodcast.com. And be sure to follow the show wherever you do, listen to your podcast so that it will drop into your feed each week when two new Episodes are live. So I hope you'll enjoy the last few Episodes. They're kind of specific to just getting started, but also I want you to hear from again, who I think are the three most important people in infant feeding. So the last three interviews will be with Don Winkleman. She's gonna be talking about babies with a strong gag reflex. I'm gonna have Marsha Dun Klein on talking about taste training, which is something you can do even in the pre feeding phase. And then Gill Rapley, the founding philosopher of the Baby-Led Weaning movement, co-author of the original Baby-Led Weaning book, will be back on to talk about the evolution of Baby-Led Weaning. So if you wanna hear it from the lady who started it all, she'll be our last interview at number 500.

Katie Ferraro (24m 30s):

So thank you to all of you for listening to this show over the years. So if you're just starting Solid Foods, I hope this podcast will serve as a step-by-step guide for you if you are working in the feeding space. I hope that hearing from the other experts will help refine your practice for pediatric feeding. If you need any resources, they're all online at my website, babyledweaning.co. And I'm looking forward to kind of starting fresh back at episode one. And here's to raising Confident Eaters, one tiny baby bite at a time. Bye now.

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