Explaining BLW to a Skeptic: 10 Benefits of Baby-Led Weaning

Katie Ferraro (1s):

And I know many of you are faced with situations where you have to explain why you're doing baby-led weaning to a skeptic or a doubter, or dare I say a hater who maybe doesn't understand how babies can safely self feed these foods. Well, here's a list of the benefits of baby-led weaning. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian, 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.

Katie Ferraro (44s):

Hey guys, welcome back. Today's episode is for the baby-led weaning skeptics. Do you have any of these in your life? Like maybe someone in your tribe, your partner, your mother-in-law, maybe you yourself. Not really sure if this whole baby-led weaning thing is what you want to do today. I'm going to help explain baby-led weaning to a skeptic by pointing out 10 benefits of baby-led weaning. Now, before I get started, I want to share a quick story about the O G skeptic in my life. My mom, I love my mom, great relationship with my mom, but we have not always seen eye to eye when it comes to infant feeding. So my mom is a registered dietitian like I am, but she works in the opposite end of the lifespan. She works with older adults.

Katie Ferraro (1m 25s):

There's a lot of similarities. It's kind of ironic. Like there are some times after a stroke learning how to swallow, or they might have dentures and they eat without their denture. So they're learning how to eat without teeth. So some areas we agree, but when it came to starting solids, my moms saw me struggle with spoonfeeding, my oldest daughter, Molly. And so she knew that I was looking for a different approach when it came to starting solids with my quadruplets. So when my oldest was 18 months in, we had quadruplets. I started learning everything about baby-led weaning. And when it came time for them to start solid foods, that was the path that we were going and she would watch it. She's like I had six kids. I'm the oldest. She said, I spoonfed all of you guys. You're fine. I don't see what the big deal is. And I was like, mom, I'm not going to sit here.

Katie Ferraro (2m 5s):

And spoonfeed for kids. I really struggled with spoonfeeding, Molly. She hated it. It's not natural. I know a lot more about baby's ability to feed themselves and I'm going to do baby-led weaning. So fast forward, I caught her on the phone, bragging to her other dietitian friend about how my daughter, Claire, one of the quads, Claire was eating sardines. She ate like two sardines and then she was eating beets. And oh my gosh, her mom doesn't even like beets. And it's amazing. These babies are eating everything. And to this day, when my kids go to my mom's house and they eat pretty much anything, she puts in front of them like mom, you have baby-led weaning to thank for this because we struggle with a lot of small kids, but one area I'm so grateful we don't struggle with is picky eating.

Katie Ferraro (2m 46s):

So picky. Eating is going to be on the list with no further ado. Let's get started. How to explain baby-led weaning to a skeptic. The 10 benefits of baby-led weaning. Let's start out with number one. And it has to do with family dynamics. Baby weaning helps you build strong family relationships. Think about it. The visual of I'll use me as an example, a first-time mom struggling with a spoonful of disgusting puree, trying to shove it into her baby's mouth who clearly doesn't want anything to do with being force fed purees. Contrast that with a baby, sitting at the table safely, seated in a chair, eating modified versions of the same foods, the rest of the family eats, but driving that food intake by themselves, everyone's happier from our baby's first bites.

Katie Ferraro (3m 30s):

We're helping to establish strong family relationships. We're helping to raise an independent eater. I mean, again, you're babysitting there at the table, joining in family meals. They don't eat the same exact foods as you at six months of age, but pretty soon they're going to get there. But baby-led weaning allows you to do that. So that's number one, building strong family relationships. The second benefit of baby-led weaning, and this is not an exhaustive list. You guys like I could go on forever and ever, or about the benefits of baby-led weaning, but I whittled it down to 10 takeaway messages for you. Number two, baby-led weaning helps you honor, your baby's inborn, hunger and fullness cues. Your baby was born with the ability to know when they're hungry and know when to stop eating when they're full. It's why they turn their head away from the breast or the bottle when they're done with their milk, breast milk or formula, right?

Katie Ferraro (4m 14s):

They can do the same thing when it comes to food, but not if we have a spoonful of food and we're arbitrarily shoving X, Y as the amount into their mouth and trying to quote unquote, make them finish the food. Okay. Baby-led weaning is part of a responsive feeding approach, meaning that we're letting the baby's inborn cues for hunger and fullness drive what, and when we should, not what we feed, it's our job to pick healthful foods, right? In the, if you look at Saturday's division of responsibility in feeding theory, we, as the parents, we pick what and when and where our baby eats, but it's ultimately up to the baby to decide how much or even whether they eat. Baby-led weaning allows you to do that. Number three, there is research to suggest that baby led weaning may help prevent overweight and obesity.

Katie Ferraro (4m 57s):

Now it is not definitive. And we don't say, without a doubt, your child will not be overweight or obese because there are many, many complex factors that drive that. However, there is research to show that starting solids extremely early leads to increased weight of overweight and obesity. So as a result with baby-led weaning, we wait until the baby is physiologically, ready to eat, which is around six months of age. And because they're driving their own intake and from their first bites, learning how to listen to their body and stop eating. When they're full, that has the potential to reduce overweight and obesity down the road. Number four, baby-led weaning can reduce the risk and the severity of picky eating. I hate to break it to you, but all babies will develop some degree of picky eating somewhere between the first and third year of life or the second and third year of life.

Katie Ferraro (5m 40s):

So at two or three, some degree of picky eating may set in, but if your baby goes into year two and they have, let's say 100 Foods under their belt, if you lose 10 or 15 foods to picky eating, it's no big deal. But let's say as with what happens with traditional, spoon-feeding, your baby's only been exposed to 10 or 15 food by the, they turn one. If you lose those 10 or 15 foods to picky eating well, that becomes a very challenging child to feed. So benefit number four reduces the risk and the severity of picky, eating benefit. Number five, baby-led weaning prevents short order cooking those things of you that have older children who are picky eaters. Many of you are interested in baby-led weaning because of its potential to reduce picky eating, you know how annoying it is to have to cook different foods for different family members.

Katie Ferraro (6m 24s):

Okay? Not only is it annoying, but it takes a ton of time. It takes a lot of effort. It rattles. A lot of parents are spending all day making food for these kids so that this kid can have that. And that kid can have that with baby-led. Meaning your baby eats modified versions of the same foods that the rest of the family eats that's benefit. Number five, benefit, number six, it saves time, right? If you don't have to spend all that time, sitting there and spoonfeeding her baby. Now you should always be sitting with your baby when they're eating, right. We never leave our babies unattended, but you don't need to be spending time in the kitchen, making different foods for babies. It also saves money. Baby-led weaning saves money because you don't have to buy commercial baby foods. If you were to go to the traditional spoonfeeding route, it's very likely that you would be purchasing pouches.

Katie Ferraro (7m 4s):

Pouches are in my opinion, overpriced, watered down version foods that your baby could be eating real safe, intact versions of that food. If you think about the cost of an average pouch, it's two or $3, you're doing three of those a day, times, 30 days in a month, it's upwards of $300 that you might be spending on pouches. And that's not even going to meet all of your baby's nutrition needs with baby-led weaning because you're cooking modified versions of the same foods. The rest of the family eats you actually save money because you don't have to purchase those unnecessary baby foods. You could literally bypass the entire commercial baby food aisle and just make real food for your baby safely. So that's number seven. It saves you money. Number eight, baby-led weaning helps avoid nutrient gaps.

Katie Ferraro (7m 47s):

If you look at the research, we know that babies who start solid foods with a baby-led approach to solids versus traditional, spoon-feeding have just as many opportunities to eat nutrient rich foods that contain iron and zinc and fiber. And so you do not need to rely on fortified foods. You're welcome to include them. If you want to provide that, you're allowing your baby to feed it to themselves, but you don't have to buy all of these fancy baby foods. Your baby can get the nutrition they need. As they're learning how to eat. Now, we keep in mind that most of baby's nutrition comes from formula or breast milk early on in weaning. But with baby-led weaning slowly, your baby learns how to get more of that nutrition from food and they back off of the milk.

Katie Ferraro (8m 27s):

And then Walla. By the time they turn one, they're able to meet their nutrient needs from mostly foods. But again, they don't wake up on their first birthday magically knowing how to eat all those table foods, right? We need that period of six to 12 months to practice. So benefit number eight is that baby-led weaning helps avoid nutrient gaps, benefit number nine. It helps your baby achieve feeding milestones. So as we're raising independent eaters and wanting them to let's work backwards, wean off of the bottle, by the time they turned 15 months, the American academy of pediatrics recommends that you look at speech language pathologists who specialize in feeding. They'll talk about baby needing to be able to drink out of a cup by themselves, an open cup that is although they might spill a little bit. By the time they turned 12 months, we need to start practicing with a spoon for our babies so they can learn how to dip and scoop on their own.

Katie Ferraro (9m 13s):

Again, when your baby's learning how to feed themselves, they have the capacity or they're developing the capacity to reach those feeding milestones. That's benefit number nine and another one. Number 10 that we don't always think about is that baby-led weaning actually can help your baby achieve speech milestones. You guys know, I work closely with a speech language pathologist. I work with a number of them, but a good friend of mine and colleague is Dawn Winkelman, who is been on the podcast. A number of times, if you haven't heard her episodes, she does a great job of explaining how the feeding milestones come before the speech milestones. And yet your baby is developing the skills that they need to meet those feeding milestones and meet those speech milestones concurrently. And so as your baby is learning how to chew and maneuver different texture foods around their mouth.

Katie Ferraro (9m 57s):

As they're learning how to drink out of an open cup and the lip closure that that requires all of these skills are actually setting the stage to help babies meet their speech milestones down the road as well. So quick list, I'll go through them again. I'm going to link all of these up by the way, on the show notes for today's episode, if you go to BLWpodcast.com/53, baby-led weaning. Number one helps you build strong family relationships. Number two helps you honor your baby's in born hunger and satiety or fullness cues. Number three, it may help prevent overweight and obesity. Number four, baby led weaning helps reduce the risk and the severity of picky eating number five. It prevents short order cooking.

Katie Ferraro (10m 37s):

Thank you. Number six, baby-led weaning will save you time. Number seven, it saves you money. Number eight, it will help you avoid nutrient gaps cause your baby can get all the nutrition that they need from foods. If they learn to feed themselves and number nine, baby-led weaning helps achieve feeding milestones and number 10, it also helps with speech milestones. So there you have it. Quick episode just wanted to run you down. 10 benefits of baby-led weaning. If you are explaining this idea to a skeptic, if you're just starting out with this concept and you're interested in learning more like, whoa, wait a minute. I want all those benefits. I get why it's a good idea, but I'd like to learn more about how to do baby-led weaning, come check out my free online workshop.

Katie Ferraro (11m 19s):

It's called baby-led weaning for beginners. And it's all about how to get your baby to try 100 foods before turning one, without you having to spoonfeed purees or buy pouches. Everyone on my free workshop gets a copy of my 100 First Foods list. So your baby can start learning how to eat all of these different foods safely. And you can recognize these 10 benefits of baby-led weaning. You can sign up for this week's workshop times. If you go to the show notes page for this episode, which is where I'll also be linking back to the list of the benefits we covered in the episode. Again, that's at blwpodcast.com/53. Thanks for listening. Bye now!