The Purees for a Few Days™ Approach to Starting Solid Foods with Baby-Led Weaning: a Feeding Guide

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1 (1m 27s):

And you can totally skip purees if you want. Finger foods are appropriate for babies at six months of age if they're starting to learn how to eat. Research indicates that babies who had the least amount of practice with finger foods are actually at elevated risk of choking. So finger foods are important, but I also know from real life experience that for many parents, the idea of their baby who's only had infant milk in their mouth all of a sudden progressing to solid strips of soft food like avocado, it just feels like too much. If this is you, you might consider this purees for a few days approach. I designed this for parents who are particularly anxious about choking and here's how it works. Hey there.

1 (2m 7s):

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. How amazing is it that you have kept your baby alive for the first six months of their life entirely on infant milk? Whether you breastfed or bottle fed, pumped or used formula or any combination thereof, your baby has been entirely sustained on a liquid diet.

1 (2m 50s):

So now does the thought of that beautiful baby who has ever only had liquid in their mouth then going to eat solid strips of food on day one when you start solid foods, does that idea freak you out and you it does. 'Cause I don't care how much you have prepared for the transition to solid foods that first day, those first meals, that first week. It can be freaky watching your baby try to figure out how to handle solid foods. And some parents do freak out and they get so scared that their baby's gonna choke, that they'll resort right away to feeding their baby by spoon. I can't do this Baby-Led Weaning thing. We're gonna spoon feed and they'll then resort to trying to shove purees down the baby's mouth 'cause they're so worried that their baby's not getting enough on their own.

1 (3m 32s):

But when we force feed babies by spoon, we shut down their ability and their desire to feed themselves. We strip away their autonomy in the feeding relationship, and then we're setting ourselves up for mealtime battles and picky eating and all of the food-based struggles that plague so many parents of young children. And for years as a dietitian teaching infant feeding, I watched and worked with parents who wanted to do Baby-Led Weaning. They're like, yes, I am into this. I totally embrace this philosophy. But then they would struggle with the actual transition from a liquid diet to soft solid foods on day one. And so as a result, all of those experiences led me to design what I call My Purees for a Few Days Approach to starting solid foods.

1 (4m 19s):

And what the purees for a few days approach does is it allows you to honor the self feeding principles of Baby-Led Weaning, but it transitions your baby to real foods safely while helping you develop the confidence to let your baby lead the way in learning how to eat. 'Cause I get it, if you're like me, a lot of parents quite type A, like I wanna be in charge. I'm the one who sets the schedule. But with the solid food thing, we gotta let go and let the babies do what they were designed to do, which is to feed themselves. So I'm gonna start you out in this episode as I do with all of the solo mini training episodes that I do with a Baby-Led Weaning tip of the day. And here's today's tip of the day.

1 (5m 1s):

Baby-Led Weaning does not mean skipping purees. Purees are an important texture for your baby to master. They're just not the only texture your baby can eat. And you can honor the self feeding principles of Baby-Led Weaning and still offer purees. And we do that using what's called the Preloaded Spoon Technique. Now, the Preloaded Spoon is a term that was coined by and a technique designed by Dawn Winkleman. Dawn is a speech language pathologist and she's a feeding specialist and hang tight because in this episode I'll tell you exactly how you can incorporate purees with Baby-Led Weaning to help your baby bridge the gap between a liquid diet to solid foods using my purees for a few days approach.

1 (5m 44s):

Now, before we dive in, I want to clarify that what we are covering in this episode is not combination feeding. Okay? What's sometimes called Combo Feeding. Parents will be like, I wanna do Baby- Led Weaning, but I'm also a control freak and I want to feed the baby by spoon. Then they call it Combination Feeding. Combination Feeding is not Baby-Led Weaning. If you are the one the adult putting the spoon in the baby's mouth, and remember putting anything in a baby's mouth including a spoon, can be a choking hazard. But if you are the one doing the feeding, that's not Baby-Led Weaning. And this is a very important distinction. We're not saying we don't do purees In this episode, I'll show you how you can incorporate purees, but you feeding the baby is not compatible with the Baby-Led Weaning philosophy. And if you'd like to learn more about this idea of Combination Feeding and why it's not traditional Baby-Led Weaning.

1 (6m 28s):

I Suggest you listen to an interview that I did with Gill Rapley. She's the co-author of the original Baby-Led Weaning book, the founding philosopher of Baby-Led Weaning. And in episode 200, we talked about Combo Feeding. Can I do Baby-Led Weaning plus Traditional Spoon Feeding Together. That's an interview with Gill Rapley. You can find that at bwpodcast.com/200. So since we're not talking about Combo Feeding, what are we talking about? Well, today I wanna teach you what the purees for a few days approach is how you can incorporate purees for just the first few days of Baby-Led Weaning, and then which foods you can use this approach with when you're starting solid foods with your baby.

1 (7m 9s):

So with Baby-Led Weaning, your baby is the one driving and directing the eating experience, right? And let's contrast that with conventional adult-led spoon feeding where adults are the one who pushed the spoon into the baby's mouth. So I mentioned in that baby led weaning tip of the day that you can honor the self feeding principles of Baby-Led Weaning and still help your baby learn how to eat naturally pureed foods using the preloaded spoon technique. So you can also totally skip purees if you want. We know that finger foods are appropriate for babies age six months of age to start learning how to eat. And there's lots of parents in my program who are like, I'm totally down with the finger foods and I'm gonna start that on day one. But there is this big subset of parents that are particularly anxious and they are so scared their baby is gonna choke on food and they don't believe that they can start with soft, solid strips of avocado on day one.

1 (7m 56s):

And we do banana on day two, sweet potato on day three, lamb on day four. They're like, that sounds great, but I don't trust that my baby can eat those foods. Your baby is going to show you that they can eat those foods and doing the purees for a few days approach. This is the approach that I designed for parents who are particularly anxious about choking. So here's how it works. We generally do this for the first three to five days of Baby-Led Weaning. And I'll use the simple starter foods example. I'm gonna use avocado, zucchini, and sweet potato. Those are actually the first three foods in my 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan. So inside of my program, Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. You can pick the five foods you wanna feed your baby each week if you'd like to, but some parents are like, don't really feel like doing that.

1 (8m 37s):

Can you just tell me which foods to feed my baby? So we also created 20 weeks of Baby-Led Weaning meal plans for the 100 First Food Daily Plan. And that's kind of a easy way to get your baby to a hundred foods before they turn one with someone else telling you which foods to make. And we've got grocery lists and recipes for each week. It's all very straightforward, laid out for you inside of the meal plan. And In this episode, I just wanna walk you through the first three days of that meal plan using the purees for a few days approach. So we'll start with the simple starter foods. We'll do avocado, zucchini, and sweet potato. So that's a fruit, a vegetable and a starchy food. Those could theoretically be your baby's first three days menu of Baby-Led Weaning.

1 (9m 25s):

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1 (9m 59s):

And so with the purees for a few days approach, we break the 20 minute meal down a little bit differently than we do in the remainder of our Baby-Led Weaning program. So for the first five minutes, we offer your baby a thin puree of the new food of the day. So let's say it's day one, we're doing avocado, so you puree some avocado with breast milk or formula. You get it nice and thin. There's a familiar scent in there with the infant milk that your baby already knows and recognizes. You are gonna offer that off of the preloaded spoon for about five minutes. And if you'd like to learn more about how exactly you do the Preloaded Spoon approach, go listen to episode 64. I interviewed Don Winkleman who created this technique who coined the term the Preloaded Spoon.

1 (10m 40s):

She'll teach you all about it. That's at blwpodcast.com/64. So back to day one, you've got that thin puree of avocado. You offer that off of the preloaded spoon for five minutes. Here we're just trialing a new taste and we're establishing that oh yeah, the baby can safely swallow something besides infant milk. And it's amazing like what that will do for your confidence to be like, oh, they didn't choke and die on the first thing they tried. That was an infant milk. Okay, it's the thin puree. That's the first five minutes. Then for the second five minutes of the meal, we do a chunkier puree. So for avocado, that would just be very ripe soft avocado that you mash with a fork. It's a thicker chunkier puree, but I just don't use as much or even any infant milk to thin it out. So you put that chunkier puree into a suction bowl, you're gonna try all the preloaded spoon again. Again, lots of babies are just gonna grab at that avocado with their hands, which is great.

1 (11m 23s):

We never want to prevent our baby from eating with their hands if that's what they want to do. So you've got 10 minutes into the meal, right? First five minutes we did the thin puree. Second five minutes we did the chunkier puree. And then for the last 10 minutes of the meal, you can bring in a suction mat or a bowl that has the soft solid strips of avocado. We cut them into the pieces about the size of your adult pinky finger. And some of the babies are gonna go right for these finger foods. Okay? A lot of times though, 'cause it's a new concept, you maybe might not reach for it. So what we'll do sometimes for the first few days is you can hold the avocado slices in the palm of your hand. So you want your baby leaning into the food, right? We're not gonna force the food into them if they're like turning their head away and not into it.

1 (12m 4s):

Your baby leaning into the food, this is a concept known as the Positive Tilt. So the Positive Tilt is a term coined by the feeding expert, Marsha Dunn Klein from the Get Permission Institute. Marsha is all about getting permission from your baby to start helping them learn how to eat and your baby leaning in towards the food that you're offering. That's them giving you permission. And if you're digging all of these other feeding experts and their techniques, if you're a technique junkie like I am, go check out an interview I did with Marsha about the Positive Tilt. That's episode 236. It's called Positive Tilt Get Permission from Your Baby.

1 (12m 44s):

And that's with Marsha Dunn Klein. You can listen to that@blwpodcast.com/236. And since you're listening to this podcast, you're probably not writing all these resources down, but I always will link all the other episodes I mentioned that'll be in the description right under where you're listening to the podcast, if you wanna listen to some of those other episodes that are related to this topic. So on day two, we're going to do zucchini. That's our new vegetable of the week. It's the same deal. We're gonna puree some cooked zucchini, remove the seeds, remove the skin, mix it up with some breast milk or formula, make a thin puree, offer that off of a preloaded spoon for the first five minutes of the meal. Then we do a chunkier puree. I've just mashed up zucchini for the second five minutes of the meal and then finish out the meal with some soft solid strips of cooked zucchini for the last 10 minutes. Okay? And you can also then reintroduce some avocado from day one here if you want.

1 (13m 28s):

But a lot of families are like, this is day two, I'm done. We just did 20 minutes. And we do solid foods one to two times per day in phase one of Baby-Led Weaning. So that's the first eight weeks for most people. That's when your baby is six or seven months of age. If you're getting a little bit of a late start, you can implement these phase one approaches even for your older baby, which is kind of speed things up to kind of get you to that a hundred foods mark before your baby turns one. So when it's day three, we have sweet potato. That's our new food of the day. It's our new starchy food of the week. Same routine. Do a thin puree of cooked sweet potato without the skins, mix it with some breast milk or formula, offer that for five minutes, then swap in some chunkier puree of just mashed sweet potato.

1 (14m 9s):

Again, you can do that from a preloaded spoon or your baby will probably try to eat it with their hands. That's for five minutes. And then finally, for the last 10 minutes of the meal, we'll just do soft, sweet potato finger food strips. So those are the first three days, avocado, zucchini, sweet potato. So for the next day, the fourth day of the week, we do our new protein of the week. And so from the protein list on the 100 First Food list, there's 20 different proteins. 10 are animal proteins, 10 are plant proteins. If you're following the 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan. We do lamb on day four, which is so fun to watch babies eat. And some parents are like, okay, I'm still struggling with the idea of my baby eating sauce strips of lamb on day four. You can puree that if you want to.

1 (14m 50s):

I think especially for the meats, even for families that are pretty confident, like fruits and vegetables and starches like those are pretty easy to offer us finger foods, the meats a lot of time will freak families out and they're like, you know what? I'm gonna go to the thin puree for the first five minutes. A chunkier puree of the meat. You can mix that again with breast milk or formula, or you can also mix it with the no salt broth when you're making these Baby-Led Weaning recipes. There's always variations that I have for the thin puree, the chunkier puree, and then how to do the soft solid strips. And a lot of families will like just progress through that in the same meal. The key to success with this purees for a few days approach is that you just do it for a few days after the first week of starting solid foods.

1 (15m 31s):

You absolutely do not need to go and puree the other foods that you could offer as soft finger foods because you've proven to yourself, oh, I know my baby can swallow some purees. I know my baby can handle a chunkier puree. I know my baby can now pick up and feed themselves the finger food versions of these soft foods. Now, there's lots of foods on the 100 First Foods list that are naturally purees, right? Think about foods like yogurt. That's a great way to introduce your baby to the potentially allergenic food cow's milk or something like oatmeal. Or we do a lot of other whole grains that kind of end up in many cases as porridges, we put those, especially when they're thicker porridges and your baby gets a little bit older and they need to practice dipping and scooping with their spoon, we're gonna let them eat foods that are naturally pureed.

1 (16m 14s):

We just don't need to go and puree other intact foods that they could safely eat as finger foods. So what this purees for a few days approach does is it bridges that gap for a few days. For you, it's this is more for you than for your baby, by the way, because your baby at six months of age, it's developmentally appropriate for them to be trying finger foods. But if it makes you feel better to do the purees, that's great. Just do it for a few days to prove to yourself that your baby can safely swallow something besides infant milk. And remember, we don't put the spoon in the baby's mouth with Baby-Led Weaning. With Baby-Led Weaning, the baby is the one who drives the eating experience.

1 (16m 54s):

So I hope that this approach will give you permission to include purees if that's what you want to do. But remember to let your baby guide the way. And if you'd like more help with exactly which foods to offer in which order and how to prepare them. My Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro program has a 100 First Foods content library that has videos and instructions and recipes for all the different phases for your baby as they move through these a hundred foods. And it also includes that a 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan. If you're the one who's just like, you know, this is great, just tell me which foods to feed on which day. And I do incorporate that purees for a few days approach for the first week. But after week one, when you guys start on week two with food number six, your baby's jamming on finger foods and you will have so much more confidence in your baby's ability to swallow something other than infant milk.

1 (17m 40s):

'cause that's what we're doing here, right? With Baby-Led Weaning, you start out with a baby who at six months of age is getting 100% of their nutrition from infant milk. And in the next six months, we're gonna progress so rapidly that by the time your baby turns 12 months of age, most of their nutrition can be coming from solid foods. But your babies don't just wake up on their first birthday and magically know how to eat a hundred foods. We use this weaning period as the practice period. But if you only offer your baby purees from six to 12 months of age, you end up with a 12 month old who can only eat purees. And as my colleagues who are feeding therapists often share the majority of what feeding therapists see in their toddler population could have totally been prevented had the baby been allowed to experiment with a variety of different textures in the weaning period.

1 (18m 28s):

So again, purees, they're an important texture for your baby to master. They're just not the only texture your baby can eat. And we can get your baby over that bridge starting in week two, you're gonna be all finger foods and you're gonna be so excited 'cause you just watch your baby eat all these foods. You're like, ah, I did not know a baby could eat that. And watching them learn how to eat and gradually and incrementally get better, it's really empowering and you're helping your baby develop the foundation for a lifelong love of eating real food. And that's the point here, right? Is that we want our babies to learn how to like and eat real food.

1 (19m 7s):

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1 (20m 6s):

So if you'd like to learn more about the Baby-Led Weaning, and if you're ready to dive in and start moving through all these foods and trying out some trickier textures way earlier than you probably thought you might do otherwise, come check out my program, Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. I also have a whole video in there that shows you how to do the Preloaded Spoon approach. 'Cause it's a little tricky at first you feel like super awkward, but there's a couple techniques I show you in the videos inside of the program that you'll make this work for you and then you'll be like, oh, this baby can do this for themselves. So you help 'em out for the first few days, but then they get the hang pretty quickly. Sign up for the program at babyled weaning.co/program.

1 (20m 47s):

I'll also link all of the other resources that I mentioned in this episode on the show notes page, which you can find at blwpodcast.com/5. And I wanna say a special thank you to our, our partners at AirWave Media. If you like podcasts that feature food and science in using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave Media. My website again is babyledweaning.co. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.

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