Baby-Led Weaning, Week 1

I can hardly believe it, but I've become a believer in Baby-Led Weaning. I honestly thought it was insane when I first saw my friend doing it with her daughter. (Love you Danielle!) I was a huge believer in the Super Baby Food method, to the extent that I have blogged about it and bought the book for nearly every new mom I know. But in the last week, I've become a complete convert.

Now, that's not to say that Super Baby Food is a bad choice for some babies. My son totally thrived on it. He loved his super porridge. He adored his food cubes turned into baby food. I absolutely loved making food for him. But my daughter? Two weeks into spoon feeding and she still hadn't actually swallowed more than a couple of bites of cereal. She appeared to hate bananas. She appeared to hate everything actually. Even the foods she liked she seemed only to tolerate.

Then I gave her that piece of asparagus and she loved it. And I realized, oh my gosh, that she might eat other things on her own as well. I asked Danielle about BLW, and she pointed me to some resources.

That night, I gave my girl a piece of avocado, about 1/4 of an avocado cut into 2 slices. She eagerly picked up a slice, brought it to her mouth, and nommed on it. The whole thing was gone before the rest of us got to the dinner table! That same night, we were all eating chicken and broccoli. I cooked her broccoli a little longer than ours (we like ours pretty crisp) and gave her some. She ate nearly all of it, leaving over just a stem that she had been holding on to. She didn't eat any chicken, but I think I made the pieces too small. When you are doing BLW, the pieces actually have to be a bit bigger at first, until they get a pincer grasp.

So far, baby girl has tried avocado, asparagus, broccoli, bananas, potatoes, whole wheat pasta, and red peppers, and she has at least tried if not loved all of them. Am I nervous about allergies? Perhaps I should be. I'm being careful that she doesn't eat anything too harsh (we took the potatoes out of the home fry mix before adding the chili powder for ourselves and we don't give her anything too acidic) and she doesn't eat anything in the major allergen groups that affect our families (no berries, shellfish, nuts or legumes for a while, but we don't eat nuts or legumes in the house anyway, and the point is she eats what we eat). With my son I waited 4 days between foods for over a year, and you know what? He wasn't allergic to anything. We did wait until he was 3 to give him some kinds of nuts and legumes, but the only allergic reaction he ever had he grew out of after a few months. Meanwhile, my daughter is enjoying food in a way I've never seen a baby enjoy food, and it's completely thrilling.

Adventures in Baby Feeding

When my son was 7 months old, we started feeding him solid foods. And he went for it. That boy would eat nearly anything you put in front of him. He was truly a champion eater.

So when my nearly-6-month-old daughter started reaching for food on our table, I figured it was time to start her on solids, too.

Day 1 came and she seemed very interested, but the rice cereal ended up mostly on the floor, on the bib, in everyone's hair, etc. Not to be thwarted, we tried the next day and the same thing happened. Then we added bananas because, hey! Everyone likes bananas! Except for my daughter, who spit them out as sure as she had spit out everything else.

So day by day, she'd get mad at us for eating but then not want to eat her food.

Today, I remembered something that we had done with my son. We were sitting down to eat fish and potatoes and asparagus, and Lillian started making those "you horrible people!" noises when we didn't give her any. So I gave her a spear of asparagus to munch on.

She pulverized the thing. I mean, she ate through that spear of asparagus and wanted another. Even my son (who loved to chew on asparagus spears) never consumed a spear with such relish. It was a sight to see. It makes me wonder if baby-led weaning is the way to go.

Now we'll just see how mama likes cloth diapering with baby girl eating asparagus!

My experience with babies and food

I have a friend whose husband is a picky eater. When she tells me what her husband refuses to eat, I am astounded. I often will say something like, "what is he, 2?"

But the fact is, I don't have a picky eater for a 2-year-old. 

I don't know why, but when I started having children, I became a little bit obsessed with making sure that they would not be picky eaters. In my late 20s and early 30s, I used to spend time every night making beautiful meals for myself and for whoever I was dating (or married to in the case of my husband) at the time. And I had a friend who said, "well when you have kids you'll be making kid food."

That just seemed so wrong to me. The thought of giving up Lemon-Caper Chicken for Chicken Nuggets seemed anathema to me. I certainly didn't want a kid who always asked for chicken nuggets or burgers and french fries.

When I was pregnant with my son, my sister sent me a whole lot of information on breastfeeding. I certainly had intended to do so, but until I did my reading, I did not equate breastfeeding with the avoidance of creating a picky eater. It makes sense--the more variety I eat, the more flavors he'll taste in my milk. Although I didn't end up breastfeeding for as long as I did strictly for the avoidance of picky eating, I think it definitely helped. 

We started solid foods at 7 months. In this case, it was my cousin Patty who sent me a book: Super Baby Food. This became my food bible. Since my husband has very serious allergies, there were some foods that we were not going to introduce until after a year, or even after two years! But for everything else the book was a great guideline. The book's main food--Super Porridge--is not appetizing sounding to adults. It's pretty much a porridge that is made from a mix of grains, occasionally legumes (we had to avoid all legumes except for soy beans), and a baby food fruit or vegetable that you prepare yourself. It sounds like a lot of work, but it actually was very similar to freezer cooking. I would spend one day a month preparing baby food and freezing it, and then I'd keep a grain mix ready to make into Super Porridge daily.

When once we went on vacation and I had to buy some jarred baby food, I was pretty amazed at how few choices there were. The only green vegetable appeared to be peas (a legume that we were not introducing that early). The only orange vegetables appeared to be carrots or butternut squash. It's possible there were other varieties, but I couldn't find them. Everything else appeared to be meat or fruit.

My son didn't eat meat until after the age of 1. But green vegetables? He ate kale, collards, swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, zucchini, and asparagus. For orange and yellow veggies, he ate acorn and butternut squash, summer squash, pumpkin, carrots, and more. His first fruit was the ubiquitous banana (hand mashed by me), but that was soon joined by avocado, papaya, mango, peach, apricot, plums, pears, apples, etc. -- every kind of fruit that we ate, he ate, with the exception of oranges (which came later--they cause very bad diaper rash) and berries (which also came later--they can be a bad allergen, and I was actually allergic to them when I was little).

 Now, he is 2 years and 9 months. And let's face it, he's a toddler. If we let him have a hamburger or pizza or chicken nuggets for every meal, he'll say yes! If we give him beef stew with noodles, he will eat the noodles first and fight against eating.

But get this--he loves to help with the cooking. The other night, I wanted to make a salad. He helped by ripping the lettuce. I then washed it and he ran the salad spinner. I then handed him bowls of veggies to add to the salad. I soon realized that we had more celery in his stomach than in the salad itself. Same went for the peppers and raw broccoli. My kid loves veggies. I'm not going to complain. He did the same last night when we were making Boboli pizza. This is his specialty, and he loves making a pizza with tons of vegetables. My husband made up a veggie bowl for him to munch out of so that some of the veggies would actually make it onto the pizza!

When we go shopping I ask him what veggies we should buy. Last time it was green beans and broccoli. He's been known to ask for corn (he wants it on the cob and who can blame him?)

I'm not saying I have the perfect eater--by far my kid drives me crazy some nights, with the sitting and staring at the food that I know he likes. But when I think of my friend's husband--the man who won't eat anything but beef--I can't help but think I did something right with my kid. 

So from what I see, I did three things that made my kid a non-picky eater: (1) breastfeeding for over a year while keeping a big variety in my own diet, (2) home made baby food with a lot of variety, and (3) now that he is older, involve him in the cooking whenever possible.  I only hope the same works with my second!