Have you heard of Baby Led Weaning or Baby Led Solids? The fancy coined term basically means allowing baby to feed himself skipping purees and parent-directed spoon-feeding. Well, I'm on board for giving it a try! Why? Well, lots of reasons!
For instance, handing baby a well-softened portion of a healthy non-processed piece of food and letting him explore it on his own sounds pretty hands-free and, perhaps, less stressful than mixing the rice with water warm enough making cereal runny enough to force-feed my kid on a spoon. Not that anyone else is force-feeding by not doing BLS but I definitely felt as though that's what I was doing when we first tried rice cereal. We did so fairly early (with doctor's approval) due to a baby with an insatiable appetite who is still showing no signs of sleeping through the night at 4 months.
Yes, I've heard it: "Perhaps, you started too early". I know. We probably did. It didn't help him sleep (not that he swallowed much anyway) and he wasn't comfortably practicing much head control when we tried the cereal. However, my 80-year-old grandma told me she started feeding her kids jarred baby food at 2 weeks old 45-50 years ago. She then politely mentioned that they slept through the night at just a few weeks old. How lovely. . . :( Don't get me wrong-if my goal were to get him to sleep, I would be more likely to spoon as much food as I could into him and at bedtime (as many have suggested among other things).
Instead, I intend to keep being his main food source (with firmly-crossed fingers that he does, eventually, choose to forego milk for even 4 hours overnight someday soon). Supplementing this food source is just the exploration of food. I've read (and read and read) that they don't actually need the calories and nutritional value of anything but milk (in whatever chosen source: formula or fromama) for the first year. So, why stress over their food intake? I hope not to.
Another reason I want to try baby-led solids is based on research. It is said to develop good eating habits, a wider pallette particularly with a taste for more natural food sources, and a better idea of fullness by self-directing their intake (decreasing obesity later in life). Not one of those findings turned me away. So, are there downsides? It does sound like it may be a mess, I'll admit (and I'm sure spoon-feeding can be too) and I'm sure I will be able to quickly identify some other downsides as we venture into this process with Garrett. However, I'm excited.
I'm excited that he can eat dinner when we eat (between and not in place of his regular milk feedings). I may even get to eat my meal in peace as he has something to occupy his time during dinner. He's really a happy baby but we've clearly identified dinner time as his specific "withcing hour". I'm even more excited by the cool videos I've seen of other babies exploring new foods for the first time. I'm also pumped that it will be nice weather once we really get into this so the mess can go outside as we grill and eat on our deck or patio.
For now, he's only 4 months old so we'll take it slow. I still want to be cautious of allergens with gradual introductions and the 3-day rule for new foods. As our alternative to rice cereal (see, we're not getting too "out there" and untraditional), we're using Baby Mum Mums rice rhusks. They were a gift from Garrett's sitter that I hadn't given much thought until I had researched and settled on BLS for Garrett's food introductions moving forward. I feel good about these for starters as they're healthy, minimal ingredient options and not too far off the beaten path.
So, we started his first adventure of self-feeding at 4 months, 1 day and I plan to stick with the mum mums for at least a couple weeks before trying anything new. He actually ate some! I could tell not only by the fact that it shrunk in his little hand with no crumbs left behind; I could smell a change in his breath later that evening. So far, mum mums look yum yum:
