Accidentally Crunchy: Adventures in Baby Led Weaning

I often wonder what our parenting style would be like without the internet. Without all the mommy blogs and the forums and baby WebMD.

Without the internet I almost surely wouldn't have known that skipping purées was an option. I wouldn't have known that we should probably wait until 6 months to feed solid foods. There are probably a million things that would be different in our parenting life if Google wasn't always within arm's reach. 

When I was on maternity leave I had a lot of time to read on my phone while O was nursing. {gasp! I didn't give him my undivided attention, gazing into his eyes while he ate!} One thing I kept seeing over and over was "BLW". Over the next few months I read blogs and Gil Rapley's book about this "BLW" or "baby led weaning" idea and I was sold.

Mike was 100% on board as well, and we decided we were going to do it at home even if daycare insisted on feeding him purées. As it turns out, daycare was 100% on board too. Our pediatrician is very hands off in parenting matters which I enjoy and his only input on O starting solids was to "try to wait until 6 months unless you think he is ready, don't worry about allergies unless you have a family history of them, and no honey."

Since it all seemed to be falling into place I assumed it was surely meant to be the way we introduced solids to O. 

My plan was to wait until 6 months, but about 3 or 4 weeks shy of that milestone O took matters into his own hands. I was eating fresh-from-the-garden cantaloupe {drool} with a fork while holding him on my hip. He reached out, plucked the fruit off my fork, and shoved it in his mouth and started gnawing on it all in one fell swoop.

I was shocked! My baby knew how to eat! I let him go to town on it for a little bit and then took it away. I wasn't quite ready to begin this adventure yet.

Fast forward another week or so, and he did the same thing with a cherry tomato. Took a chunk out of it as if he were eating an apple. I'll never forget his chubby little hand holding on to that tomato, squashing it to death, as he sucked and gnawed on it happily. Shortly after this little flavor experiment we decided it was time to "officially' start feeding him real food.

We started with steamed sweet potato, avocado, banana, steamed carrots, and peeled apple wedges {not all at once- those were just the first few}. Since we don't have any food allergies in the immediate family we didn't wait days between introducing new foods. It has been great to just give him some of what we are eating most nights. When we are eating like crap I do make him something else. He is an adventurous eater and loves pretty much everything we have offered him. Bananas and avocados took several times before he enjoyed them. O even likes food that I don't! When we get Chicken in Black Bean Sauce from our favorite Chinese place Owen happily eats all the mushrooms I pick out {because mushrooms are gross}. We are a good team.

Early adventures
{Clockwise from top left: peeled apple slice, steamed carrots, broccolini at a restaurant, and banana}

I watched a lot of videos on YouTube and blogs of babies gagging while doing BLW. It helped a lot. Because without seeing them, I would have absolutely mistaken gagging for choking and panicked. Here is a video of him gagging from about mid-October {O was about 6 months exactly}. The video cuts off abruptly but I promise he was fine- my phone just ran out of storage and cut the video {story of my life--I need a bigger phone next time}. What I've learned is that there is usually no need to stick your fingers in their mouth to fish out something {and risk shoving it further in}-- they work it to the front and spit it out on their own.

Here is a video of his early eating skills {or lack thereof}. He consumed very little for the first several weeks, and that's just fine. His doc said we don't need to worry about how much he is consuming until he is one as long as he is still getting all the breast milk he needs. I should also mention we skipped rice cereal, and his doc was on board with that, too.We always fed him people food after he had nursed, since he was still getting his nutrition from that and the people food was just an extra bonus.

Now that he is an almost 11-month-old and a pro at eating, he will reach into his mouth, grab food, and remove it if he took too big of a bite. Which, might I add, is often. I have modified the BLW approach of big, easy to grab chunks of food into littler pieces that I put on his tray throughout the meal. If I put big chunks he shoves the whole thing in his mouth like the child has never eaten in his life. {I think maybe he has seen me dive into a burrito bowl at Chipotle one too many times} If I put lots of small chunks on his tray at once he scoops them all up and shoves them into his mouth at once. I am not super concerned with him choking at this point, but man is it ever annoying to tell him to slow down {and have him not understand} 500 times each meal.

Here is a video from 9 or 10 months old where O displays his slight enjoyment of food. His favorites seem to change from week to week, but his enthusiasm surely doesn't.

It seems that the way we feed O changes little by little every day. Sometimes I feed him with a spoon if it is something super messy, and sometimes he uses the spoon I load up for him. Right around when O turned 10 months he started to scoop food from a bowl with his spoon and eat it all by himself! He is still working on that skill, but he is getting it. It is exciting and crazy how much he has learned and how much is yet to come!

I don't know that BLW is an especially "crunchy" approach to feeding, but it is definitely off the beaten path, so I'm including it in my Accidentally Crunchy series. :)

This got to be a crazy long blog so thanks for sticking with me till the end. :)

-H