Paola and Lea live in Budapest, Hungary, and Miss Lea has been in charge of her own weaning for a good few months now... which means that at least one person round here knows what they are doing.

Anyway, Paola wrote this document a month or so ago for the Yahoo baby led weaning message group and has very kindly agreed to let me put it up here as well. If you want to see Lea creating a work of art from a bowl of blackcurrants and yoghurt I suggest you pop over to the Photos folder.

Post Script 1st December 2006:

So if I've now been doing BLW with Babybear for longer than Paola had when she wrote this document, does that make me a veteran as well? Maybe...

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that, having read this over as a more experienced BLW-er, I would completely counsel against putting food up to the babies' mouths to test for the loss of the tongue thrust reflex. As I understand it this could be quite a choking hazard, so just let the babies pick up the food for themselves. If they don't, then leave it for a day or two and try again. There's no rush.

Also, as you might know I never did the puree thing at all - to be honest if you know about BLW before starting weaning there's no need for them at all, and even if you hear about it along the way I don't think there would be a problem with ditching them quickly and transferring to finger food.

I haven't changed what Paola wrote, though, because it is her story, not mine.

Lea and starting baby led weaning

Lea is now 10.5 months and I thought I would put a few words down about our experiences of weaning and baby-led weaning.

I had been thinking, reading and worrying about how to introduce ‘solid’ food to my first baby for at least a month.  I am not sure why I was so nervous about it, but I couldn’t quite imagine my little Lea actually eating food, and I wasn’t keen to give up the convenience of breastfeeding.  I read a lot. I was given a couple of recipe books, which I scoured.  But I became confused about why I needed a special book to tell me to steam apples and mash them up, or how to make a tasty sounding stew which I would then puree when I had lots of recipes for stews which I could puree, or why I would add breast milk to make the food taste like something familiar to her, when the whole point was to introduce tastes which were unfamiliar, or why I would puree everything to the same consistency when the point is to introduce different textures. I looked in the shops at the boxes and jars of special baby foods, and wondered at the lists of additives – though all of them good and important for baby health and growth. I was a bit concerned about not giving baby rice as I read that babies need iron and that their supplies run out after about 6 months.  But after asking around a bit and reading a bit more, I realise that they do get iron from breastmilk, and that as long as I was a bit careful about giving her foods with iron in them, she should be fine.

Then I came across an article by Gill Rapley about baby led weaning, and that made more sense to me than any of the special baby foods or baby recipes.  I realised that if I wanted to wean my baby, then I might as well introduce her to food, and not to babyfied mush.  So a few days before 6 months, at breakfast, Lea was in her high chair – she often sat with us at meal times – and I gave her some bits of apple and banana.  I can’t say she ate much – if anything.  And she pulled the silliest faces as I tried to put bits of food into her mouth, but she did open her mouth and seemed interested.  She had been sitting well for about a month – though I honestly couldn’t say if her tongue thrust reflex had gone.  I never quite worked that one out.

And from that point we started giving her breakfast. It was February, which is significant because the first foods she had were what was available in the shops at that time of year – lots of apple, pear and banana, and root vegetables.  I also bought some rice cakes and wotsit sized puffed grains which are readily available here in Hungary – I remember starting with puffed millet, and moving onto rye.  So I really tried to give her just finger foods. I would hold bits near her mouth and she could eat a bit.  Sometimes she managed to bite (or more accurately gum) off a piece, she would gum it a bit, and then it would fall out of her mouth.  This was reassuring because I learnt quite quickly that her reflexes meant that pieces of food which were too large for her to swallow would find their way out of her mouth.  But she was more interested in eating her yellow plastic plate or waving it in the air, then in the actual food.  And it was frustrating – for me and for her.  I gave her lots of slightly stewed pieces of fruit and steamed/baked vegetables.  But the food slipped out of her hands, or she ended up shoving it into her eye or up her nose, or she would just squash it up between her fingers.

So after a week or so of just finger foods, I started mushing up food with a fork and spoon feeding her – and she liked it and wanted more.  But I would always also give her finger foods.  I also wanted to give her foods which are by their nature mushy – like yoghurt, lentils – so it wasn’t an entirely negative decision.  I reluctantly cooked a few batches of vegetables and fruit, mushed them and froze them in ice-cube trays.  I tried not to put the food through a food processor, but to mash it with a fork, so that it at least retained some of its natural consistency.

But even with spoon feeding, she didn’t eat much.  We moved to two and then quickly to three meals a day because I thought that if she was offered food three times a day she might eat a bit more.  It didn’t really work like that.  It was just a lot of work and very messy and not much fun.  After a month, when she was about 7 months, our health visitor told us to introduce meat and fish, and that she should be eating about 170gms of food day.  We reckon on a good day she was probably eating about 20gms.  (In ice-cube terms, about 3 or 4 cubes a day).  So we got a bit worried and didn’t know how to get her to eat more, and we tried a bit harder to keep on offering spoons of mush to her.  But one day I just relaxed.  I decided that actually Lea knew best what she needed.  She liked food, she ate what we gave her, she just didn’t eat very much.  She was still breastfeeding a lot, and it was convenient when we were out or travelling not to have to give her solid food – she could easily miss two of her meals.

So we cut back to two meals a day, and she started to eat a slightly more ‘reasonable’ amount – though nowhere near 170gms a day!  We still gave lots of finger food, she didn’t gag or choke, and she seemed to know to suck and chew at the food.  By around 7 months it seemed she could pick up and hold pieces of food much better. Most of the time the food went into her mouth, but most of it still ended up on the floor.

We went to a wedding in Paris with her when she was 8 months.  We were giving her lunch one day, and looking for the bits under her chair to pick up, when we realised that she had actually eaten one of the puffy wotsit like blobs that we had been giving her.  It felt like a huge step forward.  She still didn’t need so much food, but she was starting to swallow more significant amount of finger foods.

A few weeks later, we went to stay with some friends in the country.  We had an early supper, at around 6pm and I fed her at the same time with the two ice cubes of mush and bits of cucumber and rice cakes that we normally gave her.  She ate it all, which was unusual, and then she started crying and reaching for more food.  The only things I then had to give her were what we were eating – roast chicken, rice and salad.  So she munched her way through 6 or 7 strips of chicken, several handfuls of rice and a few slices of cucumber.  She held the food in her hands, put it into her mouth, bit into it and chewed it up.  This was the first time I would say that she actually positively wanted to eat.

At 9 months, when we went away for a few days, we could just feed her from the breakfast buffet at the hotel – she was happy with fruit and toast and jam.  I remember telling a friend, and she thought I was joking!

We still do a mix of spoon feeding and finger foods.  At 10 months she could eat a whole meal of finger foods.  But I still want her to eat foods that are easier to spoon feed, though I am trying to encourage her to take the spoon more.  Occasionally she manages to get a spoon of food into her mouth, but more often the food ends up on the table.  She still eats broccoli by holding onto the flower end and eating the stalk, however many times I try to show her that it would be better to hold the ‘handle’.  I am also putting larger chunks of veg, bread and different grains into slushy food so that she can use her fingers.  It is very very very messy.  Sometimes she dives nose first into the food, and she has had several banana, apricot, avocado, and more recently mango, face masks!

She plays with any food that is spilled on the table, and has taken to rubbing it into the table and into her face.  She still drops a lot on the floor – and no doubt will do for many more months if not years.  Some days she won’t eat more than a mouthful or two at a meal, other days she scoffs her food down.  We still aren’t giving her snacks.  I wouldn’t say that she ever demands food from us or cries with hunger, and we can still miss a meal without her seeming to notice or mind.  She has her preferences, but she will try pretty much anything I give her – the first time I have her a cherry she didn’t seem too impressed, but the next day she ate at least 20!  When we are out, I only take some small biscuits/rice cakes for her.  And when we are in a restaurant or café I can give her chips, fish, chicken, bits of salad, pizza – many of the things I would eat.

Her gran thought I was mad and it was dangerous to give her pieces of food.  My husband thought I was a bit mad.  They are both Hungarian, so they just think its an English way of feeding babies (little do they know!).  But now both of them are so proud of Lea. She isn’t a particularly big eater, but at 10.5 months she still breastfeeds 4 times a day, and sometimes 5 times.  I think baby-led weaning was one of the best decisions I have made – to give her finger foods from 6 months, and to persist with it even though we also spoon feed.  

Paola Grenier and Lea (born 8 August, 2005)

Budapest

June 2006