Anyone heard of/tried baby led weening?

I have a freind who is/has been doing BLW with her one year old - and it seems to have worked really well. I was curious if any of you have tried it - and if anyone who has FF has tried it. We're waiting 'til 6 months to start solids - and it seems like a really interesting way of introducing food.

 

What is it?

 

BLW - Baby Led weaning. Mine only dropped feeding sessions as their naps dropped. I ended up weaning them at 25.5 months. I don't know that they would have done it on their own. Glad it worked for her.
eta: Are you currently breastfeeding? What do you plan on feeding them through a year, as far as I see it, there are only two options. Formula or BM.

 

Wow, sleep deprivation is great. I just read that as Baby-LED-weening, as in LED lights. I was picturing holding a blinking light in front of a baby's face and wondering how the heck that could be connected to weening. LOL!

 

BLW is an idea about introducing solids that skips the ceral/pureed food - and allow infants to "self-feed" "regular" food starting at 6 months. Its a very interesting topic.

Here are some websites that talk about it:

http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintrodu...ines.html#early


http://babyledweaning.blogware.com/

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/startings...babyledweaning/

http://www.gurgle.com/cms-22649/articles_A...ed_weaning.aspx

My friend has done it with both her second and currently her third childeren. She started without really knowing that BLW was a "movement" -- as her daughter refused all babyfoods -- but loved finger foods. Its not recommened for FF babies (which mine are) -- so I'm nervous about trying it -- but it makes a lot a sence to me.

 

I've never heard of baby-led weaning but I didn't do purees for very long. My sons were far more interested in bits of "grown up" food so I let them lead the way. James has been feeding himself since he was about 7 months and Evan just started putting food into his own mouth at 10.5 months, although he really liked us feeding him bits of food. I didn't realize there was a whole movement related to this. I just started to wonder exactly WHY I needed to be pureeing everything, and I started to consider what they might be doing in other countries where you can't pop to the store to buy jarred food or shoved steamed fruit and veggies into a food processor (I made my own purees)...and then I started thing that this big focus on cereals and purees and jarred food for months and months might have something to do with marketing initiatives by the baby-food manufacturers.

 

I read the first article you have a link to before we did solids, and thought, "Huh, that sounds kind of wacky." Went ahead and started solids the "normal" way, with rice cereal and purees - only to find that my babies LOATHED having anything spooned into their mouths!

So I took a second look and decided to try it. And they did great. For a while they were happy teething on and playing with things like apple slices and big pieces of toast, and then they started actually eating. We did self-feeding on big pieces of food (banana chunks, avocado slices, waffles, etc) for some time. Then I discovered that they loved table foods enough to accept them from a spoon. They finally made peace with the spoon that way. Now they eat some finger foods and some purees. Works great for us!

 

I think it's interesting -- maybe it depends on your babies' preferences, though? They all seem to like something different....

I know mine are nowhere near ready to eat pieces of food, or even gum on large things, because their motor skills aren't that great. But, they're definitely hungry for food, so I sort of have to spoon-feed them purees....(although maybe if we'd never started that, they wouldn't know any different).

Why does it matter if the baby is FF or breastfed?

 

QUOTE(JenniferTwinMomMinneapolis @ Jan 31 2008, 08:02 PM) [snapback]599235[/snapback]
Wow, sleep deprivation is great. I just read that as Baby-LED-weening, as in LED lights. I was picturing holding a blinking light in front of a baby's face and wondering how the heck that could be connected to weening. LOL!


OMG, that is one of the funniest things I have ever read!

I have a friend who did BLW with her son and had amazing success. He's a little younger than my girls and I wish he were older so I would've heard about the approach in time to try it.

 

QUOTE
Why does it matter if the baby is FF or breastfed?


This is what I could find about it (from this one):

QUOTE
Breastfeeding babies feed at their own pace – indeed, it is impossible to force them to do anything else! They also balance their own intake of food and fluid by choosing how long each feed should last. Breastfeeding is essentially self-feeding, with the baby in control of the process. And, because breast milk changes in flavour according to the mother's diet, breastfeeding prepares the baby for other tastes.

It is not clear whether a baby-led approach to the introduction of solids is appropriate for babies who are bottle fed; more research is needed to establish this, since bottle-feeding seems to be more mother-led. It is difficult to predict how bottle-fed babies will manage solids, so we need to be careful. However, as long as care is taken to ensure adequate fluid intake (see below), there would be nothing inherently wrong in adopting this approach. It is recommended that parents of babies who are being bottle (formula) fed discuss the matter fully with their health advisers if they wish to use this method.


I was expecting to see something about BFing being a different "workout" for a baby's mouth than bottle feeding, and promoting different oral skills - that explanation would make a little more sense to me. The stuff that I quoted about bottle feeding doesn't sound that convincing to me - sounds like a combination of trying to cover their you know what and just plain BFing snobbery.

 

BFing snobbery? huh, i resent that. i think it makes perfect sense that bf babies regulate how much they get and that bf milk changes in flavor depending on what baby eats. however we feed our babies, we are doing the best that we can for them. there is no sense calling one better than the other or accusing one method of snobbery...
heather
lily and sofi are 5.5 mos and BF

 

QUOTE
BFing snobbery? huh, i resent that. i think it makes perfect sense that bf babies regulate how much they get and that bf milk changes in flavor depending on what baby eats. however we feed our babies, we are doing the best that we can for them. there is no sense calling one better than the other or accusing one method of snobbery...
heather
lily and sofi are 5.5 mos and BF


Well, Andrew and Ivy are almost 1 yr old (actual age) and BF, and I'm planning to let them continue to nurse for as long as they're interested (and hoping it's a good long time!).

Must have been writing in a hurry & pre-coffee - I didn't mean for it to sound like that. I agree that the stuff about BM having different flavors & BF babies having a unique opportunity to self-regulate is right on the nose. But I don't exactly see how the author of that article gets from those ideas to the conclusion that self-feeding solid foods may somehow be "inappropriate" for bottle-fed babies. SOME people (nobody I've met on these great forums, fortunately - yay TS!) do have a real holier-than-thou attitude about BFing, and it sounded like that might be the case with that author, since they don't really argue their point very well.

Didn't mean to offend you! Sorry.