In my continuing quest to be the weirdest mom in the neighborhood, I’ve decided to try baby-led solids. This is an approach to first foods that eschews (ha!) pureed baby food and instead offers large chunks of appropriate food to infants so they can feed themselves. From what I’ve heard, the preliminary research shows that infants who show readiness signs for starting solids (sitting up, losing tongue thrust, developing a pincer grasp, etc.) are able to get food to their mouths, gum/bite off small bits, and move those bits to the back of the mouth for swallowing. Babies who don’t show readiness signs tend to lick and play with the food, but don’t get it far back in their mouths.
I really like this approach. It’s easier and cheaper, the baby gets to participate with the family dinner more, and perhaps most importantly to me, she is getting to explore different textures and flavors of real food. Her older sister is the pickiest eater on the planet, so I’m interested in helping this one feel comfortable with food. Plus, hell, it’s just fun to watch her. And drinking water out of a cup like the big people is the highlight of her day - she gets so crazy excited over it.
And now, since I finally figured out how to get videos off my camera and on to the web: Claire eating and drinking.
Both my kids pretty much went from liquids to solids - we did have baby food in the house, but it was a very brief time (possibly two weeks for both of them). With the delay recommended for introducing solids now, and the basic eye hand coordination around seven months, letting them feed themselves worked great.
I don’t have kids yet myself, but I’ve heard good things about mesh feeders from several people doing the whole baby-led feeding thing. You can put stuff into the mesh bag that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to eat yet, like grapes or chicken, and let them suck/gnaw at it, since the mesh keeps any large bits from getting swallowed.
That is one adorable li’l girl you’ve got there, Unauthorized Cinnamon!
I don’t have children of my own, but I’ve been one of the primary caregivers of my nieces and both of them were introduced to solid food this way. It was a very simple, natural approach, IMHO, and seemed to be a lot less hassle than when my cousin was giving jarred baby food to her two little boys.
As for whether or not it influences them being finicky eaters, I’m not sure. My older niece has her likes and dislikes (such as, for some random reason she hates sausage) while my younger niece will eat anything that isn’t crawling off her plate. In fact, once when she was two we went for a walk in the woods and found some escaped guinea fowl from a neighbor’s farm. Her response was, “I love chickens! In my tummy with mashed potatoes.”
That’s a good point about babies being older when they start eating. As I said in another thread, my husband was only two months old when they started trying to get him to eat, so yeah, no whole bananas at that point!
We do have a couple mesh feeders, and I love the idea, but Claire doesn’t like them very much. I use them to give her avocado because those suckers are slippery and mushy - not easy to eat with the hands!
I realize that pickiness may be out of my control. But seriously, my older one is a hard case - no meat, no vegetables (except tomato sauce on pizza), two fruits. She pretty much lives on grain and dairy. (But at least the pickiness extends in good directions, too - no soda or juice, no candy other than chocolate.) So anything I can do to improve the odds for the younger one, I want to do.
Oh, and thanks for saying she’s cute - I can never get enough of that!
We did this to some extent with our older two, but went whole hog with Whatsit the Youngest mostly out of sheer laziness. I kept meaning to get around to pureeing some baby-friendly vegetables and fruits, but things got busy, and it never quite happened, so we just would feed him little bits of whatever was on our plate, and somehow we just skipped the entire baby food stage.
We introduced mushed avocado and banana around 6 months, but he wasn’t really interested until sometime between 7-8 months, when he started really wanting to try what we were eating. So as long as it was something that was relatively soft and non-chokable (mashed potatoes, applesauce, sweet potato, peas, dinner rolls, etc.) we’d give him some on his high chair tray. He’s now about 17 months old and eating pretty much the same stuff the rest of us do. It was extremely low-stress and I highly recommend this “method” (ha! More like a lack of method) to anyone.
The mesh feeders only worked for us during teething; we put frozen strawberries in the bags and let the little Torqueling gnaw on them. The cold gave her (and us) some relief, and the flavor inspired her to keep gnawing.
But, she’s never been very finicky. She was the only baby I’ve ever heard of who loved fried okra. About the biggest problem we have is that she loves the fruits and veggies so much that she pretty much ignores meat. Raviolis are the easiest way we’ve found to sneak some in.
I guess this is sort of what we’ve been doing with my one-year-old, but only because I HATE HATE HATE baby food and the baby food stage and wanted to make it as short as possible. We didn’t do finger foods exclusively, though, because he’s a big chunky guy and after a couple of early feed-himself-only meals he woke up in the middle of the night hungry–he just didn’t have the dexterity or patience to get enough food into his tum.
But basically I did try as much as possible to puree what we were eating or to cook things he could eat as is–meatloaf was a nice, crumbly hit at one early meal, and I have a great recipe for these spinach-rice-cheese patties that all my kids love. Another thing he ate very early that surprises people is V-8 juice with rice cereal in it–and he still loves V-8. Now I hardly ever puree his food, but I will cook tiny pasta and spoonfeed him when the rest of us are having larger noodles–we all eat the same sauce. We just got back from a weekend at my in-laws’ house and I didn’t have to bring any special food for him at all, which I consider a milestone!
I think as long as you’re supervising her closely (and are ready to toss the videocamera without hesitation) and you’ve got your baby choking rescue moves down, it’s a great idea! And that’s not to say I *expect *her to choke, mind you. I think EVERY parent should know how to rescue a choking infant. And toddler, and preschooler and kid…
I think you’re right to look for those feeding readiness cues. I think that our recent (historically speaking) fascination with pureed baby food is because people try to feed them before they’re ready for solids, so they make the solids as liquid as possible.
The one thing I’ll caution is that she’s likely to be harder to transition to a fork and spoon, IME. Hands are just so much easier, and since she’s not watching you use a spoon to feed her for three or six months, she might be a messier hands-on eater well into preschool. Nothing tragic, just a warning.
Oh yes, I’m actually more worried about the myriad Barbie shoes, marbles, and other scary toys the five year old has around the house than food, but yeah, I’ve got my Red Cross cheat sheet hanging up in the kitchen, and my pinky is ready to sweep!
It’s actually surprising how well she deals with chunks she can’t swallow (and I hear this is typical). She will gag up something she can’t deal with, or on occasion cough and shoot it across the room! But I do stand at the ready if it appears she might need help.
I’ve been thinking of giving her a bowl of (room temperature) oatmeal and a baby spoon and letting her go to town. But I think this will be a weekend experiment, when I have plenty of help to clean up. Anyway, hopefully that kind of thing will help her work on her utensil skills.
Oh, and for anyone thinking of trying this, I think broccoli is a dynamite self-feeding food. You can cut it so it has a nice “handle,” then cook it just till it starts to lose the bright green color, and it’s soft enough for the little broccoli buds to be gummed off, but firm enough to stay together and remain easy to hold.
We sorta did this with mylittleguy. Well, we tried it, but he was not interested in feeding himself, even though he was VERY interested in “real food.” So we skipped the very thin purees and went straight to levels 2 & 3 baby food, and I made a lot of his food myself.
He’s 13 months old now, and doesn’t eat any baby-specific food, although his tastes are kind of mercurial right now so we still have to make food just for him, and something he liked 2 days ago might get refused today (and vice-versa). Also, he hasn’t figured out that he can bite a piece off of a larger piece of food – he tries to eat the whole thing in one bite.
He loves finger-foods now, but shows no interest in feeding himself with a spoon or anything. He doesn’t try to grab the spoon when we give him yogurt or oatmeal, and he doesn’t even seem to want to hold the sippy cup! He’ll grab it and bring his mouth down to the spout, but when we tip it up so he can drink, he’ll let go. Oh well, he’ll get it eventually.
We’re doing a mix of the two methods–our 10 month-old gets finger foods for lunch and mid-afternoon snack, baby food for breakfast and dinner. That’s not strict, though. Depending on what we’re eating, she usually gets a few bites off our plates at dinner, too.
I hate the whole baby food process–it’s so messy and tedious. But I’m continuing it for a little bit longer because I just like the fact that I can really measure better how much she’s getting. With the finger foods, she gets most of it in, but a nice percentage ends up on the floor or in her chair, and I’m always worried she’s not getting enough in her tummy.
So far she loves everything but peaches. Go figure.
If the weather is nice enough, this is a great experiment to be done out in the yard, too. Just keep in mind that chances are the bowl is going to be dumped over immediately and little hands full of oatmeal are very likely to go running through her hair.
OMG! You guys gotta stop with the extra-cute babies! My emotions keep telling me I must have a grand-baby right now. This, though I know the two kids I have who are old enough to reproduce, so aren’t ready for parenthood!
Still, this approach makes lots of sense, and I believe it will probably catch on.
My youngest is almost 9, so we went through the baby food thing with all of them, but I love, love, love this approach!
That’s too funny! That’s what Nat had for lunch. Well, with some pureed squash fed by me. He likes banging himself with the spoon.
I was going to try tofu tomorrow.
I’m a food nut, so I don’t mind making baby food, but I’m starting to try to make it more interactive because he can sort of manage to get it to his mouth himself now.
