Baby-Led Weaning Part III: Tips for Preparing and Beginning

Welcome back on this BLW journey! Today we talk about what you should do to prepare yourself and your little one for BLW.

1. My husband and I both can’t stress enough our number one requirement in preparing for BLW. Take an INFANT CPR course! Knowing how to properly provide CPR or remove a choking hazard, including food, from your child’s airway is very important. We didn’t just stumble into BLW lightly. As I noted in my previous blog many who avoid BLW do for the fear of choking. If you take a class you will feel much more prepared to handle these cases.

If you have someone else who will be providing these meals for your little one have them take the class as well. Make sure everyone who is feeding your little knows what to expect with BLW and is completely on board to avoid food confusion for your baby as well as you being concerned over them choking with the other provider.

2. This leads into our next take away though which is know the difference between choking and gagging. Your baby won’t always choke but they will definitely gag! A helpful say we learned from our class but also shown on the image below is: “Loud and Red: Let them go ahead” “Silent and Blue: They need help from you.” The only thing I would note is learn your baby’s cues too. I was a nervous wreck when our baby started because I thought he was choking a few times then I realized no, he just yawns in between bites sometimes. He was wide mouthed and quiet (not blue of course) and I was so nervous.

We love this imagery from Regalo (we use their playyard) that helps describe the differences.

3) Next going off of that fear is if you are nervous you will project that onto your baby. Babies are so intelligent and read our emotional cues as parents very easily. If you make meals a big scary thing they are going to be less intrigued to participate in it. That being said the BLW guides don’t recommend you praising or rewarding your baby for eating or punishing them for not eating. This is to avoid an unhealthy obsession or avoidance of eating.

4) Introduce a variety into your baby’s new diet. Many say, “Food before one is just for fun.” I could tell you all day how that statement is very very wrong but let me just say House goes into great detail about how this is inacccurate and dangerous information. Your baby’s iron stores from before birth from you are depleting between 6-8 months of age and most definitely “out” before 12 months of age. Therefore, introducing iron rich foods is a necessity that our breastmilk cannot provide. However, I will say the fun part about foods before one is that you are introducing them for the first time. So introduce a variety of colors, textures, and flavors into your baby’s diet. Don’t avoid foods just because you don’t like them BUT if you have a food allergy consider being cautious.

5) This leads to our final tip which is consider tracking on a spreadsheet what your baby is eating. Below is an image of our son’s so far. I initially decided to start tracking just because I liked the idea of 100 foods by 12 months. It would help promote a variety and keep me on track with it but when he started having reactions to things it was even more perfect. I charted dates when he reacted to what. This seemed like overkill until today when we officially had him tested on some of my concerns and found out he is allergic to dairy, shellfish, and strawberries. So, especially if you have allergies in the family (there is a genetic component) I recommend the spreadsheet even more!

Final BONUS take away! Do what is best for you and your child! Every child truly is different and so I can tell you based off of my immense amounts of research, the BLW book, and my MA in child and adolescent development what to do but I can also tell you that sometimes (even for us) the book gets thrown out the window with some babies and you truly have to go with their flow.

(Two more installments in the BLW series can be found linked below….)