What Is Baby Led Weaning?
If you haven't heard about it, Baby Led Weaning is about giving babies control over their food. It's about letting them play with food, figure out that it’s food, get it into their mouths on their own, and figure out how to swallow it. It's letting babies self-feed.
To quote www.babyledweaning.com, “it’s ‘baby-led’ in the sense that you let them do what they need to do while they’re learning, and as the parent you resist the urge to get wound up in knots about how much they’re eating, whether they like the food you thought they’d like and whether it’s smushed into the nearest curtain. The main thing is… it’s all good clean (messy) fun.”
This sounds good, and many parents will fall over themselves to tell you how great Baby Led Weaning is. But before you start, be aware of some of the inherent dangers of what's being advocated.
What Are the Dangers of Baby Led Weaning?
1. Not getting the right foods
Many Baby Led Weaning enthusiasts will tell you that your baby should eat what you are eating. It makes meals so much easier, your baby is motivated to eat what he sees you eating, etc. Sounds great!
The problem: babies have specific nutritional needs. You probably don't eat meals that are tailored to a baby's diet.
Babies over the age of 6 months need lots of iron. More than an adult man needs. More than breastmilk provides. Preventing iron deficiency is the main reason for starting solids between 4-6 months. I've spoken to many mothers who are implementing Baby Led Weaning with their children, who are not aware of this important nutritional need.
Some of the high-profile Baby Led Weaning people do highlight this need. This is great! Unfortunately, this information is not trickling down to everybody in the community. Just check out this discussion! The owner of that page, which has over 28,000 likes right now, says "No need for you to worry about iron... Just keep breastfeeding."
That is just dangerous advice. Especially considering it's done against the advice of that child's pediatrician!
The good news is that you can benefit from the principles of Baby Led Weaning, while getting your infant enough iron.
Just make sure that all of your family meals incorporate a high-iron food, and feed your infant those foods specifically. Let's say you whipped together some delicious burrito bowls for dinner that are made with black beans. The beans are a good source of iron, so setting some aside for baby is a great way to include her in what the family is eating AND focusing on her specific nutritional needs.
Be especially aware of feeding your baby red meat. Red meat one of the most important foods for your baby, because it's so high in iron.
2. Not eating enough solid foods
Babies at six months are just beginning to learn how to grasp objects between their thumb and index fingers (called the pincer grasp), which enables them to get it into their mouths easily. Most babies aren't accomplished at the pincer grasp until 9-12 months. Most likely they will grab with their entire hands, and that makes it tricky to get food into their mouths.
Baby Led Weaning advocates emphasize being relaxed about what your baby is eating, which is a great ideal, but it introduces the potential problem that your child will not eat enough solid foods if he hasn't developed the pincer grasp.
One mother told me that her baby didn’t eat solids until 8 months, because he just didn’t get the food into his mouth. I cringed!
If your child has not developed the pincer grasp and you are not supplementing their own eating with spoon-fed purees or by placing food into their mouths, they will not be getting the nutrition they need. Especially iron.
I cannot emphasize this enough, folks! Babies need iron!
3. Choking hazards
I’ve heard mothers who are practicing Baby Led Weaning talk about giving their babies relatively large pieces of food, like grapes and entire stems of broccoli. In this study, parents who practiced Baby Led Weaning were interviewed, and 30% reported choking episodes. Most were caused by raw apples.
This is fine, if you’d like to practice the Heimlich manoeuvre on your baby. If that doesn't strike your fancy, there's a reason most parents instinctively keep the food sizes tiny.
Adults have a lifetime of practice when it comes to swallowing, so it's easy for us to forget how complex the process really is! Since our memories from infancy don’t stay with us on a conscious level, we can’t remember what it was like to have to learn to swallow.
Do you remember the first time you had to swallow a pill? I do! It was so tricky to figure out exactly where to place the pill on my tongue before taking a swallow, how much water to douse it with, and what to do if it got stuck! What size was the first pill you were given? It was most likely a tiny pill, not some gigantic horse pill.
4. Too much sodium
An infant’s body is designed to work best on a low sodium diet (an infant’s sodium needs are low and breastmilk is conveniently low in sodium). Since the infant’s body is expecting to receive a diet low in sodium, her kidneys efficiently recycle sodium back into her body. Contrast that to an adult’s kidneys, which filter out excess sodium.
If your infant is eating a diet identical to yours, there's a very real chance she will be getting too much sodium for her body.
If the table food your family eats is essentially salt-free, I applaud you. Just skip this section. But if you’re like the majority of people in North America, the food you eat on a regular basis is too high in sodium for an adult, nevermind an infant.
Never Fear
Now that you're aware of the dangers and how to manage them, don't be scared off of baby led weaning. When applied appropriately, it's a great tool to use when feeding your baby!
Check out my quick guide for getting started safely with Baby Led Weaning!
Author's Bio:
Jessica Penner is a Registered Dietitian from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She graduated at the top of her class when she received her BSc majoring in Human Nutritional Sciences.
You can find her busting nutrition myths, posting delectable recipes, and teaching e-courses at Smart Nutrition.
Jessica grew up as a picky eater, but her love for travel forced her to meet the challenge of accepting new foods, and she now loves exploring new flavours in the kitchen. All of that delicious food posed a different problem at first, overeating, but her nutrition education and experience as a Registered Dietitian has brought insight and balance to her eating habits. She loves to share what she’s learned with others to help them rediscover the joy in eating!