Hi Kelly,
Thought you might like this artickle. I picked it up from an AP-list, but
who ever posted it couldn't remember where she had found it...
Päivi
Baby Led Weaning.
What a sensible approach.
You walk past the supermarket shelves of nappies,
dummies, bottles, teats and formula quite happily but
somehow at around four months you find yourself
glancing at the baby rice and colourful jars and tins.
You are not sure if these so called "children's foods"
belong in a separate category along with turkey
twizzlers but there seems to be a children's version
of most products and they are hard to avoid. Everyone
else is weaning but somehow it doesn't feel right for
you and your baby?
Stop! There is another way. A fantastically
instinctive and intuitive approach to weaning has been
developed by UNICEF and the world heath organisation
WHO
Baby led weaning basically is what it says - you do
not even offer solid food until the baby shows signs
of internal and external readiness (being able to sit
up unaided, tongue thrust movement disappears, gut
lining becomes less leaky between during the weeks
between four and six months.) This generally happens
somewhere around the middle of the babies first year.
At this time at normal family meal times you simply
sit the baby up at the table and offer them pieces of
the raw or cooked ingredients from your family meal.
E.g. - cucumber batons, banana chunks, cooked pasta
shapes, avocado slices. Until the child's pincer
movement develops further they are unlikely to be able
to pick up pieces small enough to choke on and that is
pretty much it! Over the time between 6 and 12 months
on a very gradual basis they will move from being
exclusively breast fed to taking about half of their
calories from solid food.
When you consider that almost 350g of cooked carrot
contains the same amount of energy as 100g of breast
milk it makes those entire big baby / small baby /
weight gain arguments look pretty daft!
The key seems to me that you are not "feeding" the
child - so throw away those weaning spoons - Just as a
breast fed baby has learnt to regulate their food
intake for the first six months and you learn to
adjust to the idea that you can't visualise how much
milk they are taking this is simply a continuation of
trusting your baby.
Missing out the "goo stage" means you also miss out
the fiddleyness of introducing one food at a time -
babies who were videoed for the unicef study seemed to
do this naturally.
Weaning is an incredible gradual process on using this
approach - A child needs the same amount of calories
at 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and 3 years (as their
growth rate slows) - it is simply the composition of
these calories that is changing.
The "iron issue" is often used to encourage mothers to
wean early - breast milk is low is iron yes but this
iron is easily and readily absorbed by the baby - the
store built up at birth is usually running low between
six and twelve months - you can offer iron rich foods
from six months but you must trust that the baby that
needs them will eat them and the baby that doesn't
won't!!
Health Visitors in the UK are only just beginning to
be schooled in this new approach and it is unlikely to
be rolled out until government plans to extend
maternity leave are approved. (Just as the government
weaning advice was changed in 2004 from four to six
months when maternity leave rules were changed
before.) Anecdotal evidence suggests most health
visitors are ignoring this new advice anyway and still
encouraging mothers to wean far to early.
Weaning does seem to be occurring later in the west -
some babies born in the sixties were often solids at
three weeks, ten weeks seemed popular in the seventies
- and so on - politics of our attitudes to food aside
you could view this as the logical next stage!
- Just because your four-month-old baby is watching
you eat it doesn't mean they are ready for solids -
they watch you do everything - that is just what
four-month-old babies do.
- Do not be tempted to spoon feed your baby - allow
them to continue regulating there own food intake just
as they have done already - a very useful skill and
one that may help them avoid eating disorders in adult
life.
- You can introduce a spoon as their manual dexterity
improves but it is for them to use it.
- Present a selection of healthy foods in pieces they
can manage - let them choose which to eat or explore
with their mouths. Do not put foods in their mouths -
this is where the choking danger comes from.
- Babies given solids early do not sleep better - gram
for gram in comparison to breast milk solids are very
low in calories so will not "fill them up" contrary to
what many people think.
- Waiting for your baby to be ready means that
preparing food is much easier (i.e. no hand blender
etc needed) and food allergies are less likely.
- Baby food manufacturers should no longer be
labelling jars and packets with "16 weeks" they have
been told by the government to change this to 6 months
but are being rather slow to do so.
- By twelve months a baby eating a variety of nutrious
foods will be eating what its body tells it it needs
and obtaining about half its daily calories from
solids.
The original catalyst for these notes was a woman's
hour interview with Jenni Murray - Featuring Annabel
Karmel and Gill Rapley who conducted the MSC research
into Baby led weaning that was presented at the UNICEF
conference.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2004_23_thu_01.shtml
Really worth a listen as Annabel Karmel senses the
need for her goo cookbooks may be disappearing misses
the point and gets herself all in knots over a lychee
stone!!!
--
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