Vegetarian Baby-Led Weaning …ummm…

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Why vegetarian?

I have been a vegetarian for half of my life – 20 years (I’m 40 now). I was vegetarian before becoming pregnant, during my pregnancy, while breast-feeding and throughout weaning my boys. They are healthy. I am healthy. In fact we are all more than healthy. I’m morally happy with my decision. I have never looked back. Children deserve to make their own choices when they are old enough to understand, and right now they are not old enough to understand or consent to taking another life for their own nourishment. If it sounds a bit hardcore for you then we’re not reading the same book, let alone on the same page. I would love the whole world to be vegetarian for moral and ethical reasons, because it is healthier, and because meat-eaters put a huge drain on the resources of our planet. However, each to her own decision and conscience. When my boys are old enough to understand where meat comes from they are old enough to eat it – that’s all.

Baby-led Weaning

Baby-led Weaning aka BLW is a method of weaning (introducing solid food to your baby). It is not new, lots of us were weaned this way many (many) years ago. It simply involves feeding your babies ‘normal food’. My two have been eating panini at Costa since they were 6 months old. I don’t break it up into tiny chunks, I don’t feed it to them, they pick it up and eat it just like mama does. However, in recent years due to (strange and possibly stupid) guidelines from health organisations the recommended weaning age was brought forward to a very young 4, or even 3 months. At this young age babies would choke on anything other than liquid or puree (hmmm – seems to me maybe they only need liquid at this age…) so purees were introduced. The baby food industry got involved and Bob’s your uncle we all eat from little pre-packed jars. No, I know a lot of people make their own purees, I jest. Anyway, by about 6 months most babies would be eating some kind of finger food if not ALL finger food.

So what is Baby-Led Weaning?

The WHO now recommends that babies are not weaned until 6 months (Your Health Visitor may not know this yet even though its been this way for quite a while). So actually it is obvious that we don’t need the puree stage anymore. However change is hard for many, especially when information is not freely given by those who should know.

But all this aside, when a baby can pick up food and put it in his mouth, he can safely be allowed to eat it. The internal digestion matures at about the same time as hand-eye co-ordination develops. In short, BLW is weaning by introducing solid food without the puree stage from about 6 months of age.

Baby-led Weaning means no more feeding your child and eating your food afterwards, it means sitting with your baby and eating the same food at the same time. It means thinking about your diet and adapting it to be baby-friendly and nutritious and then just enjoying mealtimes together. It means going out for lunch with your baby and not having to take anything other than a bib.

You do need to take precautions (most are the same for any kind of safe weaning).

Dos and Don’ts of (baby-led) weaning:

* your baby must be sitting upright, either on a lap on in a chair (high or low) mostly unsupported
* no added salt (daily maximum allowance for a baby is about 0.5 mg)
* no honey before 1 year old
* raw apples and similar can cause choking hazards
* do not put anything into the baby’s mouth for him(if you want to use a spoon, load it with food and let him do it himself- and duck!)
* let him take his time
* make sure he isn’t hungry, give him milk before his solid meal, he needs to be able to concentrate on exploring the food and learning how to handle it, not getting stressed about having to fill up his little tummy
* do not worry about intake, As Gill Rapley succinctly puts it “food is fun until they’re one” (again your HV may look puzzled if you quote this at them). Their sources of iron won’t deplete and they will drop milk when they are ready – mine started to cut down a little around 8 months but still had a good 4-6 milk feeds a day
* be prepared for mess
* they don’t need ‘3 solid meals’ go with the flow. By 9 months I had tried out a lot of combinations and settled on: big late breakfast, big late lunch, afternoon light snack instead of dinner (the 3rd meal was causing issues because they were tired so we all but dropped it at that point)

More information about BLW…

BabyCentre

BabyLedWeaning.com

Baby-led Weaning

BabyWorld

Wikipedia

Baby Banana

Babyledweaning Blog

Netmums