When Cwyn was 4 months old she seemed to be very aware of food and when we were eating she always tried to grab our plates. We thought maybe it was time to start with some cereal but after talking to her doctor, who didn't see any benefit to rice cereal, we weren't convinced we should start. A month or so went by and we decided just to give her some to try it out. She LOVED it and couldn't seem to get enough of it. We felt pretty confident in the decision to start giving her cereal at night for awhile just to start her out slow. Well, after one successful attempt she never wanted anything more to do with the cereal, so we quit and figured we'd just wait to start baby good. Around 6 months we decided to try with some puréed fruit/veggies to see how that went. The first attempt was a FAIL! We gave her bananas and she cried and spit every last bite out. We wondered if maybe she just wasn't a fan of bananas, but after a lot more failed attempts with another fruit and two more veggies (during the course of a month) we quit all together. She wanted nothing to do with the purees and we didn't want to push her. Side Note: To this day she does not like anything that is too liquidy like applesauce and her oatmeal has to be chunky! She has a texture issue! Anyways... While all this was going on we got the usual round of well-meaning people encouraging us to "fill her belly before bed" and to give her something "more substantial than breastmilk" so that she would grow. We felt a lot of pressure to feed her but knew that pushing her to eat wasn't best for our baby. She was growing and gaining weight so we continued with a diet of breast milk alone and didn't think much more about it for the time being.
I'm not sure when it was that I first heard about BLW but I remember at first thinking it was a crazy concept. I thought for sure babies couldn't know how much to eat and how to eat and I was NOT going to let my baby choke! But, the more Cwyn refused all "traditional" ways of eating first foods, the more I explored the concept.
For those of you who don't know what BLW is it doesn't mean weaning in the sense that you're weaning baby off breastmilk/formula. It is a theory that allows the baby to choose how, when and how much food to eat while remaining on a breastmilk/formula diet. It says that baby benefits by learning to control their appetite, they develop a healthy attitude toward food (ie they aren't picky eaters) and provides baby with healthy and fresh options. The idea is that you give baby all of the foods you would eat, that are healthy and appropriate for baby, and give them to baby in manageable pieces to explore and eat. I read articles, websites and books on the subject and the more I read the more I was convinced that this was the way I wanted to approach solids. So, I made my case and presented it to Colt. To my surprise, he loved the idea, and while he was a little nervous about the choking aspect, he agreed to trying it as long as Cwyn's doctor gave us the go ahead. I talked to her doctor and he preferred babies not have any solids until closer to 9 months because breastmilk/formula should still be the main staple in their diet. When I explained to him the concept of BLW and assured him that I would still be breastfeeding for all of her meals and just letting her explore and taste food, he agreed. Now I had the offical go ahead... And no idea where to start.
The first few months were crazy, messy, and scary. Cwyn has never choked but she's definitely had moments of gagging when she would get too big of a bite. I was always so nervous. I love BLW and once we got the hang of it it was so much easier than going the whole purée route. She ate at the table with us for every meal and was able to participate in her mealtime by learning to feed herself. To this day Cwyn has never not tried whatever we've given to her and there is no food that she absolutely won't eat. She still tends to be a little leary of some veggies (who isn't?!) but she'll still eat them. She is such a good eater and it makes me so happy knowing that she has a healthy approach to eating!
In the next post I'll explain how we started in BLW and what foods to give baby.
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