So, we at the Blakely household decided to enter the world of solid foods last night! We were planning on waiting until Noah turned 6 months old, but lately he has been reaching and grabbing for everything (including our food) and doing some serious chewing on anything he can get to his mouth (including my fingers...ouch!). So we decided to try it out a week and a half early.
After much reading and research, we have decided to go with a baby-led weaning method where you allow the baby to feed themselves finger sized pieces of food rather than spoon feeding purées. It is pretty amazing the things we have learned about how babies eat. God has created a pretty miraculous system. A baby's gag reflex is actually around the middle of their tongue when they are about 6 months old. As they get older it moves further back. So it's basically a safety mechanism so as they first learn to eat, their bodies make sure they don't get food too far back into their mouths where they can't spit it back up and end up choking. The problem is, our culture has stipulated that all babies must be spoon fed mush. When we put a spoon in a baby's mouth, we bypass their gag reflex. Then when we decide to give them finger foods, their gag reflex has already moved further back in their mouths and they tend to choke more because they never had the practice of feeding themselves solids when their gag reflex was further up helping to protect them.
Allowing babies to feed themselves allows baby to practice hand-eye coordination, to learn how to chew and use their tongues to move food around their mouths, and to explore different textures and tastes (purées obviously don't allow for any variance on textures, but they are also often a combination of more than one food so baby doesn't get to try the various individual flavors of foods). It also lets baby eat at the table with the rest of the family since they can eat the same or similar food as you rather than having to make special purées for the baby. The one downfall of baby-led weaning is it can get super messy...you are letting a baby play with his or her food, after all! But, I think that's half the fun :)
So our first experience with solids last night was pretty amazing! I am always overwhelmed with amazement watching Noah learn new things. I cut up a zucchini into about two inch chunks (an inch to hold, an inch to munch) and steamed it. We put him in his high chair and within less than a minute, he figured out how to grab the semi-slippery zucchini and get it to his mouth! At first he loved just sucking the juices out of each piece. Then he started to figure out how to scrap the flesh off of the peel to eat. It was so much fun watching him explore each piece. At one point he was able to bite off a little chunk. I was so tempted to scoop it out of his mouth for fear of him choking, but I watched as he concentrated really hard and slowly moved it around his mouth with his tongue and eventually let it fall out of his mouth. So AMAZING!! He never once gagged or choked and seemed to love every minute of his food exploration. I'm not sure how much he actually ate, but he got every single piece of the entire zucchini in his mouth for at least a few seconds! This sweet baby boy is growing up too quickly!
Have any of you tried baby-led weaning? We would love your tips and suggestions! What foods do you think we should try next? Please comment with your thoughts!
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