With baby-led weaning, skip spoon-fed purees and let babies feed themselves

As new parents, we get so used to doing everything for our babies that it's hard to wrap our heads around the idea of letting them feed themselves.

Spoon-feeding infants rice cereal and mashed up fruits, vegetables and meat is so ingrained in our parenting culture that most Americans have never heard of baby-led weaning, an approach I've used with both my boys, including the youngest, 8-month-old Avery, to help them transition from breast milk to solid food that skips purées and cereals altogether.

"Spoon feeding is left over from when people thought babies needed food very early," says Tracey Murkett, who has written two books on baby-led weaning ("Baby-Led Weaning" and "The Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook") with Gill Rapley, the British researcher and family nurse who coined the term about 10 years ago.

Murkett says that for a long time, parents were encouraged to start feeding babies "solids" in the form of rice cereal mixed with breast milk or formula at four months of age or even earlier. Now, the medical community, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommends waiting until closer to six months to start introducing foods other than breast milk or formula.

At around six months of age, babies are usually starting to sit up on their own and have lost the tongue thrust reflex that they had during the first months of life that pushed any foreign objects out the front of the mouth.

Babies at that age also start to reach for everything, and if your little ones have been anything like mine, one of the first things they start grabbing for is the food on your plate at dinnertime.

"It's very common to see babies turn their faces away (from a spoon), and parents try all kinds of tricks to get them to eat, saying ‘Here comes the train,' or something like that," Murkett says.

With baby-led weaning, parents let babies that are physically ready to eat something other than liquids to put foods that are easy to munch in their own mouths.

In the early months, it doesn't really matter if they are eating, per se, Murkett says. It's about exploring the taste and textures of food on their own terms. "They are learning the whole time," Murkett says. "They'll drop it to see what happens; they'll squish it in their fingers to see what happens."

"At first, parents often don't trust the baby to eat enough," she says, but studies have shown that babies are surprisingly good at self-regulating their nutritional intake when given a choice of foods.

Because they are also getting a steady supply of breast milk or formula, they'll eat more solid food at their own pace, as they are ready. Formula-fed babies, Murkett says, might be slower to embrace new foods because they aren't used to tasting different flavors that seep into breast milk.

Grandparents and child care providers might not be accustomed to giving up the plastic spoon and jarred purées, but Murkett suggests letting them watch the baby successfully feed himself. "That will be the thing that changes their mind," she says.

One of the biggest concerns is that babies who don't have teeth can't chew up pieces of food and will choke, but if you've felt a toothless baby gnaw on your finger, you know how powerful their bite is, even at an early age.

There's also a big difference between choking and gagging, Murkett says. Gagging means they are actually pushing food away so that it doesn't get close to the windpipe. Gagging prevents choking, and babies' gag reflex is even more advanced than adults'. Choking is more likely if there are lumps in mashed up-food that a baby is sucking down and not expecting or if children are older before they start being expected to feed themselves because their gag reflex isn't as sensitive. Regardless, parents should always supervise children while eating.

So, if you aren't giving your baby food that has the consistency of cream of wheat, what do you give them? Slightly softer versions of what you are already eating.

Steam vegetables or fruit a little longer than usual so that they are soft enough for them to squish between their gums, but not too soft that they fall apart when baby tries to pick them up. (Some foods, like bananas and avocados, are the perfect texture as is.) Cut foods into pieces that are thick and long enough to stick out of the baby's fist. Serve pasta with ridges or twists so babies can hold on to the pieces, and at the beginning, serve pasta without sauce so it's not too slippery. Rice is a little harder to eat for babies just starting out, but the smaller pieces help develop their pincer grasp between the index finger and thumb. Once they start getting better at feeding themselves, you can start to introduce meat.