Ep 32 - Breastfeeding and ... Baby-led-solids

Breastfeeding and ... Baby-led-solids

Jessica and Jennifer talk about baby-led solids, a way of introducing solids using baby friendly family foods at around six months.

Links to resources and information discussed in this episode:

• . Solids - When do we start? 
• . Solids - Which foods first? 
• . Solids - Getting prepared 
• . Breastfeed first or solids first?
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Credits: This episode is presented by Jennifer Hurrell and Jessica Leonard. Audio editing and show notes by Jessica Leonard. Transcription by Leanne Matthews. Produced by Belinda Chambers, Jessica Leonard and Jennifer Hurrell.

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JENNIFER:  One of the big things about starting food is it's about learning how to eat food.  It's about learning the different textures and tastes, and so you want to expose your children to lots of different textures and tastes.  The foods that you eat, the foods that they're going to be eating as they grow up, because that’s the reality, part of it is introducing them to your diet.

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JESSICA: Welcome to Breastfeeding with ABA, a podcast brought to you by volunteers from the Australian Breastfeeding Association.  Breastfeeding with ABA is a podcast about breastfeeding made by parents for parents. In this episode, we're chatting about introducing solids and baby led solids. My name is Jessica and I'm a Breastfeeding Counsellor with the Australian Breastfeeding Association. My pronouns are she/her.

JESSICA: This podcast records in different parts of Australia.  We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands we’re that we're recording on and the lands you're listening on.

JENNIFER: My name is Jennifer and I’m a Breastfeeding Counsellor and Community Educator with the Australian Breastfeeding Association. My pronouns are she/her.

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JESSICA: We pay our respects to elders’ past, present and emerging and to any Indigenous people listening.  We also acknowledge the long history of oral storytelling on this country and of women supporting each other to learn to feed their babies.

JENNIFER: We'd like to acknowledge that today we're recording on the Land of the Dja Dja Wurrung people.

JESSICA: So Jennifer, what can you tell us about Dja Dja Wurrung country?

JENNIFER: What I know is that the land here, there have been people here for a very long time for, you know, millennia.  I suspect the people who lived on this land all had very different experiences because one part's cold and hilly and very moist.  And by the time you get up into the plains, it's quite dry and very flat land with big old lakes that would fill at times and at times be dry.

JESSICA: Fantastic.  Thank you so much.  And thank you for inviting me into your home as well.  So here on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, it's really great to sort of catch up and have a chat about introducing solids.  So we're going to talk about introducing solids, including baby led solids. But before we jump into the baby led side of things, let's start with chatting a little bit about introducing solids in general.  So when should that happen?

JENNIFER: So the Australian guidelines suggest around six months of age and that matches with our World Health Organization, who also say that babies should be starting solids at six months following exclusive breastfeeding or other milk feeding if that's needed up until six months.  So babies don't need any solids until six months of age.  Babies are born with iron and zinc stores at birth, that last them until about six months.  And breast milk also includes iron and zinc in lower levels to meet their needs.  Around six months they start need more and the stores start being a bit depleted, so they start needing to be offered food beyond breast milk that includes iron and zinc, things like red meat.  And so that's why the recommendation is that around six months.  And I think what's interesting is that there are times when people may have been told different things, that there have been different recommendations.  I know that some of the mums that I've supported through the Association have said, that's not what I was told.  I was told four months. So they always change the numbers, you know, the change how often.  And it's an interesting conversation because, the reality is the recommendation has been six months since before my daughter was born and she's 17.  The guidelines changed in 2003.  My eldest child was born in 2002 and when he was born, the guidelines said between four and six months.  But from 2003 they've been six months and it's been clearly that for now nearly 20 years.

JENNIFER: The challenge for some people is that out there, if you're looking in the shops, they still mentioned four months on their packaging.  The reality is that's not because it's the guideline.  Nobody monitors that, that's not policed or, you know, there isn't any requirement for them to have to match a particular thing.  Companies can put what they like on their packaging, but the reality is that the guidelines say around six months.  When a young baby is approaching that age, there may be some medical reasons why a health professional may recommend a different strategy.  But we know that for most babies, milk meets all of their needs until six months, and there's no need to offer them any solids before then.

JESSICA: So what if we're watching the baby?  How can we kind of know from the way that they're behaving that maybe it's around that six-month period of time, maybe they're ready for some solid foods.

JENNIFER: So babies need to be able to pretty much be sitting up, not all by themselves, but certainly not slumped, being able to sit up well and keep their head up nice and tall on their shoulders.  Babies need to be able to bring things well to their mouth, and that's a really good measure of a little one who can easily pick something up.  And they start picking their toys up, putting them in their mouth around for three, four months.  But they need to be doing it well, coordinated, by six months.  They need to have lost their tongue thrust.  So, babies actually have a protective mechanism and when they first start putting things in their mouth, they've still got that tongue thrust that's protecting their airway.  They're supposed to just be having milk and they don't need to be able to chew and swallow.  So their tongue basically pushes things out again, and that needs to be gone as well.  So babies need to be, and lots of people say, “my baby's watching what I'm eating”.  You're if you're having a glass of wine or eating an ice cream, they'd be watching you as well.  They're fascinated by what we do.  I mean, they really wanting to see everything that we're doing.  They're taking everything in with those little eyes.  But watching you eat and moving their mouth when you are is just the same as that.  When we talk, they talk like us.  That doesn't mean your little one is ready.  They really need to have those other markers - of losing the tongue thrust, to pretty much be nearly sitting up all by themselves or certainly able to sit in the highchair without slumping, not laid back and being able to well co-ordinate bringing their hands to their mouth to bring food to their mouth.  They're good markers and around six months.

JESSICA: Yeah, yeah and you can certainly before the age of six months sit your baby in a high chair at the table and give them a spoon with nothing on it or a toy that they can chew on so that they can feel like they're participating in that family time of dinner.  It doesn't need to be about the food, does it?

JENNIFER: No, absolutely doesn't.  And to be honest with you, they just want to be with us and they want to be, you know, participating in life at that stage.  They're really curious and wanting to do everything we do.  From my perspective as a mum, I think both my kids sat in the highchair before they started solids, one was sitting very early and the other one took a little bit longer, but it meant that it was at my level when I was having a cuppa, and I wasn't sitting down, I wasn't having that down at floor level where they mightn’t have been able to reach and it was on the table and then I would take them out of the highchair and I could keep an eye on them.  So they were part of my world well before they started solids.

JESSICA: So what about allergens?  So you say if somebody might be worried about allergies, there might be a family history of allergies.  Does that recommendation of around six months apply in that case as well?

JENNIFER: It does, absolutely.  So the recommendation is that for little ones who for any child actually there is a risk of developing food allergens.  We don't know who is going to be the most likely to do that.  You know, family history might say you've got a higher risk, but nobody in my family had food allergies.  And I do.  So, you know, it was a bit of a surprise to my parents.  So there's no way of really knowing just by guessing.  So what we know is that starting at around six months is still the right age for a child with a family history of allergens, and for any child they should be being offered those allergens between when they start solids and when they turn 12 months.  So that in those first six months of solids between six and 12 months, they're getting the chance to be exposed to those foods and the research shows they're less likely to develop a food allergy if they're having it in those first six months, which is great.

JESSICA: I've had the same experience.  I don't have any food allergies and I've got one child with multiple food allergies and one who is allergic to nothing.

JENNIFER: The research about allergies actually says that if you introduce allergens while you're still breastfeeding, your baby is less likely to develop an allergy to that food.  And I might talk about what some of them are if that's okay Jess.

JESSICA: Yeah, great.

JENNIFER: So dairy is one, egg, wheat, fish, peanuts, soy.  And I think there are a few others that, you know, have been added more recently.  I think things like crustaceans are on the list somewhere.  Other nuts, which, and it's really about getting some good information from your health professionals about what the other allergens may be that you should be considering exposing your little one to.  I have to say, as a mum who did a lot of feeding my children from the food I made at home, checking in on the egg and dairy and wheat, expanded our ability to offer them food that we ate, because if I was making zucchini slice and my child had had egg and dairy, they could now have the zucchini slice with me.  So if within those high risk allergens, there are food that your family eat a lot of, you would probably start with those and then move forward.  And you don't have to do them all in the first month, you're supposed to do them one at a time, over, you know, over two or three days, and then the next one.  But you might not do them all until they're like ten or 11 months, and that's okay.

JESSICA: And doing that over the two or three days, that's quite a practical thing, isn't it?  So that if your baby does come up with a reaction a day or two later, which can happen with some types of allergies, you'll know what the reaction was to, you’re not having multiple different allergens introduced to them at the same time.

JENNIFER: And I think that's, that's a safety thing to get an idea about what's likely to be an issue.  And to be honest with you, most common reactions are a bit of a rash or a vomiting.  It's usually pretty obvious that that's, you know, we've just tried something new and now this is happening.  Very occasionally, as we all know, babies can have things happen and it doesn't link to food allergens at all, but if you're starting solids and something like this happens with your baby, it is about seeing a health professional and talking through and working out what happened.  No need to panic.

JESSICA: Yes, absolutely.  So - cool.  So, we know that babies should start solids at around six months when they're showing signs of readiness.  You did mention that you like to give your babies things like pikelets and zucchini slice.  So is that baby led solids?

JENNIFER: Yeah.  So my, with my first child, I probably followed a more traditional method because I hadn't heard of baby led solids, but very quickly moved to that without knowing what it was called.  With my second child, that was the only way she was ever going to allow me to feed her was to let her feed herself.  She's a fairly determined little girl and she's no longer so little, but when she was little, she really wanted to feed herself and she wouldn't let me give her food on a spoon.  And as it turned out, I preferred it.  I could sit with her and she could feed herself and explore her food.

JENNIFER: So using baby led solids is an approach where you provide your children essentially with soft versions.  You might give them a piece of well-cooked potato.  You might give them a piece of stewed apple or stewed pear.  You might give them a piece of raw mango that's been, you know, in a nice slice or a piece of avocado.  And as they build their confidence in chewing those foods, you start offering them other things.  You can give them a piece of steak.

JESSICA: Yum!

JENNIFER: Yeah, a lamb chop.  My little ones quite liked, when they're bigger, not right at the six month mark by about nine months I make chunky meatballs and it was like they would like use their gums to, like, grate the meat into the mouth and “yum yum“ chew it away.  And they adored meatballs for quite a long time.  The meatballs were, you know, pretty handy size for them and was a great way to sort of have a bit of them, have a bit of play, and a bit contained.

JESSICA: And meatballs are a great as they get a little bit older when they do go through those fussy ‘not wanting to eat vegetables’ phases if you can, you know, you can just grate a bit of carrot, bit of zucchini into meatballs, and they're a little bit hidden, but they can still kind of, you know you can leave them in larger grated, so they can see them well.

JENNIFER: And the other thing about that often when you're, because you're not supposed to use salt or sugar really in babies’ foods, and so often if you're offering them a piece of steak or a chop, it's fairly simple.  It's just that meat cooked.  But you can add some, into meatballs, you can add some ginger or some garlic, or you can add in some herbs, some different flavours that might be part of the food that you guys eat.  So for me, one of the things was we like to eat food with sort of an Indian palate.  And so I could use some of those spices in their meatballs, not necessarily a lot of chili, because that wasn't what I was looking at, it was the different flavours.  And my kids could have like something with some lots of turmeric and other things in it one day and then something else that was more Asian with, you know, some lemongrass and some ginger so we could mix up the flavours and expose them to those different flavours without having to make a lot of change to the other things we were eating.

JESSICA: Yeah, I've certainly spoken to a lot of mums, though, I know you said that you didn't give your kids a lot of chili and I don't eat a lot of chili.  My children don't eat a lot of chili.  I like to joke that we're all very, very white, but the way that I eat, it’s I don’t like spices.

JENNIFER: It’s pretty vanilla, that’s the way it’s called as well

JESSICA:Very vanilla, yes, there we go,  but I've spoken to a lot of mums who do eat a lot of chili and spicy, very spicy food in their diets, and they just have always fed it to their babies in the same way they've gotten used to it through their breast milk.

JENNIFER: Well, they've even gotten used to it from the amniotic fluid because when babies are inside us, the amniotic fluid tastes like what we eat, and so if you then are eating that same food where you're breastfeeding, that's one of the amazing things about breastfeeding, is breastfed babies are tasting different flavours every day.  The milk changes based on what we eat.  If I've just had a massive Italian meal, it's that's steeped in garlic, well so is my milk.  If I've just had an Indian meal, then there's some beautiful curry leaf flavour in there.  And if I've just had a lovely Asian meal, they might be like than ginger and lemongrass in my milk.  The reality is our milk changes flavour in a way that exposes our children to different flavours, which means sometimes I can be more adventurous.  Now that doesn't apply to all babies, but it's probably more common.

JESSICA: Yes, definitely.  Yeah. I even remember one story of a mum feeding her bub, maybe one year old very spicy curry and he thought it was so delicious, but it was so hot that he was spooning it into his mouth as he could.  But he was going <breathing sounds> in between taking big mouthfuls because he was he was quite happy to eat food that I would not go anywhere near, as, you know, a very vanilla ..

JENNIFER: See I like spicy food, but my partner doesn't.  So it's more that I didn't add some spice into my kids meals as they got older.  But when I started off, I have to be honest, I was cooking the same sort of thing for my partner.

JESSICA: Yeah.

JENNIFER: So it was about making sure that I was making food that we would eat, and then I just put chili on mine afterwards.

JESSICA: Yes. Yeah.  And I think so much of the benefit of the idea of baby-led solids is that you do not have to buy, mush or blend up and create a different meal for everyone in your family.  It's maybe you have to vary a couple little bits and pieces that you put onto your baby's plates, cook them slightly longer, or cut them into smaller, more appropriate pieces.  But you're eating a meal as a family together.

JENNIFER: Yeah, I think that was one of the reasons I really enjoyed it.  The other really was that my second child particularly preferred it.  With my first, very happy to be fed on a spoon as long as he had a spoon as well.  And that's what we did, that more traditional style.  But if I'm talking about baby-led solids, I think the other thing to talk about is that it is about making sure the food is nice and soft, that it is easy for a child without a lot of teeth to deal with it until children have got their molars.  They really do need some help to break down food, so it needs to be often cooked.  Raw apple isn't going to be appropriate food for children in a whole state until they've got a lot of teeth.  But some grated apple might be okay.  Some cooked pieces of apple will be fine as well.

JESSICA: And little slices of apple.

JENNIFER: Yeah

JESSICA: Or if you've got one of those little machines, that spiralises oh kids love those.  

JENNIFER: They do.  And with babies, as I said before, mango is a great food or banana or avocado.  You know, that's all ready to go.  But it doesn't have to be that squishy, it could be, I mean, a piece of carrot that's been cooked that's a piece actually retains its texture a lot more.  So you're exposing to children to different textures.  The big thing is children, one of the big things about starting food is it's about learning how to eat food.  It's about learning the different textures and tastes.  And so you want to expose your children to lots of different textures and tastes, the foods that you eat, the foods that they're going to be eating as they grow up, because that's the reality, part of it is introducing them to your diet.

JESSICA: What sort of things might people need to watch out for if they're going to try some baby-led solids?

JENNIFER: So I think one of the big things we need to be mindful of is that whenever you're feeding your child, whether it's a more traditional form with spoon feeding or baby-led solids, is you need to be with your child and it can't be left unattended.  They need to have an adult with them watching them to make sure that they're managing the food appropriately.  My eldest child used to try to put a whole piece of roast potato in his mouth and he would then try and keep his lips closed by putting his hand over his mouth and keep trying because he was not letting that out.  But the reality is we used to have to take it out, cut it into a smaller piece and say “you need to take a smaller bit mate”. This is at six or seven months.  He was very adventurous, like “I’m eating it all and you're not going to take it away from me”. But it was a safety risk, so we needed to make it smaller.

JENNIFER: You want to keep an eye on your children so that there isn't an increased risk of things like choking.  Children's airways are quite small, so something like a grape may be just the right size to, if they were to breathe it in, to go into their airway.  So giving them pieces of, say, grape cut into quarters and when you cut it into quarters, you're cutting into quarters long ways.  So you're trying to make it long and thin and narrow so that it's not a chunky piece that’s going to sit in their airway .. Cutting cherries and taking the pip out and cutting them to little pieces, making sure the pieces you're giving them are nice and soft and easy for them to eat.  One of the things one of my children liked was honeydew and rockmelon, but it's really firm and hard for them to eat, so I had to wait till they were older to give them very much.  I used to just make it into little slivers and let him chew on it so he could get the juice out.  He couldn't bite into it and actually crush it until he got molars.  So you just being very mindful, sitting with your child, keeping an eye on them.  Most of the time, if a child's monitored well, you'll identify if there's an issue for them where they might have had an issue with a particular food.  But if you're monitoring what they're doing, they're far less likely to have a situation where they might choke.

JESSICA: Now, I know that you and I both talked about in the past that we've both had one child who is mad keen on solid foods and one who was less keen.  So what about for those children, like one of each of our children who is massively keen on solid foods and they just want to eat and eat and eat .. what sorts of things might people need to watch out for?

JENNIFER: So it's really important. Breastmilk still meets a very high percentage of their nutritional needs when they're between six and 12 months.  It's still there, the majority of the nutrition, it's not all of it, that's why they need other food.  But there is a risk if a child eats too much that they won't drink enough and they may then end up, because they cannot readily absorb everything that they eat, not meeting their nutritional goals or not getting all of their new nutrients in because they're having too many or too much of one thing.

JENNIFER: So generally it's certainly recommended, particularly in the first two or three months of solids, to always offer solids after they've had a big drink of milk so that they've got a relative full tummy and they're eating for curiosity, interested in the taste and a little bit of nutrition.  They're not losing a breastfeed in the moment because they're so full that they can’t come back to the breast.

JESSICA: So you mentioned choking.  Can you talk a little bit about what does choking look like and when should people be alarmed if they think their baby’s choking?

JENNIFER: Choking generally looks like a child who's struggling to breathe, can be silent because the airway is blocked and therefore the child can't make noise, and they can, they can become very distressed very quickly.  It's very different to gagging when a child perhaps moves food further back in the mouth a little <gagging sound> and then bring the food back out.  It's very unpleasant, gagging.

JESSICA: It’s awful

JENNIFER: All babies do it, but it's you watch them if they're when they're playing with their hands, they do the same thing. They're working out where the gag reflex is in their mouth, and they'll often overshoot with their fingers and and have a little, make a little noise or even sometimes do a little vomit because they've gone too far back in the same with their food, like my son putting too big a piece in his mouth.  I knew he was very happily overriding that gag reflex, I think.  But I was worried about choking.  My second child certainly would have gagged if she'd put something that big at her mouth and it wouldn't have stayed in.  Yeah, so it is about and gagging tends to be noisy and it tends to be over very, very quickly.  They get they could do a little noise and then the food is spat out or back in the mouth.

JESSICA: It's quite useful though, because they've, they've overfilled, they've hit the gag reflex.  The gag reflex does what it's supposed to do and it moves the food away from the back of their throat and it goes back into their mouth and it's problem solved.  It's, it can feel really scary.

JENNIFER: It can, but it's your child's learning what's appropriate.  And the thing about eating is it is about learning .. it’s learning “How do I eat?  How much can I fit in my mouth at one time?  How much can I put in my mouth without mummy getting cross with me?  What happens if I put too much in my mouth?”  And all of that is really relevant and chewing is really important.  That's why offering solids in that sort of baby-led approach is a really great way because it allows children to chew.

JESSICA: What are some of your favourite meal ideas for little babies?

JENNIFER: So I think for little ones, probably between six and sort of eight months.  My kids loved once [they] are able to well cooked egg, boiled egg mashed up with some even a little bit of breast milk in it just to make it a little bit softer for them when they first spoon feeding and then roughly mashed and they could pick it up and feed themselves.  Eggs, it was a great thing for my kids to eat because it was sort of all in one and it met a few different needs as far as vitamins and protein.  For little ones, I loved the mango seed.

JESSICA: Oh yes. And just letting them suck on it

JENNIFER: Letting them sit and suck on it for ages and gnaw away

JESSICA: particularly in the bath because they get very, very messy.

JENNIFER: They do get very, very messy.  But it's really good when they're teething because they can sit there and chew and pull on those little hairs on the mango seed and they often really enjoy it.  My kids love banana.  What I did learn though, is banana stains clothes really easily, so I've got to quickly rinse them off because it leaves brown and black marks on the clothes and my children really, really liked once they were able to have it - pasta.  So pasta with something.  So I would do like a pumpkin puree and mix it through their pasta or I do tomato sort of sauce and put it through their pasta.  And my daughter couldn’t eat enough pasta.  She could eat more pasta than her dad at like nine months. Yeah, she was that was her favourite thing.  Like, she's still the pasta queen.

JENNIFER: So they were the things my kids had when they were little.  And then from about sort of 8 to 9 months along, that's when we did more the meatballs they were having meat earlier, but they were probably having it more finely ground or, you know, well broken down in a casserole or something and pulled apart.  So it was a bit easier for them to eat.

JENNIFER: I started giving them chops and pieces of steak and even strips of chicken.  And I used to use like the chicken tenders like for at home I used to make them myself.  And just bake them with a little bit of a tomato base on them or a little bit of, we use verjuice a bit, which is like a vinegar type

JESSICA: Like a vinegar type … like a white wine vinegar

JENNIFER: Sort of like a vinegar .. a little bit of flavour on the outside with some herbs and toss that through it and then bake it.  And my kids thought that was the best.  And I think they convinced them that's what chicken nuggets were.  So we never actually had to deal with the chicken nugget passion because they thought that's what chicken nuggets were to begin with.  And my kids also really liked things like um, Shepherd's pie.  My kids loved curries very early on, but again, they were mild.

JESSICA: My kids, I think probably the two that stand out for me most were lamb cutlets and they would just hold it by the bone.  So it's like it's food that comes with a handle.  But the other one was little cut into triangle pieces – watermelon.

JENNIFER: Yeah!

JESSICA: Watermelon’s fantastic.  Especially for really hot weather, it comes straight out of the fridge, it's really hydrating.  They get all sticky and then they want to get in the shower, which can be really difficult to make little ones want to get in the shower.  But my one word of warning about watermelon is that it does come out the other end.

JENNIFER: Yeah.

JESSICA: and that's, I think another thing about baby-led solids that can be quite different to purees is that, you know, babies can get decent sized chunks of food down their mouths and it comes out in a way that it might not necessarily come out with, period.

JENNIFER:Yeah, when my daughter was about 11 months old, we were picking berries and we sat her on the picnic rug with a nice hat on under the shade while we were picking berries, and we had the basket, we’d bring the basket of raspberries back and put them on the blanket and go off and get more.  So we were all watching as someone was taking turns to keep it an eye on her but nobody was really watching what she was doing.  She was mainlining those raspberries.  She ate, I don't know, half to a full kilo of raspberries by herself sitting on that picnic rug.  That nappy was like sand at the other end.  It was quite disturbing.  So children will over eat sometimes and as long as it's not an everyday occurrence, it's not the end of the world.

JESSICA: How was the colour of that nappy?

JENNIFER: It was just sandy.

JESSICA: Yeah wow.

JENNIFER: All the red, I don't know where, it just like seeds from the raspberries out the other end.  It was literally like sand.

JESSICA: So what about things like water or other drinks that people, I know a lot of people ask about that.  “When do I start giving my baby water in a cup or other liquids and fluids to drink?

JENNIFER: It's a great question.  So we know that babies under 12 months will still be getting most of their fluids through milk feeds.  So whether that's breastfeeds, expressed milk while they're with someone else or even some formula, babies do not really need additional fluids, but they need to learn how to use a cup.  So the idea is you offer cooled boiled water in a cup with meals, small amounts probably, so they're learning that process of using a cup, learning how to use a straw cup, learning maybe a sippy cup or an open cup, it's really your preference.  Because it's water, it's a bit easier to deal with the mess if they spill it than if you've offered them something else in an open cup, for example, babies shouldn't be offered any other milks to drink before 12 months than breast milk, or if they're having formula, formula.

JENNIFER: What we know is that until 12 months, cow’s milk or other milks that you may use in your home are not appropriate for babies to drink until they're over 12 months.

JESSICA: What about other fluids that people might ask about offering to their babies, things like juice?

JENNIFER: That's a great question.  So juice is not recommended.  Juice really provides babies with very little nutrition. It's mostly lots of sugar and it doesn't meet their nutritional needs. They really need the food.  So if you're wanting to offer them something that's, you know, some orange, give them a piece of orange to chew on when they're, you know, six or seven or eight months and they'll suck the juice out of it, but they'll also get some of the fibre and they're learning how to eat.

JESSICA: So what about as babies get closer to that sort of 12-month mark, what happens with sort of cow’s milk then in terms of people wanting [to] offer it

JENNIFER: Once the little ones over 12 months, if a family are looking to continue to breastfeed, they can continue to breastfeed for as long as they'd like.  If a family are looking to reduce breastfeeding or wean down from breastfeeding, or weaned off formula, babies can transition to full cream cow’s milk at that point.  So at one, babies can have full cream cow’s milk as a drink, usually from a cup.

JESSICA: Jennifer can you tell me a little bit about what do people need to know if they are wanting to not do the baby-led solids or not do it all of the time and do the more traditional approach?

JENNIFER: Yeah, so the traditional approach, which used to be really starting with purees and they were initially doing it because if a child was on formula, formulas were lacking back into the twenties, thirties and forties, formulas were lacking some of the vitamins that babies needed, and if they didn't have some food as well, that would be particularly to meet those nutritional needs, they would become sick with things like scurvy or Ricketts.  So purees were developed to meet that need and given to babies who had a tongue thrust.  But because we're starting at around six months, most babies have lost that tongue thrust and so babies don't really need purees.

JENNIFER: They do need pretty soft food maybe to start with.  So might do well mashed food, you might do a puree, but pretty quickly children need to be chewing.  And so things with roughly mashed food you might do well chopped down bits of meat in their food so it's broken down a bit more.  But the lumps of potato might be a little bit bigger, the size of a pea or bigger and quickly then moving on to just lumpy food and then often a bit of a mix of both anyway.  So that traditional approach, which starts with fairly soft, well mashed food, moves through to roughly mashed and lumpy food by eight months.  So it's quite quick, it's you're not staying on even that mashed food for very long at all.  That traditional approach is something that works for some families who may have a little one who doesn't like to get dirty.  But it is important for children to learn about their food, and that includes getting their hands dirty, so doing a bit of a combo can be good.  It is an easy to do baby, you know, baby-led food, when you're out at a restaurant where a child is going to make a lot, it may make a quite a bit of mess, so you might prefer to spoon feed them when you're out at somebody else's house or when it suits you because you've just put clothes on them and now they need to eat and you want to keep those clothes clean.

JENNIFER: There's lots of times when we might need to use a spoon, so it's fine to do a bit of both, and it's fine to have a preferred pathway, but kids probably need to know how to be fed with a spoon.  They need to learn how to use a spoon themselves, by time - they can't do that until they’re over one and they need to learn how to feed themselves with their fingers so they can explore that food and and get to know how far back things can go in their mouth.  One of the risks when we put things like lumpy food in a baby's mouth or even a piece of food, is that if we put it in their mouth, they're not in charge of their, how much is going in.  And that's where if you're giving a child a piece of food to eat, you should always let them put it in their mouth.

JESSICA: And I think that if we think about baby-led solids as the goal is to get babies eating family foods with the family in the way that the family does, sometimes adults eat with spoons too, and that's absolutely fine.  You don't need to be sort of purist about this approach of only letting babies feed themselves.

JENNIFER: No, and look to be honest, my kids loved soup.  And I used to make their soup fairly firm, so it was pretty easy, but there was no way they could pick it up with their fingers.  They didn't make it very liquid because that then meant it was harder to get on a spoon and into their mouth.  But, you know, a fairly chunky pumpkin soup, or a well made when they were a bit older, a minestrone on a spoon was much easier.  They would pick it up, they'd give them the liquid on their spoon and sometimes feed them as well.  It is great to do a bit of both, and what works?  Each family will be different.  Some families much prefer traditional, some families prefer purely baby led, but I think most families do somewhere in the middle.

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JESSICA: Although it kind of covers everything, so thank you so much for speaking with me today about solids and baby led solids.  You can check out the shownotes for a link to this episode's companion blog and to some other information as well.  If you are in a position to support the work that ABA does financially, you can become a member by visiting, breastfeeding dot asn dot au, and that'll link you in with your local group as well.

Jessica - If you need some online support, you can join our “Breastfeeding with ABA” Facebook group.  So there's three joining questions to get into that group, make sure you answer those first.  If you need to speak with a breastfeeding counsellor, you can call the National Breastfeeding Helpline on 1800 686 268.  So that's open 24 hours a day every day of the year.  Our live chat service is another option.  You can check the website to see when that's open.  Thanks so much for listening. We'd love it if you can rate, review and subscribe to the Breastfeeding with ABA podcast wherever you are listening.

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