{"id":11487,"date":"2024-08-19T09:01:40","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T09:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=11487"},"modified":"2024-08-19T09:23:47","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T09:23:47","slug":"more-parents-try-baby-led-weaning-and-skip-spoon-feeding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=11487","title":{"rendered":"More Parents Try \u2018Baby-Led Weaning\u2019 and Skip Spoon-Feeding"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A growing number of parents are skipping spoon-feeding their babies and trying \u201cbaby-led weaning\u201d instead.<\/p>\n

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Jenny Best was determined that her firstborn son would have a positive relationship with food from his very first bite. Years earlier, as a professional ballerina, she had struggled with disordered eating, and she wanted her son to think of food as <\/strong>fun.<\/p>\n

But no matter what she did, the baby seemed to hate eating.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made the homemade pur\u00e9es, and I got the expensive little baby blender, and I tried to concoct these things from scratch, and then, from Day 1, he didn\u2019t like it,\u201d Ms. Best said, wincing at the eight-year-old memory. \u201cHe was crying and arching his back, and turning his head, and particularly did not like me coming at him, at his face, with a spoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Best\u2019s son stopped eating altogether by his first birthday, and his weight dropped so precipitously that a doctor recommended a feeding tube. It took a team of therapists and dietitians to get him back on track. Ms. Best concluded that his issues stemmed from finding her spoon-feeding \u201cinvasive,\u201d and when she became pregnant with twins, she resolved to find a different way to teach them how to eat.<\/p>\n

She came across baby-led weaning, a concept pioneered in 2001 by Gill Rapley, a former midwife and public health nurse from Britain. In contrast to the conventional medical advice that parents spoon-feed babies special infant cereals and pur\u00e9es, parents instead offer their babies solid food that they feed to themselves, usually at around 6 months old.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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To the uninitiated, baby-led weaning can seem shocking and scary: You\u2019re really just going to hand an infant with no teeth a whole chicken drumstick? But proponents insist it is not only safe when done properly but also promotes oral- and motor-skill development and a healthier, happier attitude toward food.<\/p>\n

Ms. Best, now 47, began posting her first attempts with her twins on Instagram in 2019. They started off feeding themselves more traditional early foods, such as oatmeal and yogurt, but soon Ms. Best, an adventurous eater, grew bolder, offering them sardines, pieces of star fruit, even grasshopper and crickets. She watched in amazement as the twins delightedly grabbed, smashed, licked and tasted.<\/p>\n

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A growing number of parents are skipping spoon-feeding their babies and trying \u201cbaby-led weaning\u201d instead.Jenny Best was determined that her firstborn son would have a positive relationship with food from his very first bite. Years earlier, as a professional ballerina, she had struggled with disordered eating, and she wanted her son to think of food as fun.But no matter what she did, the baby seemed to hate eating.\u201cI made the homemade pur\u00e9es, and I got the expensive little baby blender, and I tried to concoct these things from scratch, and then, from Day 1, he didn\u2019t like it,\u201d Ms. Best said, wincing at the eight-year-old memory. \u201cHe was crying and arching his back, and turning his head, and particularly did not like me coming at him, at his face, with a spoon.\u201dMs. Best\u2019s son stopped eating altogether by his first birthday, and his weight dropped so precipitously that a doctor recommended a feeding tube. It took a team of therapists and dietitians to get him back on track. Ms. Best concluded that his issues stemmed from finding her spoon-feeding \u201cinvasive,\u201d and when she became pregnant with twins, she resolved to find a different way to teach them how to eat.She came across baby-led weaning, a concept pioneered in 2001 by Gill Rapley, a former midwife and public health nurse from Britain. In contrast to the conventional medical advice that parents spoon-feed babies special infant cereals and pur\u00e9es, parents instead offer their babies solid food that they feed to themselves, usually at around 6 months old.To the uninitiated, baby-led weaning can seem shocking and scary: You\u2019re really just going to hand an infant with no teeth a whole chicken drumstick? But proponents insist it is not only safe when done properly but also promotes oral- and motor-skill development and a healthier, happier attitude toward food.Ms. Best, now 47, began posting her first attempts with her twins on Instagram in 2019. They started off feeding themselves more traditional early foods, such as oatmeal and yogurt, but soon Ms. Best, an adventurous eater, grew bolder, offering them sardines, pieces of star fruit, even grasshopper and crickets. She watched in amazement as the twins delightedly grabbed, smashed, licked and tasted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11489,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11487"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11490,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487\/revisions\/11490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}