Hi everybody.
Welcome back to Cloudmom.
Question of the day: what do you do with a clingy baby?
And part two of this question, which came in from 17 shower, what are your thoughts
on baby led weaning?
Well first of all on the clingy baby.
With my babies, if I felt that they needed to be cuddled or hugged or, you know, spend
some time with Mommy or nursed or whatever, I just cuddled or hugged or nursed them.
I mean, I just tried to be as affectionate as possible with my babies and I loved having
them and carrying them.
And I had them in the carrier as much as I could and spending as much time with them
as I possibly could, which I loved to do.
And it helped me nursing-wise too, because I found that with a lot of physical proximity,
it helped my milk supply.
So that is that.
However, with my babies from the very beginning, I did try to establish what I would call some
physical independence or autonomy.
Getting the baby used to sleeping in the crib, being in, you know, a in a play mat-type situation
or in a bouncy seat, because that freed me up to do what I needed to do.
And I felt like I could get a break.
So in terms of a clingy baby, I don’t know exactly what the circumstances are, but I
would say, you know, give as much affection as you can.
But try to establish that autonomy where and when you can.
If your baby doesn’t want to leave you at all, you might try a bouncy seat with a lot
of good and entertaining sort of things for the baby to look at.
And that might help.
You might also try having her be clingy with someone else, like your husband or your mom.
Okay.
Second part of your question: what are your thoughts on baby led weaning?
I’m so glad you asked this question, because I actually had no idea what this was.
I thought baby led weaning meant allowing the baby to decide on his or her own that
he or she is finished breastfeeding.
And it’s not something I believe in, because I think babies could breastfeed for as long
as, you know, the mother is willing to try to make it work and able to make it work.
I don’t believe in letting the baby choose when they want to wean, but that’s just
my own personal experience.
What baby led weaning means is actually something quite different.
And I had to look this up.
It means that it’s a way of introducing solids to your baby where babies feed themselves
from their very first mouthfuls of food at around six months.
So what you’ll do is offer finger foods that are suitable for his or her age, you
know, very, very soft cooked broccoli is an example.
And you’ll put it in front of your baby, and your baby might eat it or your baby might
just play with it.
Um, it’s apparently something that’s very big in the UK.
And, you know, here are some of the advantages that people talk about.
Your baby experiences a lot of textures with different foods early on.
Um, some parents swear by this and say their kids will try just about anything that’s
put in front of them.
Um, and here are some cons.
You don’t start with purees so it’s harder to rule out allergies.
And you can really waste a lot of food, because you’re putting a lot of food in front of
that baby that you’re not sure whether he or she will eat at all.
And then they’ve touched it and everything so it’s kind of hard to use it.
And then some other pros again: independence, joy in eating and maturity, so a really interesting
concept here.
Rather than doing what I recommend on my website and my shows on solids and what my doctor
recommended to me (introducing a new food every few days starting with very, very soupy
purees, moving to chunkier purees and then moving to food that has a little bit of more
substance and finger foods, stage one, stage two, stage three), just starting out with
foods that can be ingested by baby on his or her own from day one.
What do you guys think of this idea?
Do you think it would work for you?
I guess one option is to do this with certain foods but not all foods.
I mean why couldn’t you combine baby led weaning with the introduction of, um, soupy
pureed foods that are given out by mom or dad on a spoon?
I don’t know.
So guys weigh in.
What do you think about this concept?
I’d love to hear it.
Please share your experiences with introducing your baby to solids.
And thank you so, so much for watching Cloudmom.
I really, really appreciate it.