Transcript Episode 8: The 5 Things You Need to Successfully Start Solids with Your Vegan Baby
Karla Moreno-Bryce: When my daughter was about to start solids, I was incredibly excited. I was so ready to start feeding my daughter. I looked forward to preparing her food, I researched the best high chair and bought it months before she was even ready to start solids, and even looked for bibs that can easily take on the mess she would make.
As a dietitian and one who was already guiding parents on Baby Led Weaning, I couldn’t wait to get started with my daughter.
But there was just one problem, at 5 ½ months my daughter wasn’t ready. And waiting another day to pass by, hoping she was ready to independently sit on her high chair, wasn’t something I had the patience for.
For someone who is naturally a patient person, this sense of urgency was quite honestly unexpected and surprising to say the least. Imagine anxiously waiting at the airport to pick your loved one who you haven’t seen in months, only to find yourself constantly looking at your time wondering when they’ll enter the waiting area. Maybe that’s a bad analogy but I hope you get the idea of just how difficult it was for me to patiently wait for my daughter to be ready to start solids.
And that’s what I want to share with you today. In today’s episode, I want to share with you the 5 most critical things you need to successfully set you and your baby up for success in starting solids, specifically if your vegan baby is starting with Baby Led Weaning.
Now, before we get started, I want to address something so that we are all on the same page here. While you may already know that you want to raise your baby on a vegan diet, many continue to question and even discourage such a diet for an infant. The truth is, you can wean your baby on a vegan diet and it’s perfectly safe and healthy to do so. Just as long as key nutrients are offered in their diet so that they can grow and develop adequately.
Alright, so the first critical thing to have when starting solids with your baby is patience. I know that this may not be what you expected to hear and it also isn’t so much of a materialistic item to have for a baby but rather it’s an internal acknowledgement within yourself. And part of why patience is so important during the early stages of feeding is because learning to eat solid foods takes time. Your baby learned to reach for things on their own, they learned to roll over from their back onto their belly on their own, they learned to crawl on their own time without us intervening or manually taking their arms and showing them how to do it. It’s the same with eating solids. Your baby will show signs of readiness like sitting upright on their own without any assistance when they are ready to learn this new skill.
Eating is a new skill they come to learn and can master, just like rolling over and crawling. And it takes time. I remember just a few weeks after my daughter started solids, I was sitting next to my daughter while offering her a meal at her high chair. And after quite some time, I remember feeling disappointed and I just started crying. I was emotional because I felt an incredible sense of responsibility for the fact that my daughter kept squishing her carrot wedges without being able to bring anything to her mouth. She kept pushing food out with her tongue and just spitting out her food. I took it personally. And I remember looking over at Luke, my husband, and asking him “What am I doing wrong?”. I had this incredible vision of my daughter grabbing food and eating well, that when that expectation wasn’t met, for me, I couldn't help but take it personally. I just forgot to be patient with my daughter. To understand that she was learning about how to grab, hold, and bring food to her mouth. Mastering all of these incredible movements just required time. So, if your vegan baby doesn’t eat the way that you envision or want them to, know that they’re learning and the most important thing you can offer to them is patience. I know it’s hard but it’s so worth it.
The second thing to have when starting solids is to trust the process. This is very similar to having patience. So much of the time I hear from vegan parents that their vegan baby doesn’t like zucchini or that they spit it out and immediately come to believe that the baby must simply not like this plant food. Or that their vegan baby can’t actually handle solid foods and question whether going back to purees is best. And I can certainly understand that rationale but a baby spitting out food communicates to us so much more than that. It’s a baby’s way of saying, “I’m not sure about this texture. This is different.” And in fact it is because they’re so used to swallowing breastmilk or infant formula which doesn’t require any chewing.
So, yes, it's expected for your vegan baby to make some efforts with solid foods because this is all new to them. But just because they seem like they can’t handle a certain plant food doesn’t mean that they don’t like that food. They don’t know whether they like it or not. This is just the first time they’ve been introduced to this new food, new flavor. So, trust the process. And more specifically, the process of learning how to eat. Oftentimes we focus on achieving the results of the baby being able to eat well and to handle eating at a certain age and when the baby can’t meet that expectation, feeding becomes a bit frustrating. It becomes a negative experience for everyone involved in the feeding process. But I encourage you to trust your baby. Trust that your vegan baby can learn on their own how to handle and like different plant foods at their own time. When you trust the process of learning how to eat, your baby feels more confident in themselves to handle foods and associates eating as a positive experience. Speaking from my own personal experience, trust the process and feeding will become a bit less overwhelming.
Alright moving right along, the third thing to have when starting solids is a good high chair. In the world of baby items, there are hundreds of different high chairs available to us. A simple Google search when you type “best high chair for baby” will result in hundreds of articles talking about different brands, colors, styles, price, and so much more. And while these articles are helpful and give you an idea of where to start, they don’t talk about the one fundamental element that actually helps your vegan baby and that’s the ability to eat. While there are an incredible number of high chairs on the market these days, they’re not all created equal. Many high chairs aim to make our work as a parent easier in the sense that they are manufactured to make it easy to clean or be able to fold and put away during non-meal times. Now, don’t get me wrong, these are amazing features to have in a high chair but they don’t address the safety, comfort, and positioning that your vegan baby should have to be able to master the art of eating. When starting solids with your vegan baby, how your baby sits in the high chair is incredibly important and should take priority when considering a high chair. And if you're part of the Vegan Baby Led Weaning Program, a course that teaches you all about starting solids and nourishing your vegan baby, you know we go into this topic in more detail so that you can set your baby up for success from the very beginning.
Now, to give you a sense of understanding, I want you to quickly visualize how you sit at the dining table at meal times. I want you to picture yourself sitting on your chair. Where are your feet positioned? Are they hanging around or are they supported on the floor? Perhaps they’re supported on a bar if you’re sitting on a stool. Now let’s come to your hips. Are they at a 90 degree angle or do they sink back on the chair? Okay, now lets move a little further up to your shoulders. Do they have some room to move around or are they secured to the back of the chair? Can you visualize how you sit down for meal times, almost leaning a bit forward to help you bring food to your mouth? How you sit in a chair determines how well you can bring food to your mouth, without any distractions, discomfort, or challenges in actually enjoying your meal.
Many times when I work with parents and they come to me with their vegan child having eating difficulties or even picky eating, a lot of the times the problem is how they are seated in their high chair. If your baby or toddler is uncomfortable in any way or it makes it very challenging for them to reach for food when seated on their high chair, the last thing they want to do is eat. Now you’re probably wondering, alright Karla so what is the best high chair for my vegan baby? While there are just a handful that could work, the only one I recommend to parents is the Tripp Trapp high chair from Stokke. It is a bit of an investment but that investment is so worth it because the better your vegan baby is seated at meal times, the less feeding issues you may encounter later on. In fact, this is the same high chair I used for my daughter and it’s still the chair she uses at meal times because it grows with your child.
Okay, the next and fourth thing to have when starting solids is an open cup. When I work with vegan parents just starting solids, a few of them have attempted to offer liquid to their baby in a cup but more often than not, the cup that is used is not developmentally appropriate. Your baby can begin to drink from an open cup at the time they start solids, which for most babies that’s at 6 months of age. I don’t recommend the 360 cup or a sippy cup, again just like some high chairs, this is to make our life easier by not cleaning up messes but it doesn’t benefit our baby. They learn to rest their tongue differently and use their oral muscles differently to suck liquid out of the cup, potentially causing problematic drinking patterns throughout their childhood. I’ll leave a link in the show notes to the open cup I used with my daughter and the one I recommend to parents as well. Just remember to give your baby time to learn how to drink. Like eating, this is all a new skill they must learn not just on how to hold the cup with their two hands but how to tilt their head back and swallow. They may cough a lot at first and make spills but this is all part of the process of them learning a life-long skill.
Alright, and the final thing to have at the beginning of your BLW journey is the nutritional foundation that helps your baby thrive on a vegan diet. In the Vegan Baby Led Weaning Program, we cover all the necessary nutrients and supplements that your vegan baby needs to grow and develop properly. But I want to highlight one important nutrient that is crucial in having a strong nutritional foundation and that is dietary fat. Some of the vegan parents I’ve worked with in the past emphasize introducing vegetables and fruits to their baby, which are important plant foods to introduce at the start of solids, but they aren’t the priority when it comes to nourishing your baby. And this is because fruits and vegetables lack sufficient calories to support your vegan baby’s growth. They provide an array of vitamins, minerals, and overall health-promoting benefits but served alone, they don’t provide the energy that your baby needs to thrive on a vegan diet. Instead, focus your vegan baby’s first foods around plant foods that offer fat, such as avocado, tofu, and nut or seed butters.
Infancy is a time of rapid growth and just like iron, your vegan baby needs adequate energy to not only support their weight and growth but also their neurological development and brain function. About 40 - 50% of your vegan baby’s energy should come from fat and while this can be met through breastmilk and commercially prepared infant formula, solids should still prioritize this nutrient. You can still offer vegetables and fruits of course, but focusing your meal planning around plant foods that offer fat is important. So, while you may hear that vegan babies develop slower compared to babies not following a vegan diet, this is just not true as long as adequate nutrition like dietary fat is part of a baby’s solid foods. And if you’re curious to know what other first foods you can offer during your vegan baby led weaning journey, I’ll link a blog post to that in the show notes.
You don’t need fancy plates or the latest baby items when starting solids with your vegan baby, you just need the right tools and feeding approach to set yourself and your baby up for success. That is to trust the process and have patience with your vegan baby learning how to eat. Remember, this is a new skill that they must learn to master, just like rolling over and crawling. It requires time and showing trust will help your vegan baby learn to eat a variety of foods. Also consider an appropriate high chair so that your baby sits comfortably and safely to enjoy mastering the art of eating. If their feet, hips or back are not aligned appropriately, this may lead to certain feeding issues later on in their childhood. And by including dietary fat from avocado, tofu, and nut or seed butters in your baby’s meals, you’ll ensure that they’ll thrive on a vegan diet.
If you haven’t already, grab my Free Vegan Baby Led Weaning Guide to starting solids where I walk you through how to get started from how to know when your baby is ready to start solids, how to ensure a food is appropriate in size and texture to prevent choking, nutrition guidelines, and portion sizes. With this guide, you’ll have more clarity on what to focus on so that you can feel less stressed and more confident starting solids with your vegan baby.
Alright my friends, that is all for today. I’ll talk to you in the next episode. Bye for now.