Weaning and IBD in family

[Chans11]

Hi, I am after some advice with weaning. My little girl is currently 4.5 months and I have been adviced to wait till 6 months to weaning due to bowel disease in my family (my dad had severe chrohns disease and died from bowel cancer and I have IBS). I would like to know of there is anything I should avoid and whether to start on purees rather than whole fooda. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks

The genetics of IBS is quite complex. Whilst there are several genes that predispose to it, they are not enough to be disease causing. Diet plays a pivotal role. The way a food is served, blended or whole , is far less important than what food is served. You should avoid sweetened, processed and canned food. A lot of industrial baby products are highly processed (rusks, puff, crips, ...) , highly sweetened even with "natural" sweetener such as apple sauce, so you should try to prepare and make your own baby food. Offering purees and soups will allow you to increase the variety and diversity of the vegetables you offer. Opt for plain product, so plain porridge and not sweetened porridge for babies, plain yoghurt and not the highly processed and sweet baby yoghurt pouches, a lot of legumes, either blended or in stew, ... think eating like a century ago, with the products that were available in the shops. Soy in its natural form so edamame, tofu ( which has been a staple in Asia for more than 1000 years) are protective.

Fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, limited red meat, real whole food is to be preferred. Avoid fried food, industrial baked goods, snacky food, sweet drinks, yoghurt, snacks at the very least in the first two years to encourage a healthy microbiome.

You can cook all the food, and present it with a spoon or fork. It doesn't make any difference. The debate is not on the consistency but on the food itself. One way doesn't preclude the other. We adults eat some food with a spoon (soup) , and other with our hands (blueberries) . As long as the food is real and not some engineered concoction that has not resemblance to the original ingredient, it is fine. An apple is an apple, you can grate it, cook it, or slice it, it doesn't change. But when an apple is used to sweeten pouches in weird combination such as pork roast with apple sauce (which should be called apple sauce with 10% pork given the ingredients) , to use the sweetness to make food palatable, it is wrong.

To make it short, if possible opt for homemade and low processing.

Many thanks for your reply, it makes alot of sense. I was more concerned about the digesting of food on BLW but am no expert so appreciate your advice

You are going to shape her digestive track. The first solids you offer will determine which gut species she will have and it is in your hand to try to limit inflammatory species. What will be key, is not the way the food reaches the mouth (spoon vs finger) but what food it is.

BLW seems to have lost its purpose to become a battle between spoon and finger. At its origin, BLW was to leave to the child the control of its feeding, allowing it to eat more or less, so the parent's role was to offer food and then step back l. On MN it has turned into a finger food vs blended food. Both can be whole food, and both can be super crappy food.

This two camps on what is best seem to have forgotten that quality of food is what is more important. Some BLW parents have great diet and will expose their child to a vast number of plants, some have a limited and repetitive diet and their child will only taste a small number of vegetables.

In your case, you need to consider the role of the microbiome, which starts in the mouth. The bacteria in the oral cavity play a huge role. Nothing precludes you from offering a whole well cooked asparagus whilst you prepare the soup/stew/puree so your DD can suck on the soft tip. She will be unable to break the hard stem. The same with a whole cooked broccoli floret. Give her one and she can again such or play with it, whilst you chop another in a small minestrone soup.

Her gut is ready to digest food. You shouldn't worry about this. You can offer soups or puree as first taste, but make sure the puree is liquid enough - just keep a bit of the cooking water when you cook the veggies in 3 cm of water in a pot - because she needs to learn to move her tongue to move the food towards the throat. Don't overload the spoon. At first just have half of it, just dip it in the food and let her taste. This will stimulate the salivary glands to produce saliva which will then lubricate the food and make it easier to swallow.

Stay away from the baby food aisle in the supermarket and focus on the fresh produce, so the vegetables and fruits, and then the whole grains, and later whole fish, frozen is fine but not processed such as fish fingers or other preparation, chicken again the real stuff, not the nugget.

You have 1 month to read a bit. Prepare her as much as you prepare yourself. Have her next to you when you prepare your dinner. Let her watch you chop veggies, look inside the fridge, smell what is cooking in the pan, and of course observe you sitting down at a table with your plate . She might get curious and try to reach, which is fine, and if what you have prepared is appropriate - no salt - she can have the tiniest possible piece on a baby fork.

It will be fine, and most importantly , it will be fun!!