How to be less anxious about weaning, with Liz Priest – Food For Kids Podcast episode 57

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. One of the reasons I wanted to make this podcast is because of how emotional feeding our children can be. There's so much information and judgement around when it comes to food and eating and we get very anxious about whether we're feeding our children right. And if our children don't eat exactly the way we think they're supposed to eat, it can make us feel incredibly vulnerable.

It starts as soon as we're pregnant worrying about what we're eating ourselves. It carries through into the incredibly sensitive topic of breastfeeding and formula feeding. And then just as we feel like we getting the hang of that, we're into weaning. And then we have 18 years of worrying about whether our kids are eating right. I invited Liz Priest on to talk about this. Liz is a qualified midwife and health visitor and runs a support service called Infant and Wisdom, which helps parents with pregnancy and early parenting both with practical skills, but also to make them feel more confident and enjoy it more.

Because of her work as a midwife and health visitor, and because she also works with tongue ties and other complex feeding issues, Liz has met a lot of parents who are feeling very unsure about themselves and their parenting, especially when it comes to feeding. I don't cover pregnancy and newborn topics at all on this podcast, but we have talked a bit about weaning and early feeding. In episode 24, we talked to Ailsa McHardy about how to know when your child is ready to wean. And in episode 53, we talked to Rachel Mujanovic about introducing family favourite foods early on, but I wanted to explore how much this period can be very exciting and very scary for parents. So I thought that Liz's experience would be perfect for this topic. So here's that interview.

Joanne Roach (01:57)

OK Liz. So like most things in parenting, there's different techniques out there when it comes to weaning babies. Everything from feeding them with a spoon with purees or right up to baby led weaning where children take the lead and pretty much everything in between. But regardless of which approach parents feel most comfortable with, there's still a lot of worry about doing it right. So in your experience, what are the things that parents worry about the most?

Liz Priest (02:23)

I think one of the main things really is listening to your instincts is quite difficult, I think. There's so much information about do this, do that, do baby led weaning, stay away from this formula, and we get all these messages but actually the main message really is that you need to only wean when your baby is ready. You get these messages saying wait till six months but actually the main thing is making sure your baby is safe and you feel safe as well and comfortable. If your baby can't hold their head up they're much more likely to choke or you're much more likely to feel really uncomfortable with it. So if that's at six months that's great, but if that's not till eight months, you know, that is also fine too.  Your baby is getting their nutritional needs regardless because you're feeding them. So your breast milk's got all the nutrients that you would want for a baby, but likewise, the formula, they have to have a certain amount of vitamins and minerals to meet baby's needs. So that element of the anxiety and worry is... “I've got to do this at exactly six months”. And I speak to parents and they'll say, well, they're not six months till tomorrow. And they are so rigidly following actually try not to pressurize yourself because they're guidelines, they're advice, they're based on an average.

And we put a lot of pressure, don't we, talking about baby-led weaning is the best one for a baby. And yes, ideally, because they can pick that food up with their fingers. So they're doing that sort of hand-eye coordination, developing those fine motor skills. But then they're also putting that food in the mouth and exploring it at their own rate, regulating their own diet. But actually, if you're really anxious about the choking and you want to start it slower, there is nothing wrong with giving them some spoon-fed food. That's absolutely fine. And what you can do in the meantime, if you're comfortable with it, is give your baby a spoon to hold and then they are still learning those fine motor skills. But you've got that confidence to sort of like create that calm environment for feeding and then it can be a lot more enjoyable rather than anxiety provoking.

And also a lot of parents are really concerned about choking and that creates so much anxiety and fear about this weaning process. And choking obviously is a risk with anything but we also forget to say there's a risk that everything goes right and everything we try works. And I always really advocate for that. If you ever have a thought thinking, what if, always think, well, what if it works?

Joanne Roach (05:03)

Yeah, that's true. That's good advice. And do you have any specific suggestions for people for whom that fear of choking really is the thing that's holding them back?

Liz Priest (05:12)

I am a massive advocate always to do first aid training. I think it's brilliant because it creates that confidence that you need and it also empowers you really with the tools. It's really empowering, really reassuring. So I'm a massive advocate for that.

But the reassurance is that part of the developmental process and part of the muscle development and those cues that babies are learning, they do gag. But there's a difference between that and choking. That gagging process is actually a very natural process. It's a muscle response. It's an innate response. And it's making sure that parents feel calm and confident to deal with that. And to give them something, and maybe they've gagged that first time, they brought it up, but trying it a second time, then they're developmentally learning. Actually, I need to chew on this. I need to use my hard palate and my gums to break this down so it's a manageable size so I can swallow it. And it's development and it's learning.

That is a really important message that this is all a developmental process. You're learning, baby's learning approach it really with an open mind and think one day I might not succeed with this, but the next day I might and just take it day by day, meal by meal. If you've tried breakfast and it didn't go down very well, doesn't mean that lunch won't go down very well. maybe just do it on one meal a day till you feel a bit more confident. If you're really worried, try weaning but in a public place. There's people around, you can ask for help. There's that reassurance that there's somebody there to communicate with. Try that, see if it makes you feel confident, give it a go.

Joanne Roach (06:48)

That's a really interesting idea because I think a lot of the time with things that we're worried about with parenting, we feel like we're going to be scrutinised and judged so much that what we do is take it into our home and do everything until we've got it somehow perfect at home before we let anybody see us do it. Whereas actually that's a really good point that if you're in a place where there's a lot of other parents around. Actually, that's a really good place to practice because there's always people around you who could help.

Liz Priest (07:15)

Yes, absolutely guaranteed there'll be somebody else there who's been through that process. They remember it. They know how it feels. They know that fear and they're there. They can support you. And I think we often think that everybody's going to have sort of that negative response, but actually nobody's perfect. Nobody gets it right first time, even if it goes right first time, guaranteed the second time it won't. For every person that judges there's at least 10 more that are supportive and the fact that you're worrying about it shows that you're a good parent because you care.

Joanne Roach (07:48)

Yeah, we're really often already doing the right thing. It's just that that comes with a lot of second guessing and overthinking.

Liz Priest (07:54)

We're designed to eat. We're designed to swallow. We're designed not to choke and learn these things because these are all survival instincts. Trust those survival instincts, trust those gut feelings and actually your baby will lead you in it. Just follow those baby's cues. And We get such a mix of advice - this guideline, that guideline, but actually your baby is the best guideline you'll ever have. They will tell you what they need, when they need it.

Joanne Roach (08:22)

So because of your health visiting and your specialist tongue tie work, you've obviously worked with quite a lot of parents for whom weaning and that feeding journey hasn't been straightforward. Do you see any other issues with the confidence of those parents and how do you try to help them?

Liz Priest (08:37)

Absolutely. It's very difficult when something doesn't go to plan and somebody said, well, this isn't working or the baby hasn't put weight on as we'd have expected. It's really hard to have those knockbacks But actually, there isn't anything you're doing wrong there, particularly like in cases where you've had a tongue tie. You've probably had a baby that hasn't settled, a baby that's probably got reflux, got wind, they may be gagging whenever they're feeding, You are constantly thinking, am I doing this right? I'm trying my best, I'm feeding my baby sort of every half an hour, but they're not settling. But there's a reason for it. If there's a tongue tie involved the tongue doesn't move as it's supposed to move. What you find is then whenever you put baby to the breast or you try and feed them with a teat, for example, it can't move in the direction it's supposed to. So then the milk doesn't come. So what actually happens, you get this sort of really negative process where mum gets sore or baby's being sick, but they're not gaining weight.

Then the supply and demand sort of process that goes on behind the scenes with the breast milk and the production of milk, the milk isn't being signaled to be produced. So it's this really hard process where you're not getting any sleep, you're getting sore, baby's being sick and people are saying things aren't working and you're trying your best.

That first period when you have a baby is so anxiety provoking as it is and then somebody says your baby's not gaining weight and you're thinking well am I failing here well actually no you're not failing the body will lose weight if it's not getting what it needs but if this baby hadn't lost weight we wouldn't know that there was a problem there. It's like this really annoying little tether of tissue that's pinning this tongue down. And that's what the problem is, not you or the baby.

But when you've had those kind of knockbacks, you become very hyper alert to thinking, Am I doing something wrong? Am I meeting my baby's needs? How will I know? You lose that confidence and trust in your own skill to really think, I know my baby best.

Joanne Roach (10:47)

Yeah, so you're losing what little confidence you already had as a new parent and you're doubting yourself even more.

Liz Priest (10:53)

Automatically your brain's thinking I'm going to protect myself by thinking everything's going to go wrong rather than thinking, actually, that was one setback and the next bit might go right. Then we come into the approach of then weaning with thinking, my baby gagged when I was feeding before. Does that mean that they're gonna choke when we're doing the weaning process? What if I do do this baby led weaning? Is baby gonna choke on these bigger things? It's that ability then to sort of feel confident again and think, actually, we had setbacks at the beginning, but that doesn't mean that those setbacks would then impact further.

And I think in those cases, it's just really important to think it doesn't matter if I don't practice a baby led weaning and let my child hold a piece of pasta straight away. I can use spoon feeding. It's fine. As long as you do the things that make you calm and confident in that situation, then your baby's needs will always be met because actually you can puree some lovely vegetables. You could have yogurts, for example, might have some porridge, for example, on a spoon. You're meeting your baby's needs. How you do it is absolutely fine. But what you don't want to get into is this... “I'm going to give baby a bit of food” and then as soon as they put it in the mouth, pull it away because you're really anxious because that's no good for you because you're anxious but it's also then baby thinks, “well, why is mummy pulling this away? Should it be something I'm worried about?” So take it slowly. If the guidelines say do something but you feel you can't do it, take it at your own time. It's okay to do that.

And I think that's the problem. We don't often feel confident, do we, to think I've got that compassionate feeling I'm not ready. Let's work this together and take it step by step. And it doesn't mean you've failed because you've not failed. You're doing it just in a different way. The end goal is exactly the same. We all get there, but we have different ways of getting there.

Joanne Roach (12:51)

So from working with all of these families, what do you most want listeners to know?

Liz Priest (12:55)

If I could wave a magic wand, would be that parents feel that they were supported to trust their own instincts. Whether it's weaning, sleep, feeding, breastfeeding, bottlefeeding You know your baby the best. You are around that baby 24 hours a day. It's easy for a professional to sit back and say, this should be done at that point or that should be done at that point. But they're not living with you. They don't understand your baby. They don't understand your life circumstances. You need to do you. Your baby needs to do them. And together you will get there. It doesn't matter how you've got there, but your instincts all come from love, nurture and experience of that one child and each child is an individual.

Just allow yourself a bit of self-compassion and just because it's like that one day doesn't mean it's always going to be like that. Take a day at a time, it makes it easier and if you're really anxious about things, reach out and talk to people because guaranteed you'll be talking to somebody else who's either been there or feeling the same. Communicating with others absolutely is key to successful parenthood.

Joanne Roach (14:08)

I thought that was so reassuring and kind and I hope you enjoyed it too. You can really hear Liz's experience with anxious parents shining through there. I love her advice to make sure that we only see each setback as an individual event and not as some harbinger that everything will go wrong in future and instead to have faith that there's no reason why things shouldn't work out just fine if we trust our instinct and honour our child's own timetable. I'll link in the show notes to Liz's website and Instagram page. So do go over and give her a follow.

Right, I'll be back on Monday with the next episode and I hope to see you there. And in the meantime, happy eating.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:57 What parents worry about with weaning

05:03 Advice for anxiety about choking

06:35 Getting out of your house can help with confidence

07:48 Trusting our guts

08:22 Anxiety when you have had a setback like a tongue tie

11:29 Wean the way that works for you and your child

13:41 Be kind to yourself and ask for help

14:07 Summary and outro