Experiences of baby-led weaning: trust, control, and renegotiation

Baby-led weaning (Rapley 2013) is an approach to introducing solid foods that relies on the presence of self-feeding skills and is increasing in popularity in the UK and New Zealand. This study aimed to investigate the reported experiences and feelings of mothers using a BLW approach in order to better understand the experiences of the mother and infant, the benefits and challenges of the approach, and the beliefs which underpin these experiences. 15 UK Mothers were interviewed over the course of a series of five emails using a semi-structured approach. The email transcripts were anonymised and analysed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2006). There were four main themes which were identified from the analysis: i) Trusting the child, ii) Parental control and responsibility, iii) Precious milk and, iv) Renegotiating baby-led weaning. The themes identified reflect a range of different ideals and pressures that this group of mothers tried to negotiate in order to provide their infants with a positive and healthy introduction to solid foods. One of the key issues of potential concern is the timing at which some of the children ingested complementary foods. Although complementary foods were made available to the infants at 6 months of age, in many cases they were not ingested until much later. These findings have potentially important implications for mother’s decision-making, health professional policy and practice, and future research.