To really not understand baby led weaning?

If she’s just 7 months old the bulk of her nutrition is from breast milk or formula. Baby led weaning at that age is just an introduction to solid food, follow all current guidelines and baby will be fine.

Just to say if they couldn’t pick it up, it wasn’t considered safe - definitely no ‘popping it in’ for them.

I didn’t do any kind of spoon feeding or purees. I disagree it’s a fad - my kids are 14, 12 and 9 so it’s been going on at least that long.

I put stuff on their tray. If they ate it, fine, if they didn’t fine. I was BF on demand though so they never ‘missed a feed’. My twins - my son ate anything he could shove in from 5 months, my daughter had about a lick of a rice cake by the time she was 1 and didn’t eat much food for ages - and still eats about half the amount of her brother.

just do what suits you though - I couldn’t understand the appeal of purées.

How are you getting on now @Leavetowean I’m in exactly the same position as you were a couple of months ago! Please tell me it gets better?

According to Gill Rapley, it's a safety thing: as PPs have said, babies' gag reflex is triggered further forward in their mouth than adults', so the baby will gag if they put it in too far and learn not to do it. If an adult is popping food in, (a) there's a choking risk because you can put it too far back, and (b) the baby doesn't learn by trial and error. Similarly with cutting up food into small pieces rather than big, as you mention in a previous post - smaller pieces are easier to choke on especially if put too far into the mouth by an adult.

The 'feeding when not hungry' thing did seem counterintuitive but in practice we still see with 2.5 year old DS that he is much less up for trying new foods when too hungry or too tired. When he was a hungry little baby expecting milk, he would not have been messing round experimenting with sticks of broccoli.

You've got a 6 month old, you're entitled to feel tired and stressed. I did not enjoy the baby stage at all, although weaning I found quite fun. Bet there are parts of parenting you are better at than I am though (Just had an argument with my DD, about my hair colour. Not a high point).

I found it much less enjoyable with my second which I think was down to having to fit everything else in. Plus I was very sleep deprived and dealing with the mess after each mealtime really wore me down. I also hoped she would take to food really quickly and that it would help with sleep (it didn't!). The only thing I can say is it won't last forever but you know that so I am not sure it's of much help.

Sorry, my comment wasn't aimed at you, you've seemed quite sensible and reasonable in all your posts. I was responding to LetsGoOutside who is quoted in the post above who was rather forthright in their disdain for BLW so I responded in kind.

What are you even talking about?! It's not a 'trend'. It's literally how babies have been weaned for years and years. And there is no salt or 'other ingredients' if you give you baby real food. I gave my babies sticks of steamed broccoli or roasted sweet potato for them to suck on. There was no salt! You just sound really misinformed.

I’m a big fan of baby-led weaning aka just a fancy new term for what parents have been doing since the dawn of time…. But it doesn’t matter what me or my children like.

Don’t listen to us angel we are just randos on the internet, I would give your health visitor a ring. That what they’re there for! Mine even offered me a course on how to do it but it’s not my first rodeo so gracefully turned her down. Best of luck to you and your little one it will all be okay.

Fair point but they probably mashed the food up rather than served huge pieces of it. That was the part of BLW I struggled with. I feed my baby mostly the same food as us (minus the salt etc) but mashed. My baby doesn’t take tiny bites of things as all the BLW guides suggest, she takes huge mouthfuls or crams the whole thing into her mouth.

Gagging is completely normal. It's not the unpleasant experience that we have as adults.

It's how baby stops themselves from choking.

Teeth don't matter. Baby's gums are really hard enough when ready to start chewing.

It's scary for you but not baby.

To start with baby will mostly just play with the food. Then it will get sucked and licked.

It can take weeks before anything actually get eaten.

All babies eventually have to eat real food one way or another. This just goes it at baby's pace.

Sorry you're having a hard time OP but I don't recognise the stress over it. I just gave him bits of whatever we were eating in age appropriate sizes and was sensible about choking hazards.

Weaning can be messy but that's just how it is. You said she isn't learning anything by spitting her food out but of course she is. She's literally learning how to manipulate her tongue and mouth to handle food.

If she's not even 7 months yet there's no harm in taking a break from it for a couple of weeks. They barely eat in the beginning anyway. Most of it just ends up on them or on the floor. Dial back the effort.

Yes, it was around when DS was a baby but I didn't know many people who did it then. I didn't use jars myself but lots of my peers did and most weaned before 6 months.

I felt the same as you. Then started only purées until I was comfortable to go more solid. My almost 5yr old is now a brilliant eater. You have to do what works for you

The advice to wean at 6 months came in in 2003 so it's been in place for over 20 years, that's hardly 'changing all the time'.

Gill Rapley's book had just come out though so you're right that BLW was fairly new, I only learnt about it the year before because our local breastfeeding coordinator suggested it and I spent a lot of time on babyledweaning.com. As soon as I read about it I knew I wanted to do it with her, it made so much sense to me to let her control what she ate. DD1 took to it like a duck to water so influenced a few people I know to try it, but I think it doesn't suit every parent.

BLW is everywhere these days so you feel like it’s the right way to do it but the old fashioned way worked best for us! It’s also way less messy.

Pretty sure my grandparents didn’t feed my parents jars of baby food. Unless a parent specifically gave them purées or jars of baby food, they fed babies bits of the food they were having.

I did purees but advice changes all the time, this was 15 years ago. I also weaned at 4 months.

@Seashor oh be quiet 🤣 what a silly thing to say.

@LetsGoOutside you're a first time Mum to a 8 1/2 month old. So you've been weaning for, what, 10 weeks. Do you not think that the proponents of BLW (which includes the NHS - no spoon feeding on this page) might have more knowledge than you? As I said above purees were fed to children by our mothers because the advice was to wean so early in the 70s and 80s. All BLW does is miss out the puree stage because now we wean at 6 months. All children have to learn to eat solids and feed themselves at some point, you're just delaying that if you spoon feed purees to a 6+ month old child who is developmentally ready to pick up food and put it in their mouth all by themselves.

My DS didn’t really take to finger foods until 8 months. Before that we mainly stuck with purées and then at 8 months it just seemed to be much easier.

Solid starts app for how finger foods should be cut and sized for different ages.

How ridiculous! How would you even know how they were weaned??
My kids all weaned like this and never smeared food everywhere by 4yrs old and were taught to use cutlery as toddlers!
Crap table manners are nothing to do with BLW!

Do what works for you. I think it's stressful when you try to make something work that doesn't. No one way works for everyone. I did a mix. Not purees really just mashed up what I was eating and stuff she could do on her own. However you do it is the right way!