to think there isn't a difference between BLW and finger foods?

[putthekettleon]

Ok I'm preparing to be flamed, and I have no problem with baby led weaning, but it's been bugging me for a while now...

When talking about weaning, so many people I know in real life/people I see on here say they are doing 'a combination of purees and BLW'. Or they say 'we're doing BLW... but I spoon-feed him if we're having yoghurt/mashed potato/soup etc..'. Surely that is just weaning?? Do they think that other people only ever give purees and never give lumpy or finger food? That if you give any kind of finger food it is BLW?

With both DC I started off on purees for a week or 2, quickly moved up to mashed food and introduced finger foods as well, like steamed carrots, rice cakes, broccoli, toast etc, when they seemed ready for it. DD2 is 7 months and eats all sorts. I just call it food.

Whenever I hear someone talking about BLW I have to fight the urge to say 'in my day (only 2 years ago!) we just called it finger food...'

Ok, as you were, just needed to get that off my chest!

If you do BLW and only offer finger foods aren't you depriving your baby of things like yoghurt, porridge and mash potato? Unless they can manage the spoon themselves, they aren't going to get much liquid in with their hands are they?
Also, with the gov now saying babies should start to be weaned earlier ie from 4 months onwards, how will this affect those that BLW? the babies won't be ready for finger foods so will those people wait until the baby can feed itself or start on purees first??

Well I, as chief cook and personal shopper, provide a varied, balanced, and usually tasty diet for the DC. So yes, I do choose what is offered.

Its up to them whether they eat it or not though. They make that choice.

yabu. terminolgy matters otherwise how do we understand eachother. i blw'd dd. i would say 'exclusively' but i'd sound like a fool cos ou either do blw or you don't. offering finger food as well as spoon feeding is not blw.

the thing with blw is its not just choosing food its choosing amount of food and really whether to eat anything and when to drop feeds - as in the child chooses all of the above. for example dd dropped feeds really quickly and had totally lost interest in bf by 12 months - she takes her food very seriously. her little friend of the same age eats alot less and has only dropped one feed i think at 18 months. both babies have led teir won feeding but ended up at different stages - this is blw - its not prescriptive.

i dont see how you can combine - you can't give puree at one meal and erm 'encourage' the baby to eat it all, then let them feed themselves finger food at the next and call it blw because its not. that is weaning with finger food. which is fine - just not what blw means.

as for ebf - its just to differentiate between that and mixed fedding. i think most people will acccept 'ebf' to mean bf but with the odd bottle here and there and tale 'mixed feeding' to mean bf with regualr ff as well.

BunnyWunny the Govt are not saying that.

One team of researchers said there might be some benefit to some breastfed babies in being weaned before 6 months.

Its not conclusive and the advice remains the same. Anyway with BLW you don't need to worry too much - they show you when they are ready by naffling your dinner off the plate.

Oh and I wish someone would tell my DS he can't eat porridge with his fingers...

Bunnywunny- if you do blw then the whole point is you wean when the baby can feed itself. This is normally around 6 months, sometimes earlier, sometimes later. You wouldn't bypass this by spoon feeding.

Having done spoon feeding with my older children I have welcomed the advent of blw

Spoon feeding is about a baby getting nutritional benefits from food and nothing more, there is no harm in that I have done it myself.

Blw is an experience for baby, yes they get some food, but they learn (quickly if they are hungry) fine motor skills, how to get a loaded fork to their mouth without dropping it, problem solving, speech development is happening too.
Oh and they learn that somethings need different handling to others, slippy jelly v rough toast for example

But the greatest skill they learn imo is the social etiquette of meal times, right from the beginning they are eating with, watching, learning from and interacting with their family.

And yes they wonderfully and amazingly regulate the amount and quality of food they eat.

So whilst I have no issue with spoonfeeding, I would have to say that blw is a completely different animal

s'nother posh word innit ?

I do have a lot of respect for what I'd call the 'hardcore' BLWers (even if I think it's a bit nutty) as it must take a lot of patience and frustration. There's certainly no harm in it. I have more of an issue when people say they're doing both, as if they think that the more traditional weaning approach doesn't involve finger foods.

But I think a lot of the so-called benefits to BLW are common sense anyway and can be learned just as well from the more traditional weaning route. My DD is 7 months and is learning how to handle foods, fine motor skills etc from eating finger foods, she's also pretty good at grabbing the spoon from me to have a go herself. She knows how to chew, as I have gradually introduced more lumps and textures. She is benefiting from the social etiquette of mealtimes as she sits down with the family at mealtimes to eat and generally eats a version of what we're having. And she does chose when to drop feeds herself, I can hardly shove my boob in her mouth if she's not hungry

But horses for courses, it's an individual choice at the end of the day. But I do think it's a bit of a fad, the Annabel Karmel for the next generation of mums

stuffthenononsene - absolutely. especilly about social ettiquette. dd has been getting compliments from other diners in restaurants for a long time now and she deserves it - she eats very nicely for a 16 months old, a lot and usually everything she is offered.

i saw a dad watching dd in a cafe the other day totally open mouthed as she shared a roast dinner with me (i just ask for an extra plate, china - she hasn't dropped one yet he he). he had dutifully spooned goop into his ds THEN eaten his own meal.

My nearly 4 month old ds2 shoved his face into my cake yesterday while i was distracted. Does that mean that he has started to BLW?

There is a 8 year gap between my two kids and all the rules and terms have changed so much!

I did blw before it was invented, I was just a slack mother who couldn't be bothered to buy a mouli mix or wait around with a spoon til the baby could be bothered to swallow. so they learned from the start to feed themselves with lumpy food.

but back then, it was just making my life easier, not an ideological position.

fennel - fair one. i also did it because i am lazy, the thought of scraping puree off dd's face makes me gag and all the palavar with bledning/mushing/frezzing/something about giant ice cube trays.....can't be bothered with all that!!

blw is cheaper too. no special/extra food. no equipment beyond a highchair and bibs and actually the hardcore ap parents i know dont bother with those either :-)

BLW didn't exist in my day either or I was just too ignorant to hear about it

DS had a combination of spoon fed purees and mashed food and finger food.

If I had another child, I'd do the same. I feed my child, my child feeds himself and all the furniture. Doesn't matter as long as he eats nutritous food .

I can see some benefits of BLW but it does seem to be a bit of a middle class obsession.

When I say EBF, I just mean not on solids yet.

Why do people want to belittle or ridicule things they don't understand?

Nothing wrong with weaning on purees, bit of both or blw . Do whatever you and your baby wants and keep your opinions on others to yourself!

My DS has been BLWed and very quickly learned how to eat liquidy things, dipping bread in soup, using hands in porridge etc. He sometimes even gave me a spoon if it was something he loved and couldn't eat quick enough (custard mainly).

BLW is a load of toss imo. If you spoon feed you put some food an the spoon by your baby's mouth and they open if they want it and they clamp shut if they don't. How is that any less baby-led than them picking it up themselves. My DS didn't have the motor skills to feed himself finger food til 8-9 months so had I not fed him some puree I would have just been feeding him milk - which is liquid - so what is the difference?

I think some of us are ridiculing it because it seems a rather sanctimonious way of just doing what many of us more or less did anyway, but now it's got a whole marketing industry behind it.

And it's sort of irritating to see new parents look with horror at a spoon as though the act of shoving a spoonful of porridge in a baby is a terrible crime.
[old gimmer emoticon]

Is there a marketing industry behind BLW though?

I mean surely a big part of it is that you do not need anything special. What would be marketed?

My new parent friends have the bible book. And worry about it incessantly. Having lunch at their house is a tense experience.

I feel the same about Babywearing and Slingmeets. It's just traipsing your baby around in a sling, innit?

What marketing? I bought a second hand hugh chair from a charity shop for a fiver, borrowed the blw book from the library, read aitch's blog and cover the floor with a bit of shower curtain. Then just stopped cooking with salt and gave ds a bit if whatever I was cooking for myself from day one, and that's still exactly what I do now. Is that santimonious?

sungirltan

I started mine on purees with finger food. They were all feeding themselves with a spoon (or hands) before they turned 1. By 16 months they would certainly be able to feed themselves a roast dinner. Is that not just normal?

Oh yes babywearing. That's new too.

And co-sleeping. I seem to have done this on and off for the last 8 years. Entirely unintentionally.

I think giving your six month old a chicken leg to playbwith is maybe at one end if the weaning spectrum, most folk are maybe in the middle (with the majority probably) and folk who stressyly spoonfeed unwilling babies exact amounts of strategically introduced puree are at the other end?

You're absolutely right.
It also annoys me when they say " he/she grabbed food off my plate and ate it so we knew he/she was ready to start eating solids" ...if my DC grabs my cigarettes and puts them in her mouth is she ready to start smoking?
Plus they always seem to be ready for weaning the day they turn 6 months old.
Sorry for hijacking your thread. Rant over. :)

Yes but moving on to solid food is an entirely natural progression whereas smoking isn't. Anyway they'd probably be wanting to eat the fag.