to think it's mental to religiously stick to baby-led weaning (finger foods only)?

[Ficuslover]

I think finger foods are fine, but isn't it weird to favour them exclusively? My friend's baby is under the 10th percentile at 8 months and can't get enough in his mouth! She won't give him anything with a spoon and his breakfast is a weetabix biscuit with a splash of milk on it. Yum. Surely it's not bad to give then some sloppy foods now and again? Why do some people have to take things so literally?

As long as he is still getting milk on demand, there's nothing wrong at all with what your friend is doing imo. At only 8 months, I wouldn't expect him to be eating much in the way of solids anyway.

AH. I hadn't considered the magic eyes factor. And active doesn't necessarily mean walking - rolling over, playing with toys etc all counts.

What if I said I think she wants her baby to remain tiny forever?

Then I'd say if you have genuine concerns about the welfare of the child talk to her health visitor or social services instead of posting on here about it.

I think BLW works fine for most babies. But if a child is a little delayed with their fine motor skills it is unlikely that they will be able to get enough food into them as they would like not to mind a spoon - even a preloaded one. I think parents who use this method should be aware of this and accept that some babies will not thrive with this method of weaning and may need a little more help.

I had one of those babies, SJ. Incidentally, she was also pretty crap at breastfeeding and was failing to thrive on demand feeding.

We did well on a mixture of spoon and hand held once we got to the weaning stage.

As another poster said, in a sense it is always baby led because they'll only open their mouth if they want to. Though then again (also said) in a sense it is always parent led because parents provide the selection of food; it won't really be child led until they are old enough to do a paper round.

Yanbu. Particularly if this 'improvised blw' is in tandem with poor sleeping and poor size. But what can you do eh? Some people need to step away from the bloody Hippy books and use their brains - but then that applies to most areas of life. ;)

Some of the things I've read people give a toothless baby astounded me, things that I as a gnashered adult would struggle with!

gummy babies aren't toothless, their gums aren't soft like an adult who has lost teeth - there are teeth just under the skin making the gums quite hard and good at chewing

My take on BLW was to give my LO what we ate as we ate it. We don't only eat hard stuff sometimes we eat mashed potatos etc. I don't think there's ever any need to puree anything that you wouldn't mash/blend for a normal adult

YABU.

Especially as until age 1 a child's main food source is milk. So provided he is getting sufficient milk, then it doesn't matter whether he has solids using BLW or more traditional weaning.

Are you going to criticise every parenting decision she makes that you don't agree with?

As someone else said, being under the 10th centile doesn't mean she's underweight though.

My DD is below the 0.4th centile for weight and is on it for height. She has been since birth. She's just a shrimp who eats like a horse.

The fact they're BLW doesn't mean a thing.

We did BLW (although I didn't know it was a 'thing' at the time, we just did it!) and she's always eaten loads.

Snap cory. I do get a bit frustrated when I see posters looking for advice when their 9 month old is BLW an won't eat much. They are invariably told to persevere as their main source of calories should be milk. While this is true, at this age they should also be getting the opportunity to explore different flavours and textures and if they can't do this by hand then it should be done by spoon IMO - if they are agreeable of course - I'm not talking about force feeding.

the thing about percentiles is it doesn't really matter if your baby is on a low or high one so long as they're continuing to climb on that percentile. If the child has gone 40th, 30th, 20th now 10th then that is more of a worry than if they have always been around the 10th but are climbing steadily along the 10th

There are so many life long (or shortening) health problems associated with losing the ability to control ones own appetitie.

What cory and SJ said.

Pre-loading a spoon and handing it to the baby has the be the most bonkers thing ever about BLW. If you've got the patience for that, you're a better person than I am, that's for sure.

I honestly, don't get what is such a cardinal sin about just feeing your baby yourself and being bloody down with it. Who has the mental stamina to sit there, pre-load (the word even makes my teeth itch), hand over, wait while baby shoves sloppy food everywhere except mouth, take it back, perhaps have a battle because the spoon is an interesting toy, wrest control of it again, pre-load and repeat for the rest of the meal time?

I certainly didn't, so any sloppy foods I fed the DC themselves until they got the hang of the whole concept and could 'load' the spoon themselves and feed themselves. I dunno, the whole concept of 'pre-loading' seems so needlessly adhering to a concept instead of just doing it the easy, logical, simple way. Have any children been scarred by being spoon-fed and then learning to feed themselves in their own time?

Slinking - I can see that viewpoint. But for me it would be the opposite. To me it would be bonkers to spend ages spooning food into a baby's mouth when you can occasionally load a spoon and leave them to it while they eat - and therefore you can eat yourself -or as I do at breakfast, run round stuffing the washing machine, applying make-up, etc, etc. I don't think it's a cardinal sin to feed a baby, but I do think it's horses for courses and what suits you as a family.

totally off topic but can we stop saying 'pre-load' please???? please? surely you just 'load the spoon for them' not pre-load it???

slinking I also feel the opposite way, why bat away the child's hand for months to feed them?

I did a health care course and for one exercise we had to bring in a yogurt and be spoon fed it ALL by someone else in the class to show just how unpleasant it is so we would take the time to let people feed themselves even if they are slow.

But kids who've been given the spoon from the start pick it up very quickly and don't do a lot of mouth missing. Its the teach-unteach-reteach thing I don't get - why teach them to be spoon fed so that you later have to un teach that and re-teach feeding themselves? why do it in 2 steps when one will do? At some point you have to give them the spoon and the sooner you do the sooner they learn to re-load. Mine could get his spoon in his mouth at 4 months and make a good attempt at re loading not long after, and 4 month olds arent capable of being cheeky and stubburn, unlike friends older babies who were being taught self feeding after 6/12 months of being spoon fed

Feminine, and Susanne - I agree. When mine were little the term didn't exist but we did it anyway. Otoh, if it stops some of the force-feeding I used to see, then that's a good thing

I think a lot of people just really like spoon feeding their babies and think that people who BLW are criticising them for it. Cos you all sound really defensive...

[runs away]

Just do whatever you like-ignore them all.

"To me it would be bonkers to spend ages spooning food into a baby's mouth when you can occasionally load a spoon and leave them to it while they eat"

"But kids who've been given the spoon from the start pick it up very quickly and don't do a lot of mouth missing"

These two quotes just sum up for me how different babies are.

With dd, giving her a spoon did not involve leaving her to it while she ate; dd's complete lack of coordination meant that there was usually nothing for her to eat, as her first act would be to accidentally up-end the spoon. Yes, I gave her a spoon from the start, yes I encouraged her to be independent in all sorts of ways, no it did not mean she ever picked anything at all up quickly.

We are talking here of a child who in later years repeatedly gave herself concussion tripping over her feet whilst walking down the hallway. And whose mother finally developed the coordination to tie her shoelaces (badly) in her late teens, despite never having them tied for her after toddlerhood. We are not very clever with our hands in our family.

DS2, 5 years, is under the 10th centile for weight. He is always saying he is hungry, and I am always feeding him. There is nothing wrong with him whatsoever. I am only 5ft 1 and DP 5ft 9, so we never expected huge children!

Why does being under 10th centile mean a child is underweight?

I am aghast at the idea that a child somewhere around the 10th percentile line is necessarily underweight or too small. I think this centile thing is really damaging, actually, because people simply don't understand it. I'd imagine, given the rising levels of overweight children, that a kid on the 10th percentile is probably in a pretty good place unless they have dropped lots of centiles for no obvious reason or are very tall.

My DD, btw, started off on the 25th percentile, dropped steadily to well under the 0th percentile and has just managed, at five, to claw her way up to the 2nd centile line with the help of a lot of cream, cheese and butter. And I couldn't have spoon fed her, even if I'd wanted to, as she wouldn't let me put a spoon in her mouth after a week or two. She's a normal height. She has bags of energy. She eats a good variety of food and often asks for seconds. Some children are just meant to be skinnier than others.

The idea that spoon feeding necessarily equals more calories is one that I'm very uncomfortable with, btw. What should those of us with smaller, thinner children do? Force them to eat more than they want to? That sounds like utter madness to me (and a good recipe for future food issues).

percentiles mean nothing, the child could be petite, as in shorter than usual too.
My son is in the 5th percentile and certainly not underweight for his size or lacking in anything.

As long as the child is being breastfed as much as he likes and given many many opportunities to eat food he can pick up I think it's perfectly fine.

This is what I did with my sons x