to ask for your best bit of BLW advice?

[moxon]

Yip, pretty much that. There are too many websites on the topic and too little time. The latter of which is heavily invested in MN anyway, so I thought I might as well see what's on offer from the wise.

Dd is now 15 months and can confidently feed herself with a fork, spoon or fingers. It's still a bit messy but she's so independent I don't really mind. BLW is the best thing we did. She started picking up food at 4.5 months and we just followed her lead. We did some spoon feeding along the way, and sometimes still do but not very often.

My top tips:

Don't be too dogmatic - the book and recipe book have great ideas but you don't have to stick to it zealously! I much prefer the river cottage book and their slightly easier going philosophy.

spoons and spoon feeding alongside finger foods are not the end of the world - in fact, sometimes it's just easier and baby really couldn't care less;

Don't rush baby - they can take an age to eat and explore;

broccoli, sweet potato chips and steamed and buttered celeriac sticks are ace for starting out with.

Buy a steamer - not an electric one, a cheap one made of metal that sits on the hob - you can make a really easy apple purée to sweeten porridge or yoghurt or rice pudding in place of sugar by steaming sliced and cored apple for approx 7-10 mins. The skins fall off and you can mash with a fork or you can cool and give straight to baby.

long sleeve bibs or stripped to nappy;

Ignore older relatives and their pleas of not to choke the baby with your new fangled ways.

Go on a baby first aid course and learn about choking. Mostly it's gagging with BLW but it helps to be informed.

Take loads of photos, sit back and be amazed at how grown up your tiny human person seems when they're picking up and eating food!

Try not to stress about the waste of food, think of it as being your job to provide tasty and nutritious food at suitable intervals and the baby will do what he's ready for with it. If it ends up on the floor he's still learning.

I got some big tshirts (age 4 I think) from primark to use as bibs over his clothes.

Don't compare to traditional weaning people, they will be on 3 meals having started at 4 months before your LO is eating anything much.

Nhs suggest working up to 3 meals by 8 months

Can you give a baby some shepherd's pie in the name of BLW??

I really want to do BLW but I really can't get my head around the idea of just letting baby have anything. I keep being cowardly and giving jars of baby rice and egg custard instead

Took ds until about 8 months to get it - didn't try any spoon feeding until he was one and I wanted to get him to use a spoon. I loved it seeing him play then gradually eat (you can't do mixed blw - not that it matters if you do ginger foods and purees it just not blw)
Gagging thing important but enough said above.
Bananas are great, swirly pasta, use a crinkle cut peeler for mango avocado etc. bread sticks, big rice cakes cheaper than over marketed baby sweet ones stick on some cream cheese, home made humous etc on it. Sit and eat with them - at 6 months I lived this as I had barely sat down for lunch since ds was born. So just sitting down with him was great. Porridge fingers, wheetabix with milk slowly absorbed then cut into fingers - very messy but ds would dive in and first with glee. Borrow blw cookbook from library - when ds had got it the muffins etc were great.

Enjoy it!

Long armed bibs from asda and sainsburys are great.

Never worry about how much they eat- they will lead you.

To get them to sleep, offer lots of protein rich food: cream cheese, meat and yoghurt are all great.

You will love it. BLW my dd has pretty much cured many of my own issues with food- I have loved watching her enjoy and explore her food. It's actually amazing.

Just don't get hung up on it. Feed the baby food, whether its baby led on not all children end up the same!
Don't over think it. (BLW is a bit like the emperors clothes - a hell of a lot of waffle about not a lot!) x

Foodwise so easy just put it on the high chair and let baby get on with it.

Mess - I have resorted to tucking two tea towels around ds' legs and body, then a long sleeved bib over rolled up sleeves and a plastic lipped bib over that. This sometimes saves me having to change him after every meal. A box of cheeky wipes to clean him up after (as inevitably his entire head is covered in dinner) and definitely a plastic mat under the high chair.

One thing I wish I had thought about was getting a high chair that doesn't have lots of crevices for food to get stuck in - would have saved me hours.

Blw is not a religion. It's food. Real food. Sometimes mashed a bit, sometimes over cooked, sometimes cut into odd shapes to make it easier for little hands. It's ok to spoon feed yoghurt. There are no weaning police.

Writer - go for it! Check the salt levels (eg stock and salt in the mash), but go for it. Younger babies often need bigger things to hold to they get the hang of it quite quickly with practice. How about shepherds our on guided loaded spoons and broccoli to hold?

Sometimes they will eat absolutely nothing. Other times they will eat ten times what you expect

The good thing about blw is that they just eat some of whatever you are eating anyway, so there's no extra washing up or prep. And if there's a day when they eat nothing, you're less inclined to do the whole cajoling / persuading / forcing as you're not bothered about waste.

(Until they reach about two, then they want their own lamb chop or whatever then when it gets thrown on the floor, I do comment!)

Oh and also your mum and your mil will totally disapprove. Mil still gives dd Yorkshire puddings first before a roast dinner as it will fill her up - wtf? If I serve her a roast she will sometimes demolish all the carbs, sometimes all the veg, sometimes all the meat, sometimes eat everything and sometimes nothing. That's how I want it to be! Not followed by a massive bowl of custard (another obsession of that generation) to fill her up (with what exactly? Milk, sugar, flour and colouring?)

Definitely agree that there is no weaning police, so just do whatever works for you and your baby! Finger foods, spoon feeding, all home made from scratch, a bit of Heinz, 5 months, 7 months. By the time they start school it won't matter at all.

And don't believe the hype about BLW preventing toddler fussiness

Sometimes they will eat absolutely nothing. Other times they will eat ten times what you expect

^ this

It really is easy to leave them to it and genuinely trust them to decide when they're full or not.

They will also have days where they eat certain food groups, ie carbs, fruit, protein. Dd even one will have days of eating loads of eggs, chicken and then days of carbing out. I let her choose now and she's 3.3

I BLWed DS and at 7 months we went to SILs house for a sunday dinner, she hadn't heard of BLW and was a bit about it.

I sat him in his bumbo and put roast chicken, spuds and veg on the tray and they all sat round amazed that he was eating/smashing things and having fun with food.

He gagged a bit on some broccoli but cleared it himself, afterwards they were completely for it and said it was brilliant.

I'm 34 weeks with number 2 and they all can't wait for the sunday dinners to happen again!

Another vote for "it's okay to do a mixture."

DS is old enough that BLW wasn't a known "thing" - I discovered it more or less independently when he failed utterly to cope with the stage in puree-based weaning where you mash a bit less thoroughly, while happily eating pasta spirals, breadsticks, chunks of banana (he still loathes that "not quite smooth" texture at 15) but it would never have occurred to me to not feed him smooth puddings on a spoon.

Unless you eat KFC/McDonalds/Pizza Hut for every meal just feed them what you're eating. More time cleaning up... Much less time slaving over the cooker!
Get in the habit of seasoning with salt at the table instead of while you're cooking - we started using more herbs/spices and my salt intake has gone down massively.
Go to a baby first aid class or check out the Red Cross video on how to deal with choking - and read Gill Rapley's BLW book. Gagging is normal and will happen, choking is rarer but much better to feel confident about what to do if it does!
If you have a well behaved dog the doesn't beg at the table for food.... You won't have for much longer!

I'd love to put a roast dinner in front of my DS. I wouldn't be able to stop thinking of him choking on chicken though! He doesn't have any teeth so can chicken be gummed? Is it cut up into really small pieces??

BLW stands for baby led weaning. It doesn't mean they have to eat finger food, or feed themselves all the time. They might lunge their mouths at spoonfuls of yoghurt that you offer them. They might like pureed food. They might be hungry enough that they can't get enough food into themselves and they need your help. This is OK. BLW is about responding to THEIR needs.

BLW stands for baby led weaning. It doesn't mean they have to eat finger food, or feed themselves all the time. They might lunge their mouths at spoonfuls of yoghurt that you offer them. They might like pureed food. They might be hungry enough that they can't get enough food into themselves and they need your help. This is OK. BLW is about responding to THEIR needs.

These are magic! Thank you!
The only thing I've come up with so far (we're only on day three, hence needing the sort of useful tips you normally only learn through trial and error) is to cover dc's table-tray with strong clingfilm, so I can just roll up the mess and discard after without worrying about cleaning, and food doesn't get stuck in the cracks. It's an ancient wooden highchair from la familia so not as condusive to BLW as some of the modern plastic models.

There will be mess. But mess can be cleaned up. Enjoy watching your baby experience different tastes and textures.

DC3 is weaning at the moment and loving it. We are about 6 weeks in. He gags often and has choked a few times (my other children never choked and rarely gagged) but I know how to deal with it. Make sure you know what to do if that situation does arise. Don't fret about how much they are or aren't eating.

Writer ds2 has 2 teeth now but was managing chicken before he had them.

I fed DS in the kitchen where the mess could be cleaned up more easily. BLW wasn't a conscious choice, we kind of fell into it as it suited him better than mush on a spoon. I certainly can't complain about the final result- at 9 he eats pretty much anything (excepts sprouts and mushrooms!).

They don't need teeth to eat!

I cut the chicken into fairly bit slices so DS could pick it up and put it into his mouth.

If you cut it too small they won't be able to pick it up until their pincer action is good.