to think baby weaning seems odd.

[ghostspirit]

baby weaning used to start at 3 months. would start of with very basic baby rice. then would start adding new flavours tectures etc could take time doing it all was good...now from what HV says its start at 6 months and they say to intruduce lumps/flavours rather fast its like theres a rush i would have thought it a bit odd to rush them.

That study isn't 'latest research'. It was a study of old studies. And it didn't get a great reception: eg. info.babymilkaction.org/news/policyblog140111

I can't get massively het up about weaning. I did BLW with each of mine, some time between 5 and 6 months. So long as you do it some time after 17 weeks, with some safe food (i.e. no chunks of nuts, whole grapes. No blended KFC) I really don't see the big deal. TBH, the best thing about BLW was not having to do an extra baby meal - so it was a benefit to me and DH rather than specifically the kids.

The HV really doesn't need to be telling you to rush through weaning. You'll just probably find that he/she will probably naturally progress faster than a 3 month old would.

Whatever the guidelines are all babies are different. They want & need different things.. My Dd was a hungry baby & was weaned earlier than 6 months.. Smooth then lumper food but wasn't really one for finger food until she was about 18 months.
Da wasn't interested in anything other than milk until he was about 7 months & apart from cereal & yogurts he went straight into finger food & whatever we are cut up a bit.

Well Feline, it sounds like that. What is the actual point of making comments like that anyway?

Oooo BLW is so diiiissgguuuusttting.... I wouldn't do it with MMMMMYYYYY children.

Its just unnecessary.

Having done the puree thing with my son and spent hours steaming and blending fruit and veg, I mostly BLWd my daughter, she was spoon fed porridge with fruit at breakfast but other meals were finger foods. The difference in them both is remarkable now, my son is suspicious of new foods and has just two veg he'll eat, my daughter will try anything and really enjoys her food. I'm seven months upduffed with DD2 and will be BLW her. I loved that we ate the dinner together and shared the experience and she learned a lot from copying what I did with my food. I remember the whole period fondly and she's been brilliant. I wish I had done that for my son but I hadn't even heard of it until he was weaned.

OP if it feels like you are rushing then slow down, nutrient content has bugger all to do with texture so take as long as you need to introduce the lumps. You'll know what your LO can handle so go at their pace. Good luck with however you choose to do it

Someone who doesnt have children.
I don't understand the purees and introducing foods singularly?
Why not just feed them mini portions of what you're eating? Most food is fairly mushy anyway - pasta, lasagna, mashed potatoes etc. Even well cooked meat is easy to eat.
I wouldn't want to eat pureed single veg, why would a baby who can see and smell your food

Glitteryfrog: There were a couple of things. One is that, pre about six months, babies shouldn't be having wheat. So when early weaning was the norm, a lot of adult meals weren't suitable. There was the issue of the level of salt people often used in adult meals (less of an issue today). There was also a theory that babies needed to accept single flavours to enjoy more complex ones.

That said, a lot of people did a week or two of single veg and then mushed up their meals. My mum did with me (at 11 weeks!).

RedToothBrush OP asked if they were BU, I said I didn't like it either. I am sorry if it caused offence!

Feline - But the OP didn't ask about BLW or even mention it

libraries it sounded like what they were referring to

Ghost - DS2 didn't want anything to do with purees. He didn't start eating actual food until past 8 months, when we roughly blitzed some Christmas dinner for him.

Persuading him to feed himself was tricky, too. We ended up resorting to putting baby biscuits on his tray and walking off and leaving him to it.

He still has massive difficulties with food textures.

DS1 did get started on purees at 5 months - he was trying to help himself to our food, but choking on it. Spoon feeding until he could use a spoon himself ended up being the way to carry on with him because he had a tendency to be a bit of a stuffer and always overfill his mouth.

Which bit? I am genuinely confused. She talks about introducing lumps and flavours fast. Which is a conventional weaning 'issue', since there are no lumps to introduce in BLW. Then her subsequent posts are all about spoonfuls and soft foods.

Libraries the waiting to six months than introducing lumps sounded to me like no food before 6 and then "finger food" to me. I could have got that wrong but that's what I thought it meant

Ok. I don't think that's at all what she was saying given the rest of her post and her later ones, but fair enough

jade my son is 12 now...but back then he did not sit up till 9 months

The OP really needs to know why the HVs are giving that advice and what options / problems she may face.

She may have a child who is difficult with food. I fail to see how telling her that you think BLW is disgusting is relevant or helpful. It might discourage her from doing it, which may be the best option for her child.

I really think its one of those subjects where advice or experience are needed. Opinions should be left out as its unhelpful and actually potentially just creates more stress and anxiety.

Jade
I think the signs are a general guide as most babies will be able to do those things, somewhere between 4 and 6 months... Of course some babies won't, I think the advice will differ for premature babies, babies with health conditions and I know some parents whose babies have reflux are advised to wean early.

I think the '4-6 months' thing is just a guide, not the rules! As parents we decide what is best for our individual children. And that's how it should be.
IMO the guides are there to point people who have no idea what they're doing in the right direction like me

thanks red theres nothing im overly worried about. i have other children they are fine with food...its just the rushing that HV seems to have put across that i dont get...i dont meant just as in starting early but once he has started it seems rushed from then on...but to be honest i will do what i want to do...

my baby is 17 weeks and i have given him a little bit of baby rice. i know from whats been said on here baby rice is crap.. but hes on my breast constantly still wakes every 2 hours day and night. its driving me mad... and i dont want to fumular feed.

Weaning has been a slow process here. We started at 6 months, as advised, but as she was 6 weeks prem she only had the coordination of a 4 and a half month old and zero interest in food. I wanted to blw (cos it sounded like the easy option) but she was having none of it. She would only have completely smooth purees. She's now 13 months and we do a mix - spoon feed her porridge, yoghurt, etc and give her pieces of other foods to ram in her mouth or drop on the floor herself. Even without the prem issue I wouldn't have seen any reason to rush. Whenever you start the first bit of weaning is learning about tastes and textures.

I don't like the obsessive adherence to a fixed age, they're all different and develop at different rates, and not all health visitors are equipped to offer individual relevant advice. If I'd left dd till 6 months it wouldn't have been remotely in her interests, and despite being a young mum had other non baby experience that led me to stand my ground and ignore my hv, instead wasting a gp appointment to get official permission so the hv would fuck off. At the time guidelines were 16 weeks, dd was 14 weeks. Later on when it changed to 6 months, my friend beat herself up and worried because her perfectly normal healthy ds wasn't remotely interested at the magical 6 mnths.
Never got into the whole baby food thing either, I just got a hand blender and served up some of what I had, or for when I was eating something inappropriate cooked batches of baby friendly food. Feeding with a spoon early on didn't hinder her either, hands work just as well in casserole as traditional finger food!
Unless there are individual medical reasons, we should all be doing a form of baby led weaning, as in 'is my baby showing all the signs of needing something more than milk?' And if they are offering it, whether that be finger food or purée.

My two kids were very different. My dd had reflux and also weight gain problems due to a heart defect ( fine now). I was advised to start weaning at 15 weeks. She took to it immediately with purees and obviously really liked them. She went onto textured and then lumps quite quickly and was on 3 meals a day long before a year.

Ds was completely different. He had no interest in any solids until about 5 1/2 months when he started taking cheese sandwiches at picnics. I had offered a little bit before that but he really didn't want it. He has only ever been interested in finger food along the lines of blw.

He was much slower than dd in eating more solids or going onto proper meals.

People on this thread are confusing "introduce lumps and textures early" with "baby led weaning."

BLW means a philosophy of weaning that is about "the baby is supposed to decide their own food intake." So you are not supposed to spoon feed or help them get food into their mouth; you are supposed to leave pieces of food on a tray and they are supposed to feed themselves, and the amount and type of food that they choose to feed themselves is supposed to be the amount that is "right" for them. (I don't actually buy this philosophy, by the way, but that is what BLW actually means).

Introducing lumps and textures early is just standard weaning advice. It is to do with the fact that if you keep giving NOTHING but purees for a long time, there is a risk that your baby can get stuck on smooth purees and it may be difficult to move them onto lumpy food and pieces etc. So it is better to do a mixture of different types of food from the start, or at least no later than six months.

Contrary to some of the enthusiastic messages on this thread, there is not a shred of actual evidence that adhering to the "rules" of BLW will make your child less picky, less allergic or anything else. The vast majority of people do some spoon feeding and some self feeding/finger foods. I certainly did.

As for "commercial baby rice"--erm, it's just rice, with a bit of iron. That is it, really. It is not the most exciting food, rice, but there is nothing wrong with it either. Some people (including me) find that mixing some rice into EBM is a nice stress-free way to see how the baby takes to having something non-liquid, and then you just go on from there. Most babies have very little of the stuff in the long run anyway, because there are more interesting things to eat.

It never ceases to amaze me how weird people's reactions to "baby rice" are. I think it has a lot to do with crunchy mummy credentials, to be honest.

It's not rushing them, OP - they can take as long as they like and eat as much or as little as they want. It's actually spoon feeding purees that rushes them into eating large quantities before they're ready. One of mine ate entire meals at 7 months old. Another ate practically nothing until she was 13 months old.

We just started with solids at 6 mths such as boiled carrots, melon, green beans, cucumber, soft fruit and let him eat at his own pace, introducing different solids after he got used to each one so blw essentially and building up to meals - now he eats really well and lots of flavours - he had chicken and prawn stir fry tonight but loves all sorts. We didn't stress about how much he ate - he is better at his own portion control and he finishes when he is full.

We do blw letting the dc grab whatever they fancy and stuff it in their faces. They love it, and it helps build a good relationship with food and good band eye coordination.