Mother V baby led weaning

[Slackalice42]

PFB is now 4 months so I am starting to think about weaning (ebf). I heard about baby led weaning know nothing about it, so I ordered a book from Amazon and sat down to have a read (coincidentally while breast feeding the spawn). Much to my surprise this caused my Mother to completely go off on one! Classic quotes such as, 'You were weaned at 3 months' and , 'That baby is hungry how can you be so cruel?' WTF? Baby is on the 95 percentile, happy, chatty and sleeps 8 hours at night. Am I missing something? Any thoughts on where this is coming from? I tried explaining about the World Health Organisation and Department of Health Guidelines and her response was that this was , 'Total bullshit put out by bureaucratic fat cats'! WTF????

My response to the older generation on weaning is you feed babies those awful smelling Heinz food jars, no wonder something new was invented.
The smell of those jars still makes me feel ill, 30 years on!

Also OP, be prepared for your DC to not actually like feeding him/herself and for finger foods to not be a good fit at first. DD had no interest in food until seven months and then when we started out we started out with a mix of finger foods/self feeding and mush. After about a fortnight we had to go entirely onto mush because she didn't chew or wouldn't chew properly and choked a few times. We did a couple of months of mush then reintroduced the self feeding and finger foods at around nine months, by which point so was much better with them.

I like elements of the whole blw thing.

However, I chose to wean traditionally, and this has worked fine for us.

It does grate on me a little though when I see blw parents commenting that it's the best thing that they ever did and that it's why their child will eat everything.

My dd was and is still spoon fed alongside having finger foods and she is a brilliant eater. She knows how to chew her food well and is beginning to use a fork and spoon with her meals.

Please don't feel that blw is the be all and end all. You don't have to do it and your child will likely be a good eater even if you choose not to.

I don't think anyone should be made to feel like one way or another is better/worse and I especially don't think anyone should have to feel bad for using jars. It's baby food, not crack.

That's just an experience you have had.

Everybaby is different, some eat at 6 months some don't and it takes a little longer.

BLW wouldn't say introduce spoons as the you confuse the issue.

I was telling my gran about blw the other day she said what is it with you lot sticking a silly name on things and believing its new she fed her babies finger foods too and so did everyone there was no puree in her day and no time to spoon feed everything when you had 5 kids a man in the pit and no washing machine! you just mashed it with a fork or cut it up and gave it to them.

She also says the same thing about babywearing aka carrying your baby and co sleeping aka bring the baby in

My parents are the same when I do things differently with my children, I think they see it as a criticism of their choices. I'm always sure to say that they made the right choices for them, and it's up to me to do the same.

On the BLW front we did it, but I was too lazy to spoon feed, I wanted to get on with my own meal! Plus I have two dogs to clear up for me. Believe me, labrador tongues get in places no wet wipe ever could!

We were staying at my parents house when we started weaning, as we were moving into a new house that wasn't ready yet.

We did blw and every time he took a bite my mum would scream "he's choking! He's choking!"

Had to bite my tongue as they were very generous to let us stay there and chuck food everywhere try blw.

BLW wouldn't say introduce spoons as the you confuse the issue.

Can I just ask at what point you do introduce cutlery?

Not a dig at all, genuinely interested.

It's one of the reasons I chose not to do blw. It was important to me to teach my child that whilst we eat some thins with our hands, we eat lots of things with cutlery. I wanted her to know this from the start. You don't see adults shovelling porridge at their faces with their hands. The whole 'exploring the food' thing was a bit too whimsical for my liking and clashed with my OCD tidiness. For me, spoon feeding her is scaffolding her learning. She now has a go by herself until eventually, she'll be able to do it independently.

Also, fwiw, I know not all babies like being spoon fed.

BLW is not just finger food, it's all food.
Traditional weaning isn't just mashed up food, it includes finger foods.

BLW means the baby feeds itself from the start.
Traditional weaning means the baby is mostly fed by the parent and gradually learns to feed itself.

I don't know how we all ended up as adults, given the crackpot schemes our mothers used to bring us up.
Honestly, anyone would think the fact they had already brought up at least one child meant they knew more than the new mum.

BLW wouldn't say introduce spoons as the you confuse the issue.
You can use spoons, just preload them and pass the to the baby to feed themself.

Well cathf considering my mum tells me that when their babies needed feeding, she and her friends settled themselves with the baby, the bottle, a cup of coffee and their cigarettes, I would hazard that there are at least some aspects where following generations may have a better idea of what they're doing.

Oh and my mother was the same as the OPs mum, she was genuinely annoyed that I waited until 6 months to wean DD - she brought it up in conversation over and over again. Drove me crackers. I don't know why it bothered her so much.

You would have to introduce spoons at some point if a baby doesn't put anything in their mouth. Blw assumes babies mouth things. Some don't.

I wouldn't say they have a better idea, more that previous generations were doing much the same as we're all doing now- making what we think are the best choices we can with the information and resources available.

DD had a spoon for yoghurt quite early, she sort of dipped it then licked it. I used to give her plastic Ikea cutlery to play with anyway, she sort of got the hang of it eventually.

Blw/mlw aside the thinking is now coming back round to weaning at 4 months rather than six. Especially if there is history of allergies or baby has eczema.
I waited till 6 months to wean my atopic little boy who had severe eczema. Unfortunately he now has multiple allergies inc peanuts. I don't know if he would have had them anyway but after looking into it I found research that suggested eating foods around him whilst he was not actually ingesting into his gut increased his chances of developing the allergies.
His paediatrician told me to wean my little girl at 4 months of age and give her everything.

Notso, I know, I do BLW. It was in response to the post who said they had to do spoon feeding then come back to BLW or something along those lines.

I think a couple of European countries (Sweden was one of them iirc) have reverted guidelines back to 4 months in line with your point about allergies Bodicea.

The point is that nothing is set in stone. Current guidelines are just current guidelines. They're not necessarily more enlightened than what went before. We're particularly bad at setting nutritional guidelines, for whatever reason.

A lot of baby led weaning is sensible, but there's nothing radical or new about it. Fair play to Rapley for monetising it, I guess, but that's primarily what I'd credit her for.

I think the secret is simply feed your baby real food. Probably what you're having yourself. And don't fuss too much about the rest. Spoons tend to be useful. Baby led vs mum led is a non issue, in most cases it's a bit of both. Most mums I know are following their baby's lead intuitively.

I can't say I did one method or another. I have an absolute champion eater at 2.5. I suspect he was born not made.

Turquoise my DC is less than one and can spoon feed themselves. It doesn't mean they will eat with their hands forever it means they can self feed. Which you could argue isn't learnt when being spoon fed, being spoon fed doesn't teach you to use cutlery either.

Knifes and forks from 14 months usually

We have been blw for 6 months almost, started when dd was six months old. She was ebf before that.

It has been great! She eats lots of different food, yes it's messy but we don't mind cleaning up, and it means me and dh can sit and eat while dd tucks in, we don't have to feed her with a spoon while our food gets cold!

The best advice I got was to not confuse that strange four month phase babies have, with hunger for 'real food' I waited til I knew she was really ready and I'm glad I did. She has never been spoon fed in her life.

And you may get a child who won't choose to put food in their mouth themselves and responds with violence to any attempt at spoon feeding. Funnily enough, none of the baby books have an answer to that...

What on earth does a book on blw actually say?

'Put broccoli floret in child's hand. Watch them (or get on with stuff) move hand to mouth and eat. '

I guess it's sweet that babies are so precious that parents will buy this tripe.

I did blw btw, but thought it was called 'eating'.

DC1 was ready for solids at 5 months and I did the traditional purée thing which he loved. DC2 showed little interest in being fed so we waited until 6 months and did BLW. It's much easier and less time consuming but don't expect it to magically give you an adventurous eater. DC2 is far fussier about her food than DC1. With DC3 I will probably just do a mixture of purées and finger foods and see how she goes. They are all different.