To think most people don't understand baby led weaning

[Londonforestmum]

I hear so often people say they are doing a mixture of baby led weaning and spoon feeding. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but this is 'traditional weaning', which always advised finger food from 6 months as well as purées. It's not doing a bit of both. BLW means you let your child feed themselves all the time. To say you're doing a bit of both is like saying you're a bit of a vegetarian because you eat some plant based foods alongside meat?

BLW also doesn't mean children don't use a spoon, you can use a spoon straight from the start but you just preload it for them and then let them hold it / put it in (or somewhere near lol) their mouths.

I think maybe people feel under pressure to do BLW but don't want to so they say they're doing a bit of it. There is nothing wrong with doing traditional weaning (purées and finger food) though!

Honestly I think it saved my sanity not to be making separate food or purées, and being able to eat my own food at the same time. Yes there's a little bit of mess but IKEA highchair/bib etc makes it pretty easy. If you don't have time to clear up the mess just give them milk and some not messy food to play with. They don't actually need solid food at every single meal anyway. And by the time they do they are more than capable of doing it themselves without mess.

The messy stage is actually really short if they get practice they manage to feed themselves easily quickly!

My SIX and FOUR year olds still have porridge fingers every morning. FFS. Utterly tasteless things (the way I make them anyway, there are better recipes out there but who has time for that) but for whatever reason they like them and it's just oats, milk and fruit so I make them.

But FFS kids!

(No spoons banned when they were little!)

Oh op just stop honestly, get some fresh air; make a cup of tea. Watch some telly.

Porridge fingers aren't a faff! You mix up the ingredients as normal and then microwave for 2 minutes on a plate. A much less messy food for a baby or toddler to eat than porridge!

solids are nearly exclusively for practice at that stage (apart from a few micro nutrients they gain from them).

This isn't true at all, and is a common misconception among those who BLW. In particular, it's not true for those who are EBF as they really do need to be topping up their iron stores. By 12 months, a baby should be eating 3 meals a day, will often have two snacks as well, and no longer needs formula if they're bottle fed. They don't get to that overnight, and it's important to work on it between 6 and 12 months. Some get it quicker than others, obviously, like anything else, but food is most certainly not almost exclusively for practice.

It seems the definition has evolved then!

Not sure why 'finger foods' needed a new name though.

The term BLW was introduced by Gill Rapley and that method is what I assume people mean when they say the phrase.

@Londonforestmum what did you do about mess when you were out and about?

DS had food allergies and prescribed milk (which we had to hide in his food as it tasted disgusting so wouldn’t have it in our food!)so had to make separate meals at times

In fairness, they could be nice if done properly (and with plenty of sugar 😂)

It just the faff of them rather than regular porridge that got me.

*Honestly I think it saved my sanity not to be making separate food or purées, and being able to eat my own food at the same time. Yes there's a little bit of mess but IKEA highchair/bib etc makes it pretty easy. If you don't have time to clear up the mess just give them milk and some not messy food to play with. They don't actually need solid food at every single meal anyway. And by the time they do they are more than capable of doing it themselves without mess.

The messy stage is actually really short if they get practice they manage to feed themselves easily quickly!*

This is great for you. The point you're completely missing is that other parents do it differently for many, many reasons and that's great too. You've had the headspace to do research on this and it's important to you. That doesn't mean that everyone feels it's as important or they don't have the mental capacity to do what you've done. It's all fine.

At the start of the thread you said you didn't judge others for how they feed their child but your recent posts indicate otherwise.

You do what you feel is best for your own baby. If someone else feeds their baby Ella's kitchen let them get on with it. They really may have other things going on and having people sticking the boot in over whether they're eating their broccoli whole or puréed is not necessary.

Mine would never touch proper porridge (don't blame them, can't stand it either). They're not really that much faff in truth, just make them and bung them in the microwave, but I do occasionally wonder how many others are making porridge fingers for children who can read.

But why does it matter what people say?

They can enough iron through BLW, you can also use supplements if you wish.

Most children will naturally get to 3 meals a day when BLW by 12 months.

I think it also causes a lot of stress for people doing traditional weaning to say they must get to that by 12 months plus snacks - why must they? And encourages to people to cut down milk and replace it with purées. Milk is more nutritious than most 'baby food' out there!

People also seem to have this idea what children shouldn't drink milk past 12 months, when in fact it's still very good for them.

Honestly I think it saved my sanity not to be making separate food or purées, and being able to eat my own food at the same time. Yes there's a little bit of mess but IKEA highchair/bib etc makes it pretty easy. If you don't have time to clear up the mess just give them milk and some not messy food to play with. They don't actually need solid food at every single meal anyway. And by the time they do they are more than capable of doing it themselves without mess.
The messy stage is actually really short if they get practice they manage to feed themselves easily quickly

I've raised three children to teen-hood, but thanks for the advice 😂

I promise you - and I cannot emphasise this next bit strongly enough - it doesn't matter.

Eventually they get a pre-paid card to spend on lunch at secondary school and they use it to buy Prime and Quavers.

Why would you want to spend part of your day gatekeeping a wanky phrase? Why does it matter? I'm often astonished at the things people will get aggressively tribal about these days. See also "gentle parenting", "sleep training" and "baby-wearing". Most people just cherry pick, muddle through and try their best 🤷🏻‍♀️

He just had things like sandwiches, cheese and fruit etc, and saved the porridge/spaghetti Bolognese for at home! Or if in a restaurant just wiped down the table?

Yes I'm sure they all end up the same anyway. Again my reason for doing it wasn't for some kind of outcome, it just seemed like the easiest/least stressful way at the time, and turned out to be the case.

Its obviously a phrase that doesn't have an agreed definition then. Which I wasn't aware of.

And no matter how many parents are doing BLW the number of children who can’t use cutlery at school is ever growing

Yes, they absolutely CAN get enough iron through BLW (mine did) but it's not nutrition they can get from milk at that age if they're EBF, they need to get it from food or supplements. I have no issue with BLW (or any other weaning method) but I do have issue with those saying that they don't need food for nutrition before they're 1 as it's inaccurate.

If you try BLW with an EBF baby and they don't take to it, then you'll need to try some spoon feeding to get them going. It's important for their speech too.

It doesn't matter hugely how the food is delivered, it does matter that they get a wide variety of healthy food. That's what you should focus on. Doesn't matter if it's coming on a spoon or in their fist, or even if it's coming on a spoon but the parent calls it BLW.

Probably because of BLW, my DC are far more comfortable eating with their hands than I would like!

"You've had the headspace to do research on this and it's important to you. That doesn't mean that everyone feels it's as important or they don't have the mental capacity to do what you've done"

I read the book (which is really short) during 1 night feed. The purée thing / schedule of what to do when seemed much more complicated.

But yes each to their own.

This may be the reason DD (2.5) decided she was eating gravy with her fingers last night....

It's usually ketchup here.

When I think of the diet they had as babies...

Chewing is important for speech. And you wouldn't 'feed' a child something they could chew as that would actually be dangerous?

YY my eldest had mainly finger food as a baby and my little one mainly purées. The older one would eat ANYTHING with her hands if I let her and the little one uses cutlery properly. Only anecdata obviously

Oh tell me about it. She loved all the veg and her favourite thing was mango. Now, the thing I hear most often is "I need a cheeeeeesy biscuit!" 🙈