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!

I expect they're right. Only a first world parent would willingly entertain that level of mess. Mashing and spoon feeding is much simpler.

You don’t need special equipment. Potato masher, fork..maybe a stick blender. All things I had anyway.
Never bought jar baby food.
I honestly can’t fathom how you can be 100% sure no one has offered baby food on a spoon or shared some fruit with her eg you are eating something and you say do you want some so pop a bit in her mouth. By point DD was 9 months old she was eating at nursery, my mil occasionally had her and my mum had her for several days when I was in hospital on an emergency. All I cared about was she was cared for not worrying if someone offered her weetabix on a spoon v putting a spoon with dollop of weetabix on her tray.

I weaned our children on endless jars of Hipp Organic using a soft spoon because I had no fucks to give about the mechanics of how they ate.

I’m assuming most people in poorer countries just call it weaning and give baby any food they may have, to eat not to play about with

I figure 50 or so years ago and before that and lots of areas of the world just feed babies there was or no need to stick some label on it, how did people cope? They just got on with it

We were probably on there at the same time! Happy days :)

@TempersFuggit you'll probably quickly figure out who I am if you want to!

It was a lovely forum and I am still friends with people from there, but honestly? 'A bit of both' is probably what I'd do now weaning wise.

As long as DC is growing and thriving, what's the problem?
My eldest is 30 and the advice then was to start on apple purée and baby rice. That didn't go well until I found things he did like
At 6 months he was grabbing toast from my plate!
He's 6'1 and very healthy
Of course you can mix it up
You're the parent, you choose

I did abit if both. By 12 months my child was eating normal food independently, the purees had long since stopped. He fed himself. It makes me laugh when people say how well there 4 year old eats and how it's down to baby led weaning . It's not by a year old you carnt tell how a baby is weaned. Purees etc are only used for a very short space of time.

If someone is giving baby finger foods but also spoon feeds them some meals I would say they are doing a mix of both. For example today my baby ate only finger foods, but yesterday I spoon fed her some mash. She could do it herself but most of it would be smeared in her hair and threw all over the floor. If someone asked me I would still say I’m doing a mixture of blw and purées because most of her food is finger foods, but somethings like yoghurt etc I spoonfeed her so I don’t have to bath her after every meal.

If you are doing a mix of finger foods and spoon feeding that's traditional weaning.

Even with traditional weaning the advice was that babies should be self feeding most food by 7/8 months and all by 1 year.

The reason purées were used was mainly because it started at 4 months (rather than 6 months like now) and at 4 months babies are not developmentally ready to feed themselves/eat more solid food. By 6 months (apart from disabilities) the majority are, and can sit up themselves making it safe to eat more solid food and feed themselves.

Playing with it helps them learn how to eat, the messy stage only last a short time!

Because in the millennia before BLW no one learnt how to eat 🙄

No you are very mistaken. Babies need nutrients from food at 6 months but for many reasons not all babies will have developed the hand grip and coordination to be able to feed themselves at that age. Maybe they were premature, for example.

I was working in childcare when Gill Rapley’s book came out and welcomed her approach. I’d seen too many young children who hated meal times, refused to eat, refused to sit at the table and caused parents a huge amount of stress. Her approach was about eating as a family, allowing the child to lead and removing pressure to eat.

Following the BLW approach dogmatically even when it isn’t working is to miss some of the key benefits around creating enjoyable, stress free mealtimes for young families.

I also notice that one of her key points, about eating as a family and sharing the same food seems to have been forgotten. To me this is far more important than whether your child feeds themselves everything. It’s when children learn table manners and see healthy eating modelled. How are they ever going to learn these things if their experience of mealtimes is having an endless supply of porridge fingers and broccoli dumped on the tray for them to eat alone?

I also notice that one of her key points, about eating as a family and sharing the same food seems to have been forgotten. To me this is far more important than whether your child feeds themselves everything. It’s when children learn table manners and see healthy eating modelled. How are they ever going to learn these things if their experience of mealtimes is having an endless supply of porridge fingers and broccoli dumped on the tray for them to eat alone

This is a really good point. Whilst I was always present when they were eating, for many meals it was opportunity for me to get on. My eldest would take a good half an hour to feed herself breakfast. I used this time to do any tidying needed in the kitchen and prep dinner/put things in the slow cooker. Lunch, sometimes we sat down together, equally other times I did kitchen chores, because getting half an hour to do this whilst baby is happy, was often the only opportunity I got. Dinner we sat and ate together.

If I'd done purees, there would have been more sitting down together and interaction between us at those meal times, but equally having an hour to cook/clean a day made life a lot easier with a mobile baby (crawling at 6m), and baby wasn't short on attention generally!

I can't abide mess, or smeary food covered children. No food ever ended up on the floor. So my DD's were spoon fed purees to start, (from 4 months) then mashed of what we were eating, and all together sat at the table. They were using knives forks and spoons in the correct order very early. They also ate a very varied diet inc. things considered weird and wonderful, happily tucking into vongole and mussels from toddlerhood. BLW is good for some, but it doesn't convey any benefit over any other types of feeding. You can achieve the same perceived benefits with any method. It just has to suit you.

OP- you have changed the tone of the thread to what BLW is and now going into the reasons as to why you think its a superior method of weaning.

i dont understand why it bothers you what people define as BLW!? Just because they don’t do it in the way you consider ‘pure’ BLW.

honestly you’re coming across as a very PFB type and you will look back in a few years and laugh at your silliness, we all do!

enjoy your time with your baby as all this will soon be a distant memory and you will have bigger problems than someone giving purees and fingerfood and calling it ‘BLW’

I mashed up dinner for my youngest, I just didn't add salt during cooking, and instead added it to the food at the end, after taking his potion out to mash. But I kept spices and herbs the same and made veggie curry just for him for lunchtimes. Now my TW'd youngest loves spicy food (he puts hot sauce on everything!) whereas his BLW'd big sister is far less keen because she didn't get that same exposure to spice.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with “missing the intellectual challenge of work”.

I’ve always found that the most obsessive and most toxic women, when it comes to slavishly latching onto a particular facet of parenting (whether it’s BLW or exclusive breastfeeding or whatever) are using it to bolster their egos/self esteem and to be seen to “excel” at something.

It’s like excelling at work gets replaced by excelling at feeding a baby.

Totally.

I remember the arguments on my online baby group about breastfeeding, weaning etc. There was so much passion from all sides, and people even up being nasty to eachother, blocking eachother etc.

Then we went back to work and massively chilled out and the arguments stopped. No doubt there were still things we would have disagreed on, but I think we got the parenting confidence by then to just do it our way without trying to push others to do the same.

Interestingly, the arguments were just brief the FTM's. Those who'd done it before steered clear. Probably because (a) they knew it didn't really matter (b) because they didn't have the time (c) they already had the confidence to just get on with it their way.

Great post @Marmose.

Sadly, you can't take the salt out of the Blue Dragon meal kit sauces...

Or jars of pesto.

Ah yeah, can't do it with premade sauces but I didn't use those then

I think true baby led weaning is feeding your child how they want to be weaned. With mine he wanted the purees, would get so excited when he saw them and would open his mouth before I even loaded the spoon. He would then close his mouth and shake his head when he had enough. He didn't want finger foods untill a few weeks later. Should I have let him go hungry because he didn't want finger foods that he could hold himself? My baby wanted the purees, that was his choice, he made the decisions that is truly being baby led. At 16 he is eats everything and makes his own food which goes to prove it didn't matter how you wean.

That's a great point - we ditched the purees after the first couple of days on DC1 as she was strongly favouring feeding herself so we went with it. Baby led to BLW (or for OP, something approximating it as she sure wasn't feeding herself her own yoghurt).

DC2 turned 6 months the week my dad died, so she was weaned on whatever could be thrown at her from a distance with the least effort. Lots of toast and apple slices. Met pretty much all the conditions for BLW but in reality, much more led by the situation than the baby.