Started blw at 8.5m due to spoon refusal & need reassurance

[Runabean]

Hi, I have just started blw with my 8.5m old after limited success with spoon feeding. I bf until 6m and assumed spooning purses would be easy but my baby point blank refuses to take food on a spoon some days which has led me to blw in desperation! Having moved onto blw it is clear that she was getting quite a lot of solid food from my spoon feeding as her milk in take has increased from 450mls to nearly 1000mls in the last few days since we started blw. She is eating a few odds and bits but clearly much less than when i was spooning! My concern therefore is that at 8.5m I don't feel I have the luxury of time for her to get used to the food in the way that I would if she was 6m. Has anyone done the same/similar to me in coming late to blw and can give advice/ reassurance that this is the right thing to do please? Thanks v much.

I (largely) BLW DS from 6 months, offered the odd puree or soup/stew on a spoon. He really didn't take to eating 'properly' until around a year old. I just bf on demand and offered food at mealtimes and snacks if he seemed interested. He now eats like a horse (18 months) and has stayed on the 50th centime throughout.

My DS is coming up to 7 months and is the same as your little one in that he isn't really bothered by the spoon. He's okay if i give him the spoon to chew on. Sometimes it goes in his mouth with the food and sometimes it ends up on the floor. He too was EBF until six months and I am still feeding him on demand now. (We're not yet making it through the night but don't expect him to till he's having a good 3 meals a day plus his milk). So you can try giving him the spoon but like Joyful said - offer puree and solids. I off mine puree but always put some of our food in front of him too - pitas, babybel, bits of pasta. Can't recommend Gill Rapleys book on BLW enough. The new River Cottage book for babies and toddlers is good too as it covers both spoon and finger food. It's good to hear other people's babies not taken to it until 1 as we can get caught up what is "right" for a baby of a certain age.

My DD, now 5 and loves her food, refused spoon feeding at about that age and worried me. We gave lots of finger foods, she loved carrot sticks, broccoli florets, fishcakes, meat balls, sandwiches, anything we were eating really. And I still did some spoon feeding. She made a horrible mess though! Used to eat soup by putting her face in it and slurping it up! Just offer food, finger food and pureed, and she'll probably get enough.

I'm doing a mix of spooning and finger foods for my ds2 who is, thankfully, a marvellous eater (unlike his brother who thought "baby led weaning" meant "I can live on pasta for a year" - bah!).
Back to ds2. I find mashed potato a great vehicle for other pureed/mashed veggies and meat, fish or beans. I roll it into balls and ds shoves it in - he gets the volume of spoonfeeding but learns blw skills.
I would also let your dd get really involved with the food - messy, but may help her to accept more different textures, flavours and temperatures. If you are worried about amounts you could also do a bit of "posting" if she'll let you. As others have said though, don't worry too much about amounts just expose her to as many foods as possible. She'll get there.