Baby led weaning

[rachae1]

My six and a half month old son, Tom, will not let me feed him purees etc. but seems interested in finger foods. I listened to an article on radio four a couple of months ago about an alternative approach called baby led weaning, based on finger foods that infants gum up and eventually learn to eat!

My understanding is that you miss out the mush stage and introduce 'pieces' of food from six months. Has anyone tried it? I would be interested to hear more on this topic.

There is a web site about this and it was mentioned on mumsnet at the time. I cant remember what it's called though. It was a very good web site as well.

DD had some sort of spoon phobia and so I did this by default, finger food until finally accepted spoon at 10 months, by which time she pretty much ate what we did - no purees. For what its worth she is still not keen on spoons at 16 months, will tolerate for pudding but nothing mundane - generally still tackles main course with her fingers.

A friend did something similar, Rachae1 -- only it was from 4 months, and she videotaped it because she was taking part in a Unicef study. Even more interesting, friend's baby had (not diagnosed then, but subsequently) significant chromosone deletions, looked a bit like a Down's baby and maybe had similar development delays. But she got the hang of eating this way in spite...

Anyway, apparently you just hand the baby something a piece of cooked carrot or brocoli or bread or rice cake (etc.) and let them decide to eat it (or not). Friend's baby was pretty good at self-feeding fairly fast.

We ended up doing pretty much this with DD because she wouldn't tolerate rice cereal but would feed herself Cheerios. She will now (at 7 months) eat some purees, as long as they are tasty enough for her, but mostly prefers finger foods. Today she has eaten: A few tiny bites of my toast, a teaspoon of homemade applesauce, 8-10 grapes, about a cubic cm of boiled potato, a teaspoon of homemade acorn squash (with a lot of garlic in it, thinned with breastmilk), and maybe half a teaspoon full of rice. Oh, and a slice of lemon out of my glass of ice water, but that ended in tears when she smeared it across her face and got some in her eye.

I started ds on finger foods at 6 months and missed out the mush stage (he never got anything completely pureed) partly as dd had sort of done this by default and it seemed to work, partly as I'm lazy and it seemed easier to me . He was exclusively bf until 6 months.

He was just getting the hang of it when he got a nasty virus at 7 months, had 2 weeks of just bf again and then went straight back to finger foods with vigour.

So, it worked for me but I guess it depends on the baby. Both mine teethed early, not sure if this makes a difference.

HTH

Californiagirl, I'm fascinated. Homemade acorn squash... with garlic... and breastmilk... sounds absolutely outlandish!! Is it nice?

Squash "recipe": Preheat oven to 375 F (I'd go for 190 C). Cut squash in half and scoop out seeds. Peel and bruise 3 cloves of garlic. Put 1.5 cloves of garlic, a little diced ginger, and a tiny amount of olive oil in each half of the squash. Put in a baking pan. Pour water into baking pan. Bake until the garlic is kind of roasted. Fill squash halves with water. Bake until squash is squashy, refilling with water if it all goes away first. According to recipe book (which is for babies and omits garlic and ginger) should take 30 minutes. Hah! Took an hour. Then you scoop it off the skin, puree it and either salt it and serve it as a vegetable or thin it with breastmilk and give it to the baby. I had a tablespoon or so pre-thinned, and licked the spoon after I thinned it -- TBH I don't taste much difference, might be a trifle sweeter. But I didn't try the version my husband thinned so much the nursery fed it to her in a bottle by mistake (she drank 4 oz of it that way quite happily, apparently). It sounds like more work than it is, really. Still I must admit it's more cooking than I've done for us all month.

aaah... understand now. I thought 'acorn' as in fruit of the oak tree, 'squash' as in cordial... woodland party food! This recipe does sound nice, thanks for troubling to write it out! x

Oh my! Sorry, although I understand English fine, sometimes I hear things only in American. Yes, acorn squash sounds pretty far out there if you mean fizzy drink. Bleurgh.

Aside from the garlic and ginger, it's really quite normal baby food from a baby food book.

Hi,

I am BLW my ds George, we started at 24 weeks and have never looked back. He has never been spoon fed anything, and is doing really well.

I have a blog about my our BLW adventure if you would like to have a look....

www.myBLWexperiences.blogspot.com

you might find it useful?

love

Mel xxxx

Good to hear all this. My baby does not really like pureed foods. She did for a while put now seems to prefer to do it herself. She is in to rice cakes, bananas, just given her a dried apricot which she loved. She is 7 months, was not fussy, got a cold and now fussy as when it comes to puree!

I was getting worried, but can perhaps relax...any other suggestions for finger foods at 7 months...?

I tried this, but my ds kept gagging/choking/being sick. She wasn't able to cope with finger foods at 6 months. She is better now at 71/2 months, but still gags sometimes. Would be very wary of giving grapes tbh

Look in the weaning section, loads about it there. I'm doing it with my dd and it's great but does seem messier than purees, although that might just be my dd.

have a look here, for our resident BLW guru, AitchTwoOh's BLW blog..and DizzyBint is also a fab source of info
BLW

If you are going to start BLW then you need to read the Gill Rapley guidelines, there is a link to them from my blog (not sure how to do a clever link on here!).

She sets out a list of do's and dont's which is essential.

I have given George grapes, and he loves them, but I cut them in half, then sort of squish them so the flesh is sticking out, they are less slippery then.

You also need to understand the difference between gagging & choking. Choking is obviously very serious, and you must intervene immediately. However, it is very common for babies to gag, this is a natural reflex and it is important for lo's to be able to do this as this is all part of gaining the oral control to move food in their mouths properly. It looks a bit scary at first, but babies are usually not bothered at all by it, George will often gag up a bit of food, give it a look then it goes straight back in!!

hth

Mel xx

\link{www.myBLWexperiences.blogspot.com \Melh27's blog!}

\link{http://www.myBLWexperiences.blogspot.com \Melh27's blog!}

oops, there you go !

Melh27's blog!

oh FGS !!!

smug bragging mother alert:

we have allowed ds3 to baby-led-wean himself. and now he is 12mo he can not only drink from cups with no lids, but eat soup with a spoon. properly.

of course, he is a genius. gets it from me you know.

ditto what the others have said really rachae1! dd is now nearly 9 months old and we have really enjoyed blw. aitch's site is fantastic, as are loads of blw threads in the weaning section on here. good luck!

yay, thanks lulumama!

Mel, have looked at Jill Rapleys guidelines, read all her report from the blog site. Also read your blog site (not all, dont have time). DLW seems perfect for us.

I mentioned it to Dp and he is keen too, mainly as LO is already made it clear to us she wants to do it herself. The first time she ate toast, my friends LO aged 20 months had toast and left the plate on the floor. DP turned around after two secs looking away to finding LO there with the crust in her mouth, and would not let go!!! Now we all have toast time together when Dp not at work at 11am!

So, anyway. We feel that we shall give it a go. DP a little reluctant to stop attempting puree altogether, so we have agreed to try this too each time, as its not the same each lunch time if we dont have a food fight.

So far. She has had pear, cut into chunky chip shapes and blanched to make them soft, whole dried apricots, courgette (cooked and raw, she likes it cooked, not raw), steamed carrot, red pepper grilled then skin peeled off. And the best, dont know if I am doing right with this one, scrambled egg. She LOVED this, actually chewed it, and chewed and made swallowing sounds, kicked her legs and making the most wonderful kicking sounds.

Puree food - mango, baby rice, formula milk. Two hald spoonfuls stuffed in when she was not expecting. Ended in tears and being given a rice cake. Brocolli, potato and formula, same. I ended up giving her pot of food to play with, she was a mess already anyway.

BLW seems less messy. Mess seems to be on tray not her, mostly.

So far so good...

I would like to give blw a go but according to the guidelines it's recommended for breast fed babies only. Has anyone tried blw with a bottle fed baby and how did it go

Thanks

Hetty, have a look at Aitch's blog here - on the left hand side, you'll see a category about bottle and formula feeding. I'm pretty sure Aitch formula fed (correct me if I'm wrong, Aitch!) and her DD is gorgeous and did very well on BLW.

This is a direct quote from Gill Rapley posted on Aitch's blog:

I just want to comment on the rant about formula feeding:
I'm delighted you've raised this. Personally, I have little doubt that babies who have been formula-fed are just as capable of self-weaning as those who have been breastfed. My hesitation in saying so in public stems from the fact that I am working in the world of academics and health professionals. In that world, any new drug, procedure or idea has to have a research evidence base to substantiate it before it is accepted - common sense is not enough. This is a safety feature - just in case there could be a hidden danger. If I step outside that I will not be taken seriously by people who, if they are convinced, have the potential to share the BLW message with lots of parents. So, since my own small piece of research was done using breastfed babies, I am not able to make assertions that are more general. You, as mothers, are perfectly free to state what makes logical sense - and I thank you for doing so!

Thanks for that littlelapin. I think I'll give it a go now and see how it goes