baby led weaning - no purees!

[AlexiaSarah]

My 5 and half month old will not take food off a spoon and does not want to eat purees at all, including yoghurt. In desperation (am breast feeding and she wont take formula) I am introducing finger foods. Feel very alone and dont know what I am doing. Anyone got any advice?

There is a great BLW website that someone on here directed me to a while ago. I'll get a link, hold on.

here hope this helps. I got some great ideas and receipes here, plus advice and support in their forum

Why are yuo desperate?
It won't harm her not to eat so much if still b/feeding (best thing for her.)

Have looked at sites but wanted to speak to some real mums doing it! Just feels a little off the wall as it is not the norm!

It is alot more common now than it used to be. There are an awful lot of people that do BLW instead of purees these days.
I think I'm going to go this route with ds2, or at least a mixture. Ds1 didn't have any finger foods until he was about 9 months!
It's still early days for her, (not even 6 months) and the thing with BLW is it's more about fun than eating, even more so than purees iyswim. Until she is about a year, milk is supposed to be her main source of nurishment, so if she doesn't want to eat anything, I wouldn't force her, let her go at her own pace.We started with pasta, boiled courgettes, broccoli, peppers, carrots.

If she won't take purees or anything, is she ready for weaning?

BLW is great! It was the perfect decision for us. Don't be afraid of doing it, you can get lots of specific tips from here. 5.5 mo might be a little early.

Basically just start giving them finger food, bit of what you are having (non processed food though), rice cakes, veg batons, fruit. Tomatoes and satsumas were early winners here. Sticks of cheese, bread sticks, toast, DD was eating tuna and noodles but 7 months.

Don't stress about it. Remember: FOOD IS FUN UNTIL THEY ARE ONE. Doesn't matter how much they are eating to start off with. Just offer them food and see how they go. Top tip, food always tastes better from your plate!

One of the best tips that I got from Aitch on here was put a plate in the freezer when you are cooking that way when you serve up put LOs food on the frozen plate and it cools down really quickly. Saves them getting frustrated waiting for food to cool down.

Go for it, just try not to worry.

I wouldn't feed finger foods to a 5 and a half mth old baby.

If she's not interested in eating I wouldn't push it. At 5 1/2 months, maybe she is just not ready and if that is the case BLW won't make any difference (since there it is the baby who decides whether and what to eat).

The key point with blw is that they pick it up and eat it when they're ready.

Don't start offering food in 'desperation'. You start making food a tense and difficult arena from day 1. Eating is a lovely, pleasurable experience and hopefully it should start that way.

DD helped herself to our Sunday roast aged 7 months and we never looked back.

Bumper That about the frozen plate is brilliant! I am def gonna do that with ds2. I was the one getting frustrated waiting for food to cool down with ds1. Fantastic tip

Don't push it. There is no need at all to rush to weaning. A few more weeks and your child will be ready, so why are you so desperate?

I don't take any credit for it Littleboyblue, that was a classic mumsnet tip!