BLW ?!?

[Soyouare2faced]

Am I the only parent to wonder what this new age BLW is ?? (Ok maybe not THAT new)
Just seems like one messy choking hazard to me !!

I had similar with DD. I don't care if it was gagging not choking, it was fucking frightening and I wasn't going to out either of us through that again.

And babies learn to chew and swallow perfectly fine with traditional weaning. Saying that it's BLW that teaches them that is rubbish.

It's that kind of bullshit that pisses me off so much about BLW, opinions and anecdote presented as fact.

Outside of MN many of us do trad weaning or a mixture of trad weaning and finger foods and they get on fine. Might be good eaters, might not. Might do brilliantly as babies but become refusers as toddlers.

Do what works best for you and your baby.

We did my own slapdash weaning, which started with purees but quickly developed into purely finger foods. In a way it was a sort of BLW as I followed DS' cues as to what and how he wanted to be fed (eg when he started to refuse the spoon at seven months we moved to just finger food). I think that some of the homemade purees I did in the beginning helped to get DS used to different flavours though.

As with anything related to DCs there seems to be a certain amount of over-investment and fundamentalism that is attached to the weaning process by some. Echoing PPs who state that some (not all!) of the BLW enthusiasts online are slightly batshit (referring to traditional weaning as 'force feeding', puree as 'mush' etc.) so I'd steer clear of them! Most of the people I know who've done BLW are not at all like this and I think it can be great for some babies.

PS Gunting - super impressed by your 11mo using a fork! DS is nearly 11mo and is crazily messy, scooping up his food with both hands and ramming it in. He's just not interested in cutlery at all (think maybe he's too greedy and just wants to stuff it all in as quickly as possible...!).

At 11 months my baby did this brilliant thing where he would quite painstakingly mime using cutlery then (job done) he would place his knife and fork down and start eating with his hands.

Ha! That image made me laugh splendide

Ds1 had no appetite for solids. And hated lumps. And had numerous allergies. Weaning him was a joy I can tell you - lots of time at the allergy clinic and the paediatric dietician.

Ds2 probably would have been a good candidate for blw but after our experiences with ds1 he was carefully fed purees, one new food at a time per week (diary kept), no milk, nuts, eggs, fish, shellfish etc until past his first birthday. It was the antithesis of blw!

They both survived, thrived and are healthy, very unfussy food lovers now. I suggest you pick whatever form of feeding suits you and your baby, secure in the knowledge that there isn't one right way.

It was a bloody rusk that had been softened with milk!! I wouldn't mind but I only gave her that as I'd run out of the usual breakfast!
I appreciate the honesty of posts here! I some times feel like BLW pro's ram the idea down your throat ( the irony )

What were the very first foods you gave when blw? I assume not the usual baby rice? I'm not sure where to start.

windows my daughter started off with sticks of steamed carrots and broccoli, toast and banana, chicken. Only for about a week though and then she was straight onto what we ate. She's never had a purée as I simply could not be fucked to stand there making it when she's perfectly fine eating my food!

Yeah we did similar. Roasted root veg went down well and brocolli and toast. Banana is good, mango I think we did. Peas he managed well.

Oh and plain yoghurt with fruit, he used his hands and the fruit as dippers.

Soup weirdly is good when they're a bit bigger. He dips bread and cheese and he could do his own spoon by about 10 months if the soup was quite thick (so it could stick to the spoon if that makes sense). .

My son started with sausage casserole so sausage cut length ways, steamed veg and mash. He had toast, avocado, strawberries, omelette. I have some pics of his meals at 6m, 8m and 10m.

My DS does a mix of puree and finger foods when really I'd intended to do purees. He is sometimes a spoon refuser so for some babies, the choice is made by them! He is 6 months and we are still very much at the playing with food stage. Am trying very hard to relax over it and just give him different textures and tastes, whether thats puree or finger foods. I imagine in real life people are less militant about 'pure' BLW, as I find most people are about exclusive breastfeeding than on mumsnet.

My Dd is 17 months now, but choking is one thing I am still absolutely terrified of.
But as others have said, gagging and choking are two very different things - babies have a very high gag reflex, so gagging is actually a natural preventative measure against choking. I read somewhere that with traditional weaning, babies learn to swallow before they learn to chew because of the smooth puréed foods, but with BLW, they have to learn to chew before they swallow - so as crazy as it sounds, the risk of choking is less.
We did a mixture of BLW and spoon feeding - I hated the mess at first, so spoon-fed any "wet" foods. But then Dd started trying to explore the bowl with her hands, and I let her.
She's eaten the same meals as us since weaning began, and eats pretty much anything - except rice but I think it's the texture she doesn't like! She's now beginning to use a spoon and fork properly, with a little bit of help, but more often than not gets excited at the taste of things and uses her fingers to pick it up!

Some people who only feed by a spoon stop their baby being able and to later finger feed/control their own portions/explore and enjoy the textures and shapes of food so much.

Just offer some finger food alongside the purées and don't get caught up the labelling of how you feed (don't forget blw as a term was created by somebody to sell a book).

If worried about choking it's actually better to let the baby gradually get used to shapes and textures rather than control via purées and a spoon so they can learn not to choke. babies are actually very good at not choking if left to their own devices as it's an inbuilt reflex. You could also do a baby first aid course to help your confidence - they only take 2/3 hours and run in evenings or weekends and so you'd feel confident you could deal with it if necessary next time not your DP.

Easy finger foods that aren't massive choking hazards are toast, cheese, cooked potato wedges, sweet potato wedges basically anything that 'crumbles' rather than breaks off in s hard lump (like an apple slice or raw carrot stick).

See, i couldn't be fucked thinking up healthy balanced meals twice a day for us all to have - I probably still had undiagnosed PND and we were eating a lot of pizza and comfort food. And i liked for me and DH to be able to eat alone after she'd gone to bed.

So batch cooking and freezing stuff for DD, using a very good veggie weaning book (from which we've got some great recipes that we still use now) was much much easier. I would cook when she was napping and I enjoyed making the food in peace and quiet.

We did try BLW and I hated every minute of it.

I'm not a pure BLW'er, but I've always found the purees thing a bit weird. DC have what we have, sometimes it's a spoon thing and sometimes it's a finger food. From what I've seen this is the approach favoured by the NHS- certainly the paediatrician we saw was happy with it.

I did blw (although did spoon fed weetabix/yoghurts etc) and DS, now 2 is the fussiest little fuss pot ever when it comes to food.
But, that said, although it's messier than spoon feeding, it is easier as I really couldn't be bothered to make loads of purées and stuff and I didn't want to fork out £££ on ready made stuff so DS has just had whatever we are having from the beginning. I'll do the same with dc2 because I think it is easier.

Thats interesting Sack, I went to a weaning workshop run by the local HVs and they very much seemed to advocate puree. One lady asked about BLW and she said she couldn't answer questions and would need to seek advice from a different source (almost like it wasn't recommended by the NHS!)

My HV came and talked to me about purées and spoonfeeding and I said 'what about blw?' She was shocked I'd asked and said that in an ideal world, everyone would do blw. I wonder how much advice they give is down to their own personal preferences.

I haven't seen my HV, then again I don't want to.
All things considered I don't see how eating foods whilst having to prevent yourself from choking is a nice experience, gagging or not I can't help but find in slightly cruel, and after the choking incident I won't be trying it until she's older.
River I love your honesty

I don't see how eating foods whilst having to prevent yourself from choking is a nice experience, gagging or not

I'm sorry you had a scary experience, but this is a ridiculous overstatement. To say it's cruel is nonsense.

I agree. Watching DD gag or choke or whatever it was was dreadful. I was simply not prepared to put either of us through that again, given that it's completely unnecessary.

Sack would you like to eat a meal whilst gagging?

I did BLW and for the main advantage was that it was pretty much a seamless transition from breastfeeding into solids. I would usually eat with the baby on my lap anyway, and when they were ready to start solids, they started eating the food from my plate. Once they started actually eating it rather than just exploring textures, they went into a high chair and got their own portion of food. So the big difference from my point of view is that I didn't really wean them at all. I just gave them the opportunity to do it themselves.

Except that's not what happens in the massive massive majority of cases, soyouare2faced. My son has gagged maybe twice. Never anywhere near choking. I wouldn't have given DS a moistened rusk, though.

I've weaned 3 children doing BLW. No choking incidents at all, a few gags. Started on soft fruit like raspberries which fall apart in their mouth. I use spoons but do loaded spoons (so put the mash/porridge on the spoon and put it on the tray). My DS2 has been feeding himself porridge this way since 7 mo (not much went in at 7m but he could manipulate the spoon and from about 9m he could manage a full bowl). At 12m he could load the spoon himself and has been using a fork from about 10m - sometimes needs bit of help to stab things.

It doesn't necessarily stop fussiness (with my older twins, I have one dusty bin who will eat anything and one fuss pot who needs lots of encouragement) but it does put the control in their hands and they are very good with portion control - will leave cake/sweet things when they are full and eat well at mealtimes with little in the way of snacks.

I will say I think it's easier to do for subsequent children as you have got into the routine of doing 3 solid meals at regular times with dinner at 5-ish. certainly first time around I survived on toast and enormous bowls of pasta at 10pm but you can't get away with that second time around so the baby feeding slots more easily into your day. And you need to be able to interact with the older ones while managing the baby eating.