Baby led weaning

[Vsarahc]

Hi
Lo is 6moths so we've started to introduce foods we're 2 weeks in but don't seem to be getting very far , we tried bland veg purees but they didn't seem to be a hit. Today he had homemade yoghurt which did seem to go down alot better .
Just wanting some advice really as to what to offer him an whether it needs to be puree or not .
Thanks

Were a bit further along, 7.5 months (2nd baby but can't remember what first was like) and its seemed SO slow!! She isn't that interested a lot although has improved in the last week or so. It's just messy play to start with really. She seems to want to be in charge and prefers holding the food cut in to strips or holding her own spoon while I feed her a bit. She often doesn't want to open her mouth for the spoon though...

I remember with first baby a couple of years ago being told not to completely purée the food or else they won't get used to lumps. Well, second baby initially would cough then vomit if there was a chunk of food in her mouth so we had no choice but to blend it up at first. Then went with very mashed up but "juicy" or slimed stuff that would slip down easily, banana, courgette, etc. And then mashed regular food.

It's very slow and very messy at first... 🙂

If you're doing baby led weaning, it definitely doesn't have to be pureed. We gave DS a little of whatever we were having, minus the salt. His first meal was a roast chicken dinner. He's ten months now and a great eater - it takes time though. The best thing about BLW for me is that because he feeds himself, we can all eat at the same time.

Bland veg purée is not BLW. Maybe join the BLW group on Facebook there's loads of inspo there.

We got stuck right in and baba had sweet potato katsu curry as their first meal (not that they ate much of it but had a good suck on the potato and tasted the sauce)

Good luck!

Similar to PP we did BLW and just let her eat / ignore or throw whatever she wanted to.

It took a good few months of her having what we had (minus salt) to actually start eating and you need to remember that they don’t get most of their nutrition from food until they are over a year or so.

I would recommend the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook - we use it a lot and now my LO eats pretty much anything but we still just put it on a plate and it’s up to her whether she wants to eat it or how much.

She still drinks plenty of full fat milk and loves yogurt so will always fill up on that.

I think the less you stress about it the less they will worry about it and will just try different foods.

Good luck

There really aren't any rules to this. I gave my little one a mixture of purees and finger food. Babies naturally love sweet food because their milk is sweet (formula or breastmilk) so fruit or sweet veg is a good place to start so that they actually get used to different textures (banana pancakes were a big hit with us). I would say make sure you include lots of healthy savoury too for some variety. It'll also make life much easier down the road! Things like baked egg cups with different veggies mixed in are good (can be batch cooked and popped in the freezer), avocado on toast cut into squares or fingers, potato cakes, fish cakes...there is so much stuff you could try. I remember being totally overwhelmed but it does pass!

Puree isn't bably led weaning. It's traditional weaning. Both are fine but you sound a bit confused.

I did proper BLW, just gave steamed veg for 2 weeks, then a bit of fruit and gradually everything else.

Cut everything into easy to hold sticks, use crinkle cutter if you have one- stops slippery stuff sliding away.

Don't worry if they don't eat much or anything. It's a learning process, they are exploring the food.

You can shovel in puree/ porridge with a spoon.etc if you prefer and just wanting to fill their tummy.

Also avoid most experts recommend to avoid sweet food to begin with. Get them used to bitter tastes so broccoli, spinach etc. Save the carrots, sweet potato parsnip for a few weeks in.

Very old school to give the sweet tastes first.

We are doing a mixture with 7 month old. He gets finger type food, but I do purée as well as I think he just can’t eat bits otherwise

Ie he can eat things like carrot/ broccoli/ cauliflower/ banana as pieces. But he can’t eat a chickpea, celery, lentils, red peppers and similar without purée as he just spits it all back out.

So he gets something like last night- pumpkin, rice and peas puréed up. Then a bit of cod just flaked into the purée, so it’s not all smooth smooth purée. And then some pumpkin left in chunks to try afterwards. He ate 90% of the fish and purée, and about 5% of the solid pieces.

So I’m happy to do a combo as he won’t eat anything otherwise, and he is still waking 5-6 times overnight to feed so I’m trying to get some solids in gradually. He won’t be on purée forever.

We did BLW from 6 months (including 'natural' purees like yoghurt preloaded on a spoon). For the first 10 days ds would barely even touch the foods on his tray and seemed to much prefer spoon feeding himself. He wouldn't actually let us feed him - I wasn't massively determined to do BLW but he decided that for himself. He then started actually tasting things but still eating very small amounts for a few weeks. He's now 8.5 months and for the past 2 weeks really seems to have 'got' the idea about eating (and drinking) and it's so nice to see him discovering new tastes and really enjoying his food, and his coordination has improved so much that he can now pick up things like pasta shapes, hold more slippery fruits. The best advice I can give is to expect nothing of the mealtime initially and therefore don't spend ages preparing special foods if it's going to ultimately lead you to slightly resent it when they don't eat it/throw it all everywhere... Helped me a lot when I realised this. We've just now reached the stage where the cookbooks seem worthwhile. Also try different textures as my ds definitely initially preferred drier foods if holding them himself.

Also, although it might seem 'easier' for them to fill up on puree, a whole pouch of eg. beef and vegetable casserole only contains about 60 kcal. They generally need to eat larger volumes of puree to get the same nutritional benefits of the non-pureed food versions.

And finally, teething! We had no idea when we started weaning that ds was cutting 4 teeth and still wonder whether this also contributed to his reluctance to actually try things.

Good luck! I'm so glad we've stuck with BLW and can already feel how much easier it's making mealtimes together at home as ds can feed himself (not sure the same can be said if we ever eat out in the future as the mess is another matter entirely )

@Rawrsome13 - that might be true for purée from a pouch. But homemade purée has just as many calories and nutrients as giving it whole.
I literally give the same things but purée half, and give half whole so how can one be less nutritious ( well the whole is atm as it goes on the floor tbh)

I'd just keep on going with it and let things develop naturally. Some babies aren't that interested at first. Some will not understand how to lift the food to their mouths.

I found make your own wraps a perfect blw lunch. I had pots of nibbly salad bits, cheese etc and ds could have a bit of everything.

@caspianberg yes sorry I was a bit hasty there, yes of course purees can be fortified and made more nutritionally dense, particularly if homemade (and I really don't think there is anything 'wrong' with the occasional shop bought pouch either...) but in the long run, once solid food becomes more important as a source of nutrition, an older baby/toddler would have to eat more puree in order to get the same amount of calories/protein/other nutrients than if they ate a range of the same foods at mealtimes in their non-pureed form. I think sometimes too much emphasis is given to the amount consumed in early days of weaning and not on mealtimes as an opportunity to explore foods/develop skills for the future when mealtimes do matter more in terms of actual nutritional intake.

I'm convinced for us that the couple of weeks where ds really swallowed very very little have paid off in terms of giving him exposure to the textures he needed to help him develop the skills to eat much larger quantities of more solid consistencies now, but every baby is different and parents have to make choices that make sense for them. If giving puree gets your child interested in food then great! I just know know that if my future self could have told my old self during those first few weeks that it was fine that ds was getting his nutrition pretty much entirely from milk but that this would change then I would definitely have felt more reassured.

@Rawrsome13 - yes I agree with you there about the pressure of getting them to eat.

But I do think the whole food is fun before 1 is a bit of a joke. Yes they don’t need to eat 3 full meals at 6 months, but food after 6 months is important especially things like iron as babies levels stored from pregnancy run low if they are breastfed.

So a 6 month old not eating much is ok, but if a 9/10/11month old is still just playing with food and most on the floor, then milk isn’t covering everything they need at that point.

It’s definitely hard to get the balance though of offering a mixture and being relaxed about how much they eat

BLW is a joke just feed your baby how you feel best trust me the world survived well enough without this new hipster nonsense there’s enough pressure on us as mums as it is

I know people dislike the food before one saying, but when my dd wasn't eating not a single medical professional would see her until she had turned one.

@Fuscialuscia

BLW is a joke just feed your baby how you feel best trust me the world survived well enough without this new hipster nonsense there’s enough pressure on us as mums as it is

100%. We do a combination of spoon feeding and letting baby feed themselves. I’ve seen BLW militants on Facebook groups describe this as abuse. Of course this is not how all BLW parents think but I don’t want to be associated with people who think like this. Weaning is fucking hard, if you have to spoon feed your child to get them to eat then just do it. Mine is happy being spoon fed porridge and yogurt and happy digging into a bowl of spaghetti bolognese on their own.

I appreciate I’ve maybe derailed a bit but I get frustrated with the whole debate on how to feed and putting parents down because they don’t exclusively BLW.

@Meepmeeep, I absolutely agree! I do a mix too, finger foods and spoon fed. Ds has always held the spoon, unless he is being lazy and just opens his mouth 😂 But he also picks up finger foods well and happily feeds himself too, especially as he's that little bit older. I find it hilarious that blw fanatics think anyone who dares to do spoon feeding is just there, shoving spoons of yogurt into a protesting babies mouth?!