Baby doesn't seem to like BLW

[Autumn13]

My DD is 6 months old. I'm doing BLW but I'm not sure it's going well. I give her a huge variety of foods which she loves but she just does like feeding herself. She gets frustrated and cries because the food isn't going in fast enough! She's fine if I feed her with a spoon and can handle lumps etc really well.

*doesn't like feeding herself

Do what works for you both. Let her feed herself and you also help using a spoon.

My DD was the same so I started giving her food from a spoon first so she wasn’t starving and then I give her finger foods to explore. She’s almost 9 months now and is starting to prefer to feed herself.

God, just squeeze some Ella's kitchen into her mouth! I tried that BLW thing and mine just dumped it on the floor and screamed at me. I couldn't take all the waste for no gain so out came the pouches and happy baby! Now he eats everything and happily fed himself with a spoon at the appropriate time. Dont sweat it!

As others have said, just do what works and don't get so hung up in a certain approach. There is nothing wrong with spoon feeding alongside offering finger food. If there was, my toddler still wouldn't have tasted yoghurt or porridge.

Baby lead - your baby is showing a preference for being spoon fed right now so follow their lead. They will show when when they don’t want something and as others have said let them explore with some finger foods as well.

Then dont do it. Dont get caught up with the MN fanaticism about BLW. Its bonkers.

We never intended on doing BLW but our second screamed everytime a spoon came her way, but then one of her first phrases was "I do it myself!"

Your DD seems to be telling you she needs some feeding so I'd just go with that.

You could try one of the MN weaning recipes or just something like porridge for breakfast with some banana on the side to play with eat herself.

Just do puree instead. My DS hated BLW when I tried it so I switched to purees and offered him finger food alongside (which he rarely touched) and he was more than happy. He is now a toddler who will eat anything and everything!

You are being baby led, she is communicating in her own way that she wants to be spoon fed for now. I never went in for all the BLW nonsense and now have kids who eat everything. Just go with what your baby wants.

I never did purees or anything like that but DS was (is!) a lazy so-and-so who just preferred to open his mouth and have his food shovelled in for him. He's almost 4 and would still like me to spoon feed his dinner to him when he's tired but it didn't stop him learning to eat properly. Quite the opposite of his sister who went batshit if anyone tried to spoon feed her. As others have said your baby is clearly showing you their preferences, that is the ethos of 'baby led' so roll with it :)

@Marzipan12

You are being baby led, she is communicating in her own way that she wants to be spoon fed for now. I never went in for all the BLW nonsense and now have kids who eat everything. Just go with what your baby wants.

This!! If your baby wants a spoon it wouldn’t be ‘baby-led’ if you ignored her!

I remember mine weren’t interested in feeding themselves at 6 months. When I put anything in their hands it would never reach their mouths. By 9 months they both loved munching on sticks of various things.

In terms of getting babies used to tastes, I believe it’s far more important WHAT you feed them (ie a ranges of flavours and textures) than HOW you feed them.

I wanted to do blw but dd wasn't having bf any of it and just wanted to be spoon fed so I went with that. He then started eating those melty stick things that he loved and then started picking more and mor epu himself until in the end he got annoyed at me trying to feed him so he was fine and did it all at the right time.

The science (unless paid by the person who invented this BLW concept) is not in favour of BLW :
"“The evidence so far on BLW is not all positive. “There are also concerns as to whether all babies are developmentally ready for grabbing chunks of food at six months. Professor Charlotte Wright, a pediatrician from Glasgow, found that, of a sample of six hundred families, only 40 percent of babies were in fact ready to self-feed at six months. By eight months, 90 percent were ready to reach out spontaneously for food. This indicated to Wright that it was “unrealistic” to expect children to rely exclusively on self-feeding when they started on their first tastes of solids. ”

Excerpt From: Bee Wilson. “First Bite: How We Learn to Eat.” Apple Books. ”

Only on MN, is there this battle between spoon and finger, just focus on the food, not the mean by which it reaches the mouth.
Ignore the ideology battle, and grab the unique opportunity to offer fresh food, give her a variety of vegetables, focussing on taste.
The obsession about finger food (which was a need for party food that could be eaten without a fork) has opened the door to industrial baby junk .
Think about how you eat and offer food you usually eat with a fork/spoon in the form of purees, soups, stew with cutlery and food you eat with your fingers, without once she knows how to swallow.

Explore the world of tasty vegetables, rich creamy soups, risottos, and once she knows how to chew and therefor how to produce saliva to help food go down, you can widen the food and even offer small bites crushed with the back the back of a fork from your plate (as long as low ion salt) because this is another big BLW failing. It makes only sense if the family has a healthy diet, not if high in processed food, take aways, ...

":“But in one small study of American mothers using BLW, it was found that the grown-ups—and by implication the babies—were eating excessive amounts of sugar and salt and inadequate amounts of micronutrients, especially folate.”

Ignore the trends @Autumn13 and think about the WHAT you would like your child to eat, not the HOW. You want her to develop a preference for vegetables and not processed. Easy, don't ever give her processed food, such as the puffy snacks, sugary snacks bars.

A child will like the food they are used to. Some tribes have terrible food (according to our Western taste) but to their children it is the best ever.

My DD was the same so I started giving her food from a spoon first so she wasn’t starving and then I give her finger foods to explore. She’s almost 9 months now and is starting to prefer to feed herself.

This is exactly what I did with my DS and it has worked really well - much better than BLW when he was barely eating a thing!

My understanding as to why BLW is suggested by health visitors is to avoid babies developing an aversion to textured foods (by only offering them completely smooth pureed food). But if you are giving her lumpy spoon foods then you certainly don't need to add in BLW if you don't want to. We do a small amount of BLW by offering finger foods alongside puree once or twice a day - but that's just for fun. The only finger foods she'll actually eat are avocado, the inside of cucumbers and the outside of baby corn so certainly not a very varied diet if we were relying on BLW for her food intake! The rest she just enjoys chomping on and spitting out :D She is 6 months old like your little one. If you do want to continue trying BLW, then I'd offer her the finger foods after you've finished spoonfeeding, so she's not hungry.

The philosophy behind BLW is self -feeding. In the same way a baby on the breast takes what it needs, a six month baby will decide by itself how much it wants and the mother should not intervene . That's what Baby-led-weaning is: BLW removes the role of the mother as the feeder. IF your DD cries for food and won't self feed to her satisfaction @Autumn13 your DD is not a good candidate for BLW and the meals shouldn't be tearful.

BLW from the self-feeding principle has been twisted into many other things and I pretty sure BLW was never intended for ultra processed baby food such as cheerios, baby crisps, puffed snacks, baby break and the sort.
Nobody can self regulate, let alone a baby, artificial food, engineered for you to crave more.

A market is born for this twisted version of BLW with the supermarket full of finger food and many parents when they put something on a plate, and the child has a bite and then doesn't eat, will then put something else, and something, abolishing the philosophy of a child self-regulating what it wants to eat.