Baby led weaning 8 month old.

[Torinunn2022]

Hello everyone.

Looking for some advice and opinions.
My daughter is currently 8 months old and has been doing a mixture of blw and some purées since 6 months.

She can swallow purées really well and I was delighted that she had taken to exploring the BLW foods really well taking everything to her mouth and having a try. She chews the food but is yer to swallow anything, it all gets mashed in her mouth and spat back out.
Now I wasn’t worried about this at all and just thought it will click some day, but I casually mentioned it to the HV at a recent weigh in as she asked how solids were going.

They proceeded to tell me that this was really concerning and would need a referral to SALT as she should be swallowing food BLW style by now.

This has worried me. But my gut view is that she will get there, she just hasn’t figured out how to manoeuvre the food to the back of her mouth yet.

Does anyone else have any opinions or experience on this, is this HV being over the top?

Many thanks ☺️

I guess my first question would be how certain are you that she's actually swallowing nothing with finger foods (bit gross, but looking at the nappies is usually the easiest way to tell).

It does seem a bit early to worry, but if they're offering the referral, I'd take them up on it. Waiting lists are long, and you can easily take her off the waiting list if in a month or two she's happily managing all sorts. In the meantime, I'd make sure she got plenty of chances to practice, but otherwise try to put it to the back of my mind.

How come she is still weighted by HV at 8mo?
Were there any concerns about her weight?

My DCs got one HV weighting at around few weeks and nothing untill year 1 review.
If there were no cencerns about weight I'd think HV was over the top. Although I find most of them are as they deal with hard social cases which probably makes them get dramatic over most irrelevanr and bizarre things.

On feeding,if your DD was used to pures she may find chewed food a bit yuck and hard to swollow. Try mixing up pure with finelly chopped (or chewed) pieces of food and give her to explore. Worked well with my first and was reason second baby never got pures in the first place.
And as someone mentioned, they eat tiny bits so it is hard to tell how much they had if they feed themselves.
Try mot to stress, food before one is just for fun :)

I'd take the referral. Waiting lists are long, and if it ends up that she doesn't need it you can take her off the list. But if she does need the referral, you're better on being on the waiting list now rather than later.

Very sensible comment.

If you’ve only just introduced finger foods then I wouldn’t be too worried as it takes a while to get used to them. If your baby had only been on finger foods from 6 months and no purées but still couldn’t swallow I’d be more concerned. Is your baby interested in peoples food when they are eating?

Took her for a weigh in because she had been off her milk for a couple weeks and only taking minimal amounts and wanted to seek advice regarding this. Her weight is really good she’s 75th percentile so no concerns with that.

and yes she has been having finger foods for a couple months now.
I was just under the impression that blw is a skill that can take a bit of time and therefore should come with more practice. Just shocked me it was suggested she needs professional help

BLW is a style of weaning where you let babies explore feeding themselves and eating at their own pace. It involves feeding finger foods. What you are doing is simply offering spoon fed and finger foods (which is not BLW), so I think it may perhaps be a bit confusing for your HV to understand what you're doing.

It should be really obvious if she's eating or not. The poos of a baby who is only milk fed are very different to the poos of a baby who is taking in any sort of solid food (pureed or not). I would say, having BLW mine (no purees), they don't appear to eat much at all before about 10 months. A lot of it looks like it gets mushed about and falls out, dumped on the floor, etc. But it's super obvious from their nappies that they are eating from 6 months. What comes out looks like broccoli or carrots or cucumber, and it often but not always causes some digestive discomfort initially.

It doesn't sound too concerning to me. I did similar with my two, combination of purées and finger foods. They do just mush up finger food to begin with. She's swallowing the purées so obviously no physical issue. I think she'll get there too!
No harm in getting checked out though I guess