Did anyone do traditional weaning?

[Elisabeth3468]

My daughter is now 6 months so we have just started weaning, she hasn't got massive interest yet but it's early days.
I am very anxious about choking and going through a lot of trauma in my family at the moment (death of a young family member) so my anxiety is generally quite high.
i have a 3 and a half year old who was weaned mainly self feeding because he didn't let me spoon feed him! He eats really well but gagged till about 1 years old.
I know all the facts, I know gagging is normal and a protective mechanism and I know first aid should choking happen.
my daughter has a high palate and a very strong gag reflex, even sometimes gags when breast feeding!
i was thinking of going down the traditional weaning route. But I feel a bit guilty as she seems to want to grab my food and put it in her mouth herself.
I load the spoon with mashed avo/banana /puree /yoghurt and she will lick the spoon and seems to enjoy it but then gets fed up.
did anyone go down the traditional weaning route and can give me a basic time line?
please be kind.

We did a bit of a combo but mainly traditional. I think we gained more confidence a couple of months in and introduced more baby led style meals but it worked for us. We started him with veg puree, lots and lots of variety and moved onto to other stuff naturally.

DS is now 3 and will eat pretty much anything (except potatoes weirdly!)

I think traditional weaning is what most people do- it’s a combination of purees/spoon feeding and finger foods so like at breakfast you would spoon feeding the yoghurt but serve the toast as fingers that they feed themselves. That’s how we did it anyway and they were off milk and bottles by 1 and are fairly good eaters as children so it seemed to work fine.

I didn't do purees, I always made sure there were lumps in food. I also had food on a plate at the same time, so I could spoon feed and DC could play with food too.

Have you considered doing a first aid course? I was terrified of weaning DS3 after DS2 choked on a teacake and other people in the cafe had to intervene (he was fine). Knowing what to do if your DC does choke does help to keep the anxiety at bay.

DS1 was weaned traditionally and he is quite prone to overeating compared to my other two who stop when they are full.

If you want to do traditional weaning then buy the Baby Bible by Annabel Karmel, can't go wrong with it.

Just googled and it's called the Baby and Toddler Meal Planner, I'm sure it used to be called the Baby Bible.

I did traditional weaning I.e. purees AND finger foods. Soft broccoli, soft apple, etc are very safe. At 11 months, he eats proper food i.e. pasta, toast, risottos, chunks of chicken etc etc. My thinking was that no one just eats "bits". I also had to go back to work at 7 months so I needed to make sure he was getting food in him.

What I did do however is I moved on from smooth purees after 2 weeks. I never pureed after that but chopped finely/mashed with a fork.

Paedetrician said it's very important you graduate to textures very very quickly so they don't get used to smooth purees as that can be tricky to move on from.

Remember they do need to be chewing stuff early as it helps with talking, they need to exercise the jaw muscles.

We did traditional with our 5 due to knowing two families with loss due to choking. I just couldn’t mentally deal with it. Very successful. No problems moving on from it. This whole BLW thing is fine in principle but, like everything, shouldn’t be considered the law. There’s a lot of dogma around these things and people are as rude about traditional weaning as they can be about bottle feeding. Ridiculous.

We generally went from milk at around 6-8 months to fine oat porridge/ Holle cereal and then to pureed veg with assorted additions like quark or cottage cheese.

Didn’t want to do the blw - too messy and time consuming for me. I used jars and pouches and spoon fed them. Worked our way through the age ranges. Worked for us - they grew up liking anything and everything. Didn’t have fussy eaters.

I would recommend an app like solid starts that makes it very easy to safely prepare food according to age. Traditional is fine if that's what you feel comfortable howeber it can actually end up more dangerous when you do move to feeding solids. This was advice given to me from a pediatric speech therapist so it's not just behind the fad of baby led weaning. The issue is the child learns to swallow without/ before chewing, thus the issue when they come to foods that do require chewing. As others said mushed foods with some lumps is the best way to go often if your a little nervous around going straight to solid foods and a combo is fine if they are getting the chance to chew!

My kids are around 30.

When I weaned them I used to spoon-feed them whatever puree I had made (or sometimes bought) but give them something in each hand to wave about and try to feee themselves eg a breadstick and a bit of cooked broccoli.

This was what we used for weaning and i always recommend it to everyone!

Please don’t get bogged down with the whole BLW vs purées debate, it causes nothing but stress. When we weaned LO we mixed purées and finger food so for example mashed up banana and a whole strawberry (the biggest in the punnet) for them to gnaw on and tackle, or some toast cut into fingers but with scrambled egg on a spoon.

We did - used a combination of Annabel Karmel and She Who Must Not Be Named as a guide (this was a fair few years ago now!) - went from smooth porridge and purees, to slightly lumpier and then mixed with finger foods.

No issues at all, and often giving a piece of broccoli or something to wave around would mean I could distract them whilst I got a spoon inside their mouth!

Traditional weaning is feeding them purees, mushed up or easy to eat foods, plus some self feeding. Some of those who push BLW think wrongly that with traditional feeding, you just feed them purees all the time. That was never recommended. They reach an age where they start to grab food from your plate anyway. I would -
4 to 6 months: Tiny, tiny bits of very soft food.
6 - 9 months, mixture of purees, textured food and some feeding themselves e.g. breadsticks, carrots etc. Most nutrition should still be milk.
9 months to 1 year - progress to feeding them versions of what you are eating without salt, and nothing very chokable like grapes. This is assuming you eat fairly healthyish. But at this age I would give curries, pasta dishes and similar. Still give milk.
By one years old they often start taking food from your plate anyway.

Thanks all. She doesn't seem interested one bit and cries to get out the highchair within about 2 minutes. She's 6 months 1 week old tomorrow. Developmentally very ready, can sit unsupported and bring objects to her mouth etc. Guess we just keep trying! Think it was around 10 months before her brother really ate much 😫. What a slog lol

Agree with all above 😃 I did the same and they are all adults now and eat everything.