Down's syndrome and baby led weaning

[Jodie0Louise]

Has anyone tried baby led weaning, where you offer pieces of food rather than purees, with a baby who has down's syndrome? It was something I wanted to do before I knew my son had DS and was wondering if it would still be possible. Thanks x

I guess you could give it a go but to be honest I would have reservations. My main priority would be to introduce a good mix of flavours and textures and try to establish healthy eating habits. BTW I have used BLW with 2 of my kids, but with my DD1 who has SN, her motor skills were not suitably developed for her to feed herself at the appropriate age. She also had feeding problems and was considerably older before she could really chew well and manipulate the food in her mouth. There was no avoiding purees in her case. Do you have a SALT you could ask for advice. DDs SALT has been invaluable for feeding tips. Best of luck

Thanks

My DS2 has low muscle tone and had similar feeding issues as his friend who has downs syndrome. I wanted to do BLW but he wasn't able to. We started off with purees and then did a mixture of purees and bite and dissolve food.

Interesting question. I did do BLW with my son (NT) and it worked really well. I also did do it with my DD before she was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. She didn't have low muscle tone, but she didn't eat enough using BLW. But then she doesn't eat enough purees either... If there is no issues with choking (?) you could always try and see how it goes?
Is weight gain an issue for children with DS?

dd2 has cp and low tone. she has always had feeding issues (inc milk - was ng fed to begin with).

i would definitely ask to be referred to a slt who specialises in feeding if you don't have one already. we had to be really careful with dd2 - and children with downs can be quite similar in tone. our feeding slt was brilliant.

blw was a no-no tbh. although the 'bite and dissolve' foods (quavers ) were the way we managed to get dd2 to take different textures. thick purees were much more successful than thin ones. she pretty much gagged on anything that needed chewing. (we found out when she was 3 or 4 that she has no laterla movement in her tongue. hadn't occurred to anyone before that!) um, and placing food into the side of her mouth obviouslt helped her with the chewing thing - as she couldn't move it aorund her mouth herself to position it.

anyway, get thee a feeding slt referral. ours was literally the only reason i stayed sane over the first two years.

fwiw, dd2 is 7 now, and can eat pretty much anything. she needs supervising for stuff like apples, but (touch wood) no choking episodes for ages. she eats the same diet as the rest of the family now.

Hi - my dd has ds & we've just gone through the weaning stage. I started her on puree just to get her used to the concept of food, but we then quickly moved onto offering a selection of finger food once she had the idea of chewing. She has relatively good muscle tone, so was able to cope with both methods fine.

HTH & good luck!

Hi, same as proudmum my DS is just 1 (he has Downs) we did the purée thing and it went well and we are on textured/lumpy now. I put bits if banana, rice cakes etc on the highchair tray and he has a go with them. However I could not rely on it to give him all the nutrition he needs.

Thanks for your advice. It seems like purees at first might be the way to go. I think weight gain can be an issue for some children with DS but it hasn't been for us so far. ds is feeding pretty well.