BLW 8mo stuck in a rut and pincer grip not improving

[JenniC]

My 8mo has been BLW for about 8 weeks now and I'm finding it much more enjoyable and relaxing compared to when I puree-weaned my 3yo. He loves sitting at the table and joining in with meals and he's still at the stage of not really swallowing any food, just sucking and chewing then spitting out. I'm not worried about this at all as I know he's getting enough nutrition from his milk (4 x 7oz bottles a day).

However, I haven't seen a huge amount of progress since we've started and the main reason I'm concerned is that he isn't trying a wide variety of flavours or textures.

He's still only really eating chip-shaped things which are easier to hold (like toast, strips of steak, chicken drumsticks), doesn't like touching slimy things (like melon, pear or pineapple) and struggles to pick smaller things up (like strawberries or bits that have broken off his toast for example). Well, he doesn't struggle as such, he tries for a bit then can't be bothered to persevere so just ignores it (which is just like him, very laidback, if he can't reach a toy, he just plays with something else)! He also hasn't worked out how to suck food off his fingers (even though he sucks his fingers for comfort to get to sleep!).

Just wondered if anyone's experienced this and has any tips on a wider variety of food that I can offer that will help him with his pincer skills and also expose him to more tastes? As I said, I'm not overly worried now, I just want to work on it now before he actually starts getting hungry for food and don't want him to get frustrated. Also, he starts nursery next week so who knows how he'll cope with food there (and how they'll cope with a BLW baby!).

Any help much appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Oh, and forgot to say, I have tried pre-loaded spoons as well which, apart from the huge mess as he flicks it everywhere, haven't been that successful. He just grabs the spoon then sucks/bites down on the spoon with food running down his arm and then won't let go of it and happily sits there with an empty spoon!

First, I wouldn't worry about developing his pincer grip. It's like other motor skills such as crawling - they pick it up in their own time and all babies are different (mine started getting his at about 9 months+ IIRC. I think bits that break off toast are enough for him to practise on and you don't need to give him anything special.

Have you spoken to the nursery? It might be that they expect you to provide your own food at this stage anyway.

Also, try not to worry too much that he's not getting enough variety (this was one of the things I got a little bit hung up on). You can put quite a lot of different things on toast or ricecakes, e.g. avocado, banana, houmous, goats cheese, fish such as salmon chopped up with cream cheese...

With 'slimy' things, will he eat them if you hold them for him? Or (haven't tried this myself) if you had a child's plastic fork you could stick that into a chunk of e.g. pineapple (thinking like 70s cheese and pineapple on a stick!)

Thanks ChocolateMoose. Sorry I haven't checked back the last few days and missed your reply.

The nursery are fine about the concept of BLW but we'll have to see how it works in practice! He starts on Tuesday so I'll find out then. Breakfast shouldn't be a problem as he'll have toast, tea is usually sandwiches, soup or pasta and snacks are fresh fruit and rice cakes. Depends whether lunch is something easy to hold like roast dinner or mushy like cottage pie, I think!

He tried tuna mayo on toast the other day and seemed to like it so that's good. Houmous didn't go down well though!

Yes, he will eat slimy things if I hold them but he did actually eat loads of nectarine today, with the skin on to hold, so we may have had a bit of a breakthrough as it was also the first time he noticeably swallowed a decent amount of food rather then chewing and spitting out!

I won't worry too much then as I can now see some progress!