Knowing when to start BLW

[nymphadora]

I puree fed dd1/2 at 4 months as was recommended at the time. 6 months & BLW makes much more sense to me and that's what we planned for dd3.

She is v interested in food at the moment and sits on someones knee while we eat (getting high chair next week hopefully) and last couple of days has been trying to touch the food. She got as far as putting dhs pasta sauce on her face tonight but spent the rest of the time trying to get in the fruit bowl & fighting a grapefruit. I'm quite uncomfortable with her joining in so much yet as she's only 18 weeks. But I don't want to discourage her from it only to then go the other way in a few weeks.

Sorry missed a bit! How do I deal with delaying weaning without discouraging her. Or should I just keep her away from the table ?

I would sit her on your lap and put some suitable things within her reach - if she bites, chews, swallows then she is ready to eat! If she just sucks, mushes and chucks away then she's fine to just play with food.

At 22 weeks my ds ate a piece of brocolli - so I took that to mean he was ready.

She just touched so far. Toys go in her mouth but food hasn't made it that far yet.

Bumping this for more advice

aitch's blog

She is still at the curious stage, do I should thinknlet her explore textures etc but try to hold off if you can-we have allergies etc in our house so I stick to 6mths but others are different.

She sounds keen though so you'll have fun when you do decide to start in earnest-none of this mucking around at 8mths stuff

Do=so, sorry, fat fingers on iPhone whilst feeding

Thanks. She grabbed a piece of roast pepper last night & was quite disgusted by the texture which was hilarious!

I want to hold off but don't want to discourage her. Poor dh had to eat in the other room yesterday as she was yelling at him constantly!

Hi Nymph - exactly the same here with 18 week old DD (I remeber you from the preg threads!! ). Today, I let her grab a cucumber stick and it went straight into her mouth in a v co-ordinated fashion and she promtly guzzled all the watery inside seeds! She then took another stick and did the same again. I take that as a sign she's ready for cucumber sticks at least!

I will now be putting suitable things within her reach - I figure she won't eat them if she's not ready. The fact she's co-ordinated enough to get them straight in her mouth and her tounge thrust reflex isn't spitting everything out (she definately ate the inside of that cucumber!) suggests to me she's coming up to being ready before the die-hard 6 months deadline. I am going to start very gently now I think!