7 month old screaming in frustration at BLW

[MonkeyChicken]

my ebf baby boy didn't show any interest in purees at 6 months so I happily went down the baby led weaning route. However as his apetite is increasing he is getting really upset at meal times when he can't get the stuff in his mouth. I'm not sure how to make it more grabbable. I've given him yoghurt and porridge from the start. To begin with he would feed it to himself off preloaded spoons but now he prefers me to feed him. He's got so upset this week with his BLW food that I've started him on purees too, which he now loves. So now I tend to pick out bits of what we are eating and pop it on his tray which he'll "eat" for a bit but I also puree some of what we are eating and feed him that too. Guess he's getting best of both worlds, but think I must have got BLW "wrong" somehow. After chasing food round his tray for a while he'd just look at me and burst into tears.

If he prefers being spoonfed then spoonfeed him! Surely that is being led by your baby?

I do similar with my ds - finger foods at every meal, sharing what we eat, but I also mash and spoonfeed stuff for him too.

Not every baby will do exactly the same thing. If he wants spoonfeeding, then I think he's being very vocal in leading you. We used to call BLW handing the baby a butty cos it was easier for them to feed themselves.

Cheers Rita and Visitor. Thanks for being my sounding board. It's all good. My DD (2.5) was spoon fed and has always been a good eater, so I've no problem with it; it just seemed a sudden gear change. I think he was happy to gnaw at stuff at 6 months but by 7 months he just wants to get something in his tummy whilst waving a bit of carrot in the air. (he's a big boy, 9lb 10 at birth!) This eve we ended up being out at dinner time unexpectadly so I nipped into a sainsbury's local and got an ella pouch. Didn't have a spoon and he happily sucked it out! Hilarious, my DD would never have done anything so vulgar.

Please don't think you have got BLW wrong. I seem to remember doing the same with DS (aged 3.5 now). Sometimes I'd pop something on a spoon and sometimes he ate it himself. It deosn't really matter. Now I have a 7.5 mth DD who doesn't like eating at all but that's another story. The point is your boy is happy, healthy and eating. There will be some BLW purists who say you should never put things to your babies mouth but as with all inflexible views is best to ignore as it will tend to only make you feel bad. You and your baby are doing great!

If he's opening his mouth and going for the spoon, then you can safely say, IMHO, that you are not putting things into your baby's mouth, so even the BLW "purists" shouldn't be able to say anything!

Be happy you have such a good eater!

We went down this exact path. DD was happy with BLWing but at around 7-8 months she just didn;t seem to be able to get the amount into her that she needed/wanted to eat and would get very cross and frustrated. So I gave her spoons of food - we had a month or so of shepherds pie, fish pie etc - things which you can eat off a spoon. I also always fed her her breakfast from a spoon anyway. We just went with it as it overlapped with the summer holidays and as I'm a teacher I had loads of time to spoon feed her or not and generally let her take a lot of time over her meals if and when she wanted to. She grew out of it fairly quickly I think and we went back to BLW. She's 15 months now and she drinks from an open beaker, spoon feeds herself everything (still sometimes prefers to use her fingers - particularly shreddies for some reason...??) and can use a fork quite well too. She hasn't become picky or fussy and it's all good. I think the problem (I know this was the case for me anyway) is that we seem to divide everyone baby into BLW or puree and sometimes you need to switch between the two - and that's OK

it isn't a question of getting things wrong, nor of 'purists', but generally speaking the advice at this stage would be to let your child have food quite soon after a feed, so that they're not hungry and aren't frustrated like this.
but of course if everyone's happiest doing a bit of spooning etc then go for it, the main thing imo is not letting it become a pita so whatever works.

I've had the same sort of thing with my baby who is nearly 8 months. I give him about half and half finger foods and spoonfed stuff. He just got too cross with just finger foods, and he cut back his milk feeds fairly rapidly (now on 5 BFs a day, a lot fewer than a couple of months ago). However he is getting better and better at finger foods and I can imagine in another month or so I won't really be spoonfeeding him at all. I'm just going with the flow, trying to give him as many different tastes/textures of food as I can and following his lead. To a certain extent anyway...