weaning, purees, fussy baby!

[mangomilkshake]

Hello, i would lovelove some advice/reassurance from you lovely ladies!

I started weaning my son from around 6 months and it went relatively well, he ate baby rice mixed with banana, baby porridge, carrot, mashed potato...but he is now totally rejecting all the purees that i am making for him (he's now 7 months)...dh suggested trying out the ella's kitchen pouches and he loved it, which has left me really disappointed and gutted that ds doesn't want to eat my slaved over the stove lovingly-prepared purees.

i have however been perservering with the annabel karmel recipes and made him a chicken dish which he took one mouthful of, which was accompanied by a digusted expression..

i hadn't finished writing my above post, before it got posted!

anyway, i am feeling really crappy about the fact that he is not eating my home-cooked food, and have no idea where to go with this whole weaning lark...

i've been giving him strips of banana, carrot, cauliflower and broccoli florets to hold (and eventually eat) while sitting in his high chair - it beggars belief really that all other things like toys, remote controls etc reach his mouth, but the most he will do with a strip of banana is squish it in his hand and rub it all over the highchair.

would appreciate anyone's advice/comments/reassurance!!xxx

Hello Mango, my DD is 7.5months. We started weaning at 6 months. EBF. My daughter would not entertain a spoon at first and would like your son squish food in her hands and then chuck it. e have discovered two teeth poking through in last few weeks and so this could explain why she was refusing a spoon.
However, thankfully she is now putting finger food in her mouth after a little bit of squishing. Also, the spoon is not her worst enemy anymore (as long it has yoghurt on it but am working on that).
Iam trying to stay as chilled out about it as possible and have found that she will copy me and put food in her mouth if i put food in my mouth too. Keep going with the experimenting with recipes as it can 10-15 times for a baby to accept a new taste. Maybe your baby is teething too. As long as he is getting his milk feeds food is for fun.

mango remember - until one, food's for fun :) It's all about discovery of tastes and textures for your DS atm, so if he wants to rub the food all over the place, and squish it in his hand, I'd let him.

Will he eat your puree if you give him a loaded spoon?

thanks for your replies guys...

lovepotatoes - ds has been showing the signs of teething for some time now, so perhaps like your little 'un the teeth are now ready to poke out which is why he is pursing his lips - though his mouth opens like a fish when i am aiming the ella's kitchen stuff to him! yeah like you I am trying to chill out about it but it is ever so frustrating - i sat him in the high chair last night and gave him some pasta which he loved playing with and was happy to have little pieces put into his mouth but he is still working towards his own food-filled fist reaching his mouth...

flisspaps - i tried giving him a loaded spoon as he is always eager to grab the spoon off me and he just flung it rather than it going anywhere near his mouth - interestingly though, he is more than happy to eat porridge, baby cereal etc when i feed him with the spoon, so i dunno i suspect he maybe just doesn't like my cooking :(

thanks for the reassurance that till one the food is for fun - i have to say, the health visitors don't really broadcast that fact and kind of expect that baby will be eating 3 square meals fairly quickly once weaning starts.

mango - your DD sounds liek EXACTLY like mine - will eat a limited range of ella's kitchen and yoghurt and soem finger food but nought else....7.5 months and I'm also trying to chill!

hi i have no advice to add but i do have a question - i'm just starting to plan for weaning and i was going to go mad pureeing veg and freezing it in icecubes but now i'm thinking blw sounds like it makes more sense. my question is when to give baby puree and when to give small bits of solid food and how do you tell what they are ready for??? cant seem to find the answer - thought you might know

kosh You'll get more advice if you start your own thread, but if you want to do BLW (do it! It's great!) then wait until your LO is sitting up without being propped, and can grab something and shove in mouth. My DS could do the grab and shove in mouth from 4 months but wasn't sitting properly until about 25 weeks. We started BLW at 26 weeks and he took about a month of playing with, licking, and dropping the food before he really got into eating it. You spend a bit of time picking things up off the floor and chucking them.

Now he's shovelling it in (33 weeks) and v. happy. There's a some great info right here on MN here about when to start, and then more BLW info here in fact, that whole page is handy, so have a browse maybe? Good luck - it really is a lot of fun!

well i have reached a breakthrough i think - i made lovely lentils for ds (annabel karmel recipe) and he ate it!! amazing, as i was preparing myself to end up chucking it away! perhaps my ds is humouring me, but i am going to try giving him some more maybe later or tomorrow. i mixed in some tiny pasta shells in it too which he seemed to like. so maybe he was just going through some phase, and hopefully now i can reduce the ella's stuff.

blackcurrents - i had a question about blw - i did initially want to do it but got scared about the choking aspect - i am still to some degree worried about that, and today was breaking up the tiny pasta shells in half and i didn't want them to get stuck in his throat (possibly over-reacting??) - with blw - how is choking potential dealt with? also, i heard from someone who did blw that they were giving their baby dairylea sandwiches - now i appreaciate that people who go along with blw don't generally consider purees to be relevant as part of the weaning process, but from my point of view, where the baby has been on purees and then moves on to lumps and chunks in puree, could the other principles of blw be incorporated, or is it you do blw from the day one and that's it?? or you start on purees and that's it?? if that makes sense

sorry if i am rambling a bit....i can't help think sometimes that it was all much easier when ds was younger and all you had to do was whip your boob out (!)

Mango: oh GOD was breastfeeding simpler! SO much agreement from me!

The key part is the BLW is "baby-led-weaning" not "give them finger foods." Most people who give their babies purees are also giving them finger foods, aren't they? Certainly most of my mates are. So in the respects that they can choose how much of the finger foods to eat, that's 'baby-led' of a sort. But, erm, if you're spooning food in then you're not doing BLW. No judgement - not saying it's 'better' or anything, it's just that you're not baby-led if you're holding the spoon. I'm not sure what you're asking so I'm probably not making any sense, sorry!

The baby-led part is key for the choking risk, in my meagre experience. If you're not spooning it in, they put it in their own mouth at their own pace, shift it around a bit, and, like as not, spend a few weeks letting it fall out again. DS learned to chew before he learned to swallow, thereby reducing the risk that any food he eats will choke him (cos he knows how to chew it). Babies on purees seem to learn to swallow what's being spooned in before they learn to chew food. Hence having to give them purees and then slowly-increasingly-lumpy food. I think?

DS hasn't gagged on anything since the first two weeks (when he gagged as things hit the back of his mouth, before staring into space for a moment, then swallowing them). I'm not going to pretend my heart wasn't in my mouth every time he gagged, but (as long as they're sitting upright) the whole POINT of the gagging reflex is that it PREVENTS them from choking. He would gag on something, it would be pushed back to the front of his mouth, and he would either do his 'stare, stare, stare, swallow' routine or just open his mouth and let it fall back out.

Hope that makes sense!

i really like the ideas behind blw - i think i may have missed the boat with ds now - gutted. incidentally, can blw be introduced once the puree thing has been tried and tested or is it too late?

blackcurrants - i just read back my post and i am not sure what i was actually asking now either - d'oh! i think basically what i am thinking is that i want to encourage ds to be more independant with food and have the confidence to put it in his mouth and self-feed eventually, so have been giving him banana cut into chunks or carrot batons which he is holding and mushing up in his fists but not actually putting in his mouth - so this part of it is baby-led,while i am feeding him the puree stuff with the spoon which isn't baby led obviously...what i am really thinking about is will this way teach ds to independently feed himself or have a screwed him up by spoon feeding his the puree??? he does seem to be mushing the pasta bits etc in his mouth before swallowing so i think he gets the idea - its just the hand to mouth bit that he hasn't figured out probably cos his mummy-dearest has been spoonfeeding it to him.

regarding the choking - ds done some scary gagging moves yesterday with the lentil puree so i guess the risk is the same whatever they feed.