Anyone do a bit of BLW and a bit of spoon feeding?

[redandyellowandpinkandgreen]

Ahh the things I thought I wouldn't do. DS is 23 weeks and I think ready for weaning now but he hasn't had anything yet, he is EBF. He sleeps pretty badly and was awake loads last night so I am on my knees a bit. In my old, more judgey days, I thought it was wrong to fill a baby with food to make them sleep, now I just want some sleep!

So, I was planning on BLW but it will take a while before he has any substantial food and I think he is hungry from the night waking. Do you think it would work to spoon feed him one meal before bed and keep the rest to finger food, just until he has the hang of eating more?

Thanks

yes, it does, but tbh even at that there is a difference between what people talk about doing and what they actually do, quite rightly if someone is in a damned hurry and their baby is fine with having a bit of yog off a spoon and it makes your day pass quicker and nicer then it's not like suddenly you are chucked out of the BLW club. because there IS no BLW club. there are just a bunch of people tryign to wean their kids and live their lives with as little stress as possible. and what that means for one person will not be the same as for others. for me, no interference, leaving it totally up to the kid was the no-stress option. for others, who are more concerned with just knowing for their own peace of mind that something has gone in, some puree is the no-stress option. great. we could all do with less stress.

but i do bridle a bit when people come on for a rant about how blw is nothing new, blah blah blah when technically they are just wrong... it is new. leaving the kids entirely to their own devices is not the same as 'doing a mix' etc.

I was going to do 'pure' BLW but about a week in I gave DS a yoghurt (by handing him loaded spoons, natch) and he devoured it with such gusto it became apparent that his appetite surpassed his dexterity IYSWIM. He also gagged a bit more than I was comfortable with on a lot of the finger foods we gave him. So now I do what some of the previous posters have said and give him some mashed (not pureed - always a bit lumpy) foods like sweet potato, butternut squash, avocado, bolognese sauce etc on a spoon, and some soft finger foods (bits of chicken breast, toast soldiers, strawberries, peach slices) and try to make sure he has finger foods at least once a day. He likes to feed himself so I give him loaded spoons with the mushy stuff on (mashed veg/spuds, yoghurt, porridge etc).

I believe that there have been studies that show that solids do not make babies sleep any better, and that has certainly been my experience. If anything, DS sleeps worse than before he was weaned (which I hardly thought possible - his sleep has always been dreadful) and he eats like a horse. I think sometimes the food even disrupts his sleep judging by the explosive farts that greet me when I go to him at night. So if I were you I'd wean how you want to wean and not think of it as a sleep aid as it's unlikely to have that effect. There are so many developmental milestones/sleep regressions etc in the first year and if you have a bad sleeper they will be more affected by those than other babies - solids won't make much difference IMO.

much as i quail a bit at the idea of there even being a thing called 'pure blw', CD, what you are doing does sound to me like 'pure blw'. the main thing is that they are doing it for themselves, not that it's in solid form, i reckon. if you were giving your child shepherd's pie from the family table that would be mashed anyway, and handling cutlery is another developmental skill that it's good to encourage imo.

although i never gave mine yoghurts until a bit later... cba with the mess.

Ha ha - actually, DS is a dab hand with a spoon - I thought he'd just fling yoghurt everywhere but he is surprisingly dextrous at 7 months. The occasional spoonful goes in his ear or up his nose but most of it ends up in his mouth. Mind you, he loves yog so much I suspect he'd view it as a dreadful waste if it didn't ...

Yes me have done 50/50 with all 3 in fact am doing with ds3 as we speak. He is 6m, is picking up bits of cheeses and cramming into mouth and in between I am shovelling in mashed potato an veg. Couldn't cope with yoghurt and weetabix blw.

Thanks all, sorry for the BLW and spoon feeding confusion! I shall just call it weaning from now on in. I think the boy isn't hungry though. Or maybe he's just lazy but it's not going so well on the weaning front.

it IS just weaning, at the end of the day, and nothing to worry about. they are clever creatures and barring incident they do not starve themselves.

speaking as someone who never quite managed to pull off EBF, though, i do always think that by the time they are coming up to this age and you are giving them 'foreign' food anyway, would it be so bad to supplement with a bottle? or do you think that would harm your bfing?

I would say dd2 was blw. I put piles of food I was serving us and dd1 on her tray, and she would scoop up handfuls and put them in her mouth/schmear them in her hair/fling them at the cat.

Dd1 was purees and finger foods moving on to mashed foods etc (I copied from a book chapter by chapter!), and it felt very different to what I did with dd1 .

I was going to blw with ds, but he hasn't got a great swallow reflex,didn't lose his tongue thrust reflex until 8 months (he is 10 months now) and doesn't have the dexterity for a spoon, although he is great at mashing toast and roasted parsnips into his hair! So I spoon feed him, and he has a pile of food on his tray to play with.

I think you have to go with what suits you and your child tbh.

AitchTwoOh I'm not against the idea of giving formula but I'm just not sure whether there would be any point, do you think it might help him sleep a bit better? I am trying not to give any bottle now and go straight to a cup and he has managed to swig a bit of water out of a cup but he isn't very practised with it yet. I would be reluctant to introduce a bottle now because I would probably have to 'train' him to drink from one. Suppose could put some formula in a cup.

There are also studies that say formula does not make babies sleep better than breastmilk. I've read quite a few threads on here where people have said introducing formula before bed made no difference in itself - ie the actual formula isn't some magic sleep elixir. However, friends who have done it have said it is helpful because your DH/DP can do that feed while you go to bed early (though of course you can do that with EBM) and you also know exactly how much milk they've had so you can feel more confident settling without a feed in the night (though guess this is also true of EBM in a bottle). I am crap at expressing so if I were going to introduce formula at 10pm it would be for those reasons.

Formula won't necessarily help your DS sleep better. DD has been FF since 7weeks and STILL wakes up perhaps two or three times a night at 13mo.

I introduced a formula feed at 10pm - didn't make him sleep better, but it did mean if I knew he'd drunk 200ml then when he woke 2 hours later he wasn't hungry. Basically gave me the confidence to tackle his sleep issues as I knew they were behavioural/developmental not hunger related. It could have been ebm but I'm rubbish at expressing.

yes, sorry i wasn't clear, like the others have said it's not because the formula is a magic bullet, just that you won't have to be the one doing it, iykwim. if you are on your knees, you poor thing, it might be something that you can hand over to someone else and get some rest yourself.

but you know, your original plan of spoon feeding before bed might be the very thing, you really don't know until you try these things. like i say, food with my two threw their sleeping off until their stomachs got used to it.

Yes sorry Aitch, I didn't mean you said that re parent led etc, just that I agreed with your explanation of BLW vs spoon feeding!!! What I wanted to say and didn't manage very eloquently was that the baby leads and chooses what to eat, (in terms of what is put in front of them naturally), and that spoon feeding is 'parent led' because it is the parent putting the food in (of course until the baby wants no more) Phew - still not eloquent, but I just wanted to try and clear up what I was trying to say!

OP, Since weaning my little girl has most definitely been sleeping worse! Sorry. She is also bfed, but I am planning on swapping to formula and bottles over the next few weeks in prep for return to work etc. Also I can get her into a vague routine for my own sanity, and I am hoping this will have a bit of a knock on effect into nighttime sleeping...... I think everything you try when it comes to achieving sleep however is just a hope.
Also by having bottles I know how much she is having by day, and can then have some confidence that by denying her more than one night feed she won't waste away Would you consider sleep training in any form, or do you really think it is hunger he is waking with?

I did read someone saying they gave their baby some weetabix for 'supper', so maybe do try? What have you got to lose?

It is so hard when you are tired, and seeking out every possibility that might bring you some sleep.... You have my sympathies being the mother of a 3 year old that was a nightmare sleeper!!! Sorry to drag in a cliche, but it will pass......

no worries, bagpuss, it's a minefield. hard to sound enthusiastic about one thing without being interpreted as having a downer on everything else (when in actual fact one doesn't really give a toss about what anyone else does because... it's not any business of anyone else, tbh).

I mainly let mine have finger foods / eat from our plates, with a little bit of baby-led spoon feeding of pureed fruit / ready brek / porridge etc.

Tp be frank, I found the whole tone of BLW threads / information so unbearably know-it-all that I refused to call what I did BLW. It was just 'common sense'.

I don't think it's possible for DS to sleep worse!

I'm not sure about sleep training because he's still in our room and having him crying right next to my head in the night would be a bit traumatic. I put him to bed at 7pm and if he doesn't settle straight away I do let him whinge a bit and just keep going back in to reassure him so I'm not averse to doing that but don't think it would work when he's in our room as I'm so aware of him disturbing DH who has to get up for work.

He normally wakes again about 11pm or when I go to bed so I feed him. Then he is awake about every three or four hours in the night and if it is more frequent I don't feed every time as he can't be hungry. But I shush and pat him and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and I buckle and feed him for an easy life. He's very easy to re-settle after feeds though, just feeds for 5 mins and back to sleep so I'm not that sleep deprived, just get lots of broken sleep. Oh and there is the 4am waking too...

Yes but even broken sleep is completely draining. Tbh he sounds a lot like my girl was from around 4 - 6 months, the dreaded 4 monthlies! I also would feed just for an easy life, but if he is only feeding 5 mins at a time is he really hungry? Or just seeking some boob for comfort and to help him resettle?

I got to the end of my tether with mine, once you get there you can make a decision re what type of sleep training and bite the bullet I reckon. My DH slept on the sofa for a few nights (she is also still in with us) and I dealt with the shh patting, it does get easier each night But you do need to be in the right frame of mind, and happy with whichever method you want to use. I think any form probably takes about a week to get on top of, you just need to look at the long term benefits. I now feed her once a night only, after that the boobs are off limits! I would hope to stop that feed over the next few weeks, but at the moment she feeds so well at that feed I think she still needs it, and she won't take a dreamfeed.... Is a dreamfeed an option for you?

I'm no expert. Perhaps you want to keep feeding him if that feels right to you. Whatever sits best.

Sorry, completely unrelated to your OP! Apologies if I'm deviating to an area you don't want any opinion on

redandyellow come and join us on the sleep nightmares thread - there's loads of us over there moaning sharing experiences about our crap challenging sleepers!

OP, I found that while weaning didn't necessarily help DD2 sleep better straight away (as I started her on mashed fruit and veg, which I guess isn't that filling anyway) once we got into the swing of things and she was having a good sized main meal in the evening, usually with some carbs in it (potatoes, baby pasta etc) then she definitely did start sleeping better. So I would say keep persevering with it. If I recall correctly, at one point we started giving her 'supper' of baby porridge just before bedtime, which went down quite well!

Oh, and to answer your other question, although I started off with purees/mash (so shoot me! ) we moved on quite quickly to mainly self-feeding when she was around 6-7 moths and I felt she was ready. She is now 10 months and happily shovels in noodles, pasta, veg, whatever we are having with her hands. But if it's sloppy or if she doesn't seem to be having much success I spoon-feed her, I'm no purist and hate the term BLW (sorry!)

The sleeping pattern sounds quite normal for a BF baby,I remember it well, the 4am waking is harsh! Could you bring him into bed with you?

Thank you lovely people. He does come in bed with us from about 4am as he just won't settle on his own from then but it's not ideal as I end up all scrunched up on the end of the bed and it takes me 20 minutes to straighten up in the morning!

I sort of dream feed as when I go to bed it ends up disturbing him so he wakes a little to feed but mainly sleeps through it.

I am getting to the point where I don't think he needs the feeds in the night but I do them for an easy life and I need to break the cycle sometime.

I was so convinced I would have a good sleeper too, like it would be hereditary!

Off to moan about sleep on the proper thread.

Semantics aside we are doing what you are suggesting. I was a blw 'purist' with dd1 and it worked great. But dd2 likes to be spoon fed a bit. She still has what we are having, I just cut it up and spoon fed her a bit. As countess said, her appetite is outstripping her dexterity. Hasn't helped her sleep though! Do join us on the thread count linked.

Redandyellow, my DS2 is the same and I am sorry to say that solids have made no difference at all to his night wakings - I do a combination of finger foods and purees, learning as I go along. After a few weeks I found that he is generally very hungry at mealtimes now, despite still having regular bfs, and finger foods then make him very frustrated as he doesn't get much in. So I find it better to give some puree first and then some selected finger foods.

I too don't really know what to do about the night feeds and also have to feed him when I go to bed. I tried sleeping in another room to see if I was waking hiim at that time but he still woke around 10. Then it's usually 1-2 more times after that and usually up for day around 6am. YAWN!!!!