I'm interested to hear other peoples experiences about different stages of weaning

[Paschaelina]

What steps did your baby go through to get to the point of eating platefuls of solid food.

My Boy, now 8 months old, was started on BLW at about 24-25 weeks when he started grabbing food, two months later and he is able to manage anything a bit mushy and soft but has not yet developed the ability to chew meat and other more solid food to a point at which he can swallow. It also doesn't get spat out, just sits in a compacted mass in the roof of his mouth.

Is there a set of steps all babies must accomplish in order to get from one stage to the next?

Does a baby who tucks straight in at 6 months old have some innate sense that others don't? Do some babies take til more than 12 months old to gain any significant ability?

Is the playing field more or less level at 18 months old, or 3 years?

Does a slow weaner equal a fussy eater later on?

Too many questions pasch and all interesting.
Dc3 is (was?) a spoon refuser and would only suck toast til 9m. She then rapidly gained serious fish finger and quiche eating skills and at 10m feeds herself mainly but will eat cut up pasta one piece at a time off a spoon (I don't have much time for that!).
Dc1 and 2 both got mush spooned down them til about this age and I'm not sure they could deal with a fish finger with the skill of dc3. But dc1 and 2 are great eaters and will try anything, even though dc1 wouldn't feed himself until he was 2 (he saw me sponing mush down dc2 and wanted his mummy too).
I would say most of my RL friends with dc the same age as dc1 had them all eating in a similar way by about 3 years, up til then there were still lots of quirky eaters.

Ha! Spoon refuser? Oh yes! Boy is also a demon toast-sucker - peanut butter disappears, toast left in a squodgy mess.

My mum is of the (slightly harebrained?) opinion that babies cant deal with lumps til they have molars!? In which case we would all be eating slop til 2.

But Boy fairly obviously can't cope with bigger bits yet. I presume its all a developmental curve so he'll get there in the end.

My DS wasn't much interested in food and wanted to be spoon fed by mummy til he was around 3. He could eat by himself - he managed at nursery - but didn't like lumps and was quite lazy about chewing so it was stews and minced stuff til he was 3ish. Once he started chewing he was fine and progressed rapidy to more grown up stuff, he is 8 now and has a huge appetite and eats all sorts of things. DD was the opposite and grabbed food from other people's plates and fed herself from young age. Refused spoon feeding at 8 months, so from then on it was all up to her, she decided to do BLW herself. Chewed well too, remember her managing strips of tender steak at a party at nursery when she must have been about 10 months old, give or take a month.

DD was a spoon refuser. I think it had more to do with temperament than ability. Bf-ing DD was a nightmare initially because she didn't want to be guided to the nipple she wanted to find it herself. So even at 4 hours old she wanted to be independent!

She ate loads at 6m because she was interested in all the new flavours. Then she had a couple of months when she mainly licked and dropped things. Now she finally has some teeth (aged one) she seems to have regressed and will no longer take small bites preferring to stuff things into her mouth whole, squish them a bit, spit them out, stuff them back in etc.

I think weaning is simply unpredictable. Lots of factors beyond our control affect the pace at which they take to things but you don't meet many adults who'll only eat out of Ella's pouches so I guess they all get there in the end.

Funnily enough, although my 9 month old ds can feed himself all kinds of things (sandwiches, cheese, bananas, roast dinners, pasta, mince) he can't manage lumpy baby food. I tried to give him a stage 3/from 10 months jar today and he spat out every solid chunk in it

He was BLW'd at 22 weeks and took to it very quickly, and has since gone through a phase of prefering to be spoonfed by me with a bit of rice cake or toast as finger food, but now does 50/50 self-feeding and feeding himself from a pre-loaded spoon (with me trying to get the odd spoonful in for speed).

DS was weaned at about 20 weeks, quickly went from purees to lumpy purees and by 6 months was happily eating toast/bananas etc.

By 8 months he was eating meals and now at 18 months there isn't much he wont eat and he is just mastering feeding himself.

I am very thankful he has been easy to wean, I wouldn't have the patience for the battles!