BLW baby crying during meals

[DrinkFeckArseGirls]

We only just started BLW few days ago, at 27(ish) weeks. My DD up till now have had some fruit, bread crust and some corn. She eats very eagerly and it looks as if she's been doing it all her life . However, within, I guess, 5 minutes of starting on her food she starts to get very frustrated and cries. Then throws herself on the food, which calms her down for a bit and then she starts crying again even when chewing. Obviously by then I remove the food as I don't want her to have unpleasant associations.

Can some one shed some light on it for me? Is it too early for her? I googled it and one of the suggestions was trapped wind but when I try to wind her, nothing comes out .

When do you give her solids? Would she have recently had a milk feed? I wonder if she's hungry and not yet efficient enough to get sufficient food down her IYSWIM - you could try giving her a milk feed just before a solid meal?

Hi, most of the time (well, it's been only a few days) I make sure she had her milk first and few times she just grabbed the food when I was eating. I wait at least half an hour after the feed to give her solids as I don't want her get too full up.

If she's crying due to frustration perhaps she is trying to tell you that she wants to be spoon fed.

Have you tried offering some food - mashed veg or potato or something - on a spoon? She maybe doesn't yet have the coordination to satisfy her desire and need for solid food. You could get her to feed herself and use a spoon in tandem until she is more practised.

She does get the food in though, it disappears and not (all) in the carpet. Plus the nappies are the best proof. Now I'm thinking it might be the texture/ rawness. She was very happy with the bread crust, maybe I jumped ahead and should've given her for example a cooked squash and not raw fruit. Argh, feeling guilty now.

We'll see how it goes before I resort to purees but you might have a point ilovemountains, she likes it more when the food is in my hand, as if it were at a better angle for her to get at.

Give her something easier and more filling, like fat cut soggy chips.

You're saying that too Norman, hmmm. I think that might be it - her enthusiasm is ahead of her capabilities.

Don't feel guilty! It might just be that she wants to eat faster than she can get it in.If you spoon feed at the same time as she feeds herself that might solve the problem. And most things can just be mashed or cut up very small, you don't need to purer everything on a spoon.

It doesn't have to be puree OR blw. Just relax the rules a bit. Mushed with a fork veg helped along with a spoon from you and DD is still following her lead. Cooked veg batons are much easier than raw. Banana and pear are easier than apple or orange. Shreddies with a bit of milk are good too.

DS was like this for a while. The first couple of weeks of BLW he loved. then the novelty wore off and he wanted food faster than his unco-ordinated grabby little hands could manage

We had a couple of months where he was having half his dinner plonked on the tray as finger food and half mashed a bit and offered on a spoon, which seemed to do the trick. Loaded spoons went down well too, once he worked out which end was which.

He's 10m now and shovelling it in like there's no tomorrow.

yy to softish stuff too.

And DS always liked to have one big thing instead of lots of small things - peas got batted to the floor whereas a large roast parsnip got sucked enthusiastically.

Great, thank you all. I'll try something cooked and big and squishy tomorrow . Although banana, mind you still raw, was not a great success. DD was very unimpressed and ate it only because I was eating it. Hopefully we'll have more luck with potatoes or some root vegetables.

Risotto was also a favourite with DS at that stage - easy shovel in with hands and filling too

dd2 is like this - we think her appetite is ahead of her dexterity. she enjoys finger food, but we offer spoons of mashed stuff at the same meal which helps.

dd1 was BLW, but her hand/eye-co-ordination far outstripped dd2's at the same age.

I had to give up on doing totally BLW as DD just loves food and got so frustrated that she couldn't get enough. Now I just give plenty of finger foods and mash up whatever we are eating.

My ds often cries in the highchair because he'd much rather be on my lap pinching food directly from my plate...

DS went through a phase of really not liking his high chair, but he was happy sitting eating on my lap.

You can also give a loaded spoon for them to investigate and eat themselves, DS loves this, he never accepted spoonfeeding, but if I held a spoon in front of him, he would poke it with his finger, then take it off me to put in his mouth. Soft food, like bread soaked in tasty soup often goes down well too. Also anything dippy, like houmous and breadsticks, or toast thickly spread with fruit puree so they can suck it off.

I think it is normal for them to go through a frustrated stage, just as a puree fed baby might start refusing or grabbing at the spoon before they are able to feed themselves, but you need to decide if it is getting too upsetting for her.

How do you feel about mess? DD's favourite foods at that point were rice mixed with yoghurt and dal, pasta in tomato sauce and scrambled eggs. All of which she could shovel in herself. She didn't really start going for the well cooked carrot sticks etc until she was 8-9m. It was hideously messy however.

Loaded spoons are worth a try too.

Another thing we found is that DD definitely preferred strong flavours to bland. She loved satsumas but had no time for bananas. And we thought she didn't like bread until we gave her some garlic bread one day.

Sorry, didn't think more people would contribute! Happy to see more suggestions [smike].

I don't mind mess at all, I just have to organise myself better and get some plastic tablecloths or something to put on the floor. Yep, my DD not a big fan of stodgy (and appropriate for the early days) stuff but loves juicy fruit though. Very unimpressed by parsnips, avocado, banana, broccolli but loves pears, apples and nectarines. And cucumber. (And she eyes up everything she should not be eating, Jaffa cake, sausage, salty shop bought hummus).