Baby led weaning?

[Mymble]

Hi. Have dd who is 25 weeks. I keep seeing baby led weaning mentioned and want to know a bit more. Dd is exclusively bf.

Any tips/advice/links?

TIA

We have been doing this for a week now with DS and I have been pleasantly surprised by how much he actually eats. Obviously nowhere near as much as his spoon-fed peers, but we give him something new everyday (no history of allergies to speak of) and he gives it a suck/chew/taste, and it later reappears in nappy! Cons: The mess is unbelievable and the family are sceptical. Pros: I can see his hand-eye coordination improving before me, and he just loves sitting up in his high-chair, joining in with meals. Oh, and it's very funny seeing the faces he pulls (the one when he first gagged on broccoli will remain with me forever!) We just cheer him through the gagging and let him get on with it. c

What about when you're out? Any good, portable early weaning foods?

sazhig

thanks for those links, they're SO interesting. looking forward to starting baby led weaning already (i'm still pg)!!!

We haven't yet tried DS out in public, but have found that rice cakes aren't too messy.

Filyjonk - Finger foods are really easy when eating out. If we ate out in the early months when ds wasn't able to have food from the restaurant then we just took things like apples or pears & cut them up at the table or things like rice cakes that didn't need cutting up at all. Most places are also happy to prepare their veg of the day salt free. What we did most of the time was save a few sticks/wedges from the previous hot meal at home & put them in a tupperwear for taking out - what could be easier. I always silently chuckled at all the work puree users seemed to have to do when eating out - bringing spoons, jars, getting them heated, then having to feed the little one (which usually involved delaying your own meal or having to eat very very fast to fit it all it). We just gave ds his food & let him get on with it! He always made a mess (& still does at 17 months!) but restaurants don't mind - if they give good service then we clear up as much as we can - if they dont then we leave it all for them

How 'cooked' do veggies have to be? Really soft? Or al dente?

Also, do you have to reheat foods if you store them in the fridge?

I did this in part (abit of pureeing but most ended up in the bin) and can definitely recommend, I'm not much of a cook, so as well as they steamed veges, I bought breadsticks and rice cakes, which work a treat, I gave them to DS at 6 mths and he coped fine - my best tip if you worry about preparing lots of little meals is to buy some frozen veg - you can get organic these days and things like frozen broccoli or cauliflour are great (it's reckoned that with the amount of road miles some "fresh" veg notches up, they are not disimilar in vitamin content). DS will now try anything (incl. pickled onions and radishes!!!) and as I am usually famished by the time dinner is on the table, I found not having to feed DS first each time very liberating.

Do any of you BLWs work full-time? I like the sound of BLW but am going back to work full-time in January and wonder how my childminder would manage with a baby not really getting much in her mouth, the subsequent mess and her also not taking EBM from a bottle.

Also, when you say porridge - how are the eating this?

Am doing a mixture of mush and finger food. Definite preference for food with texture, I think.

Sorry, not at work, but really I don't think there is anymore mess than conventional weaning (babies still spit things out and stick fingers everywhere I'm sure) I think the difficult thing to get across is that your LO doesn't have to eat everything/anything, it's definitely a real hangup with the postwar generation that children should eat every last thing on their plate whether they like it or not and with BLW you really need to take a backseat and let your child decide what the fancy (I get some cloudy looks from Parents in law about this, but DS has never refused to eat peas and DH has, so there)

You tend to beam with pride, thinking your clever little baby has eaten a huge amount of carrot sticks, cheese cubes etc, and then look down and see them all on the floor.

Or the floor is empty and you're convinced he's eaten at least as much as his little mates. Then you lift him out of the highchair and are showered with half-chewed bits of toast.