Am I the only one who thinks baby led weaning is a stupid idea?

[chocablock]

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/mar/14/familyandrelationships

It seems as if everyone is doing BLW apart from me. What happened to the tried and tested traditional mashing up your baby's food and feeding it to them with a spoon? OK maybe let them play around with their own spoon a bit to get into practise but basically make sure they eat the food!!!Is there anyone else who thinks blw is new fangled stupidity? Or am I just a voice in the wildreness and hopelessly old fashioned?? :)

TSC I think you are right. My two were the same, they either ate or didn't. All this bollocks about spoon feeding equals fussy eaters etc etc. It seems that every year some new parenting method will come out that is so much better than anything gone previously and you simply MUST follow it if you want the best for your baby. Most of it is common sense and like you said, what most of us do anyway but re-packaged and given a new name.

Rhubarb, if you spoonfed and give finger food, that's traditional weaning. You can't combine BLW with spoonfeeding because then it's just puree/AK style weaning.

BLW by definition doesn't involve any spoonfeeding. If you do use a spoon, you give the baby the spoon and let them put it in their mouth. And maybe other babies have more coordination, but 7mo DD catapults yoghurts from the spoon before she thinks about sticking it in her mouth. I remember the BLW says it's much much later they can handle cutleries.

My point exactly lilham. You cannot combine BLW with spoonfeeding. So it's all or nothing.

No middle ground.

But you can combine you giving them purees etc with a spoon, and them eating "finger food" with their fingers. Also as with most things in practice there is probably a complete spectrum from one extreme to the other !

I think it's the labels that irk some people.

It is the label that irks me and the idea that it is new.

It is mother led. If I go to someone's house and they ask me if I want broccoli and stilton soup or pea and ham soup, I will go for the second. I am lucky in that I eat most things but I don't really like either and as I am hungry and polite and that is the choice I opt for one. I would be a bit miffed if the hostess then told everyone 'exotic chose the soup today'. If I had really opted for what I liked I would have carrot and coriander-the hostess chose the soup. It is the same with the BLW-nothing to do with the baby and if someone gave the baby a choice not sanctioned by the mother there would be hell to pay!

I don't know where you get the idea that all babies were weaned at 3/4 months and they all had purees. People did there own thing and it was a mixture. I personally like my soups pureed, I much prefer them to ones with bits-how on earth do you know what your baby likes unless you give them both? You also cannot feed a baby more than they want to eat-they won't eat it.

It isn't difficult-the aim to to get them onto the family diet as quickly as possible-how you do it is unimportant. But unless the baby is advanced enough to sit up and say 'I would like my potato unmashed and I don't want the fish' it isn't baby led!

It is a trendy fad until the next one appears and meanwhile people just quietly get on with it without giving it labels. I feed them the same as the family-some is very solid, some is mashed, some is pureed-but so it is with the rest of the family.

why be irked? why not just quietly get on with what you're doing? why is it so important to you that it's NOT new? (or that it is, and it's a fad. it's so hard to keep up).

Juggling, yes but that's traditional weaning didn't you know? I don't know why that is bad, but it is. Apparently.

I quite like Pick 'n' Mix, in all aspects of life

Bless you for not noticing that everything goes in cycles. BLW is not new-fangled - it's just been rediscovered. You don't really think parents have always, always styeamed, mashed and blended, do you? I know they've been doing it for a long old while, but not forever.

Anyway, do what works for you and your baby. I pureed with Baby 1 and hated it. By Baby 2 I'd heard about BLW and gave it go. I loved it - weaning ds (Baby 2) was just so much fun. Weaning dd (Baby 1) was a faff and a bother - all those hours sodding chopping, steaming, mashing, blending and freezing in bloody fiddly ice cube trays. But that's just my take on it - you do what works and feels right for you. If ever I had dc3 dh would leave me I'd go down the BLW route again. Most fun you can have with a baby and a broccoli spear!

I couldn't sit and watch any of my children gag?!

I don't understand this gagging/choking argument. Traditionally weaned babies are eating finger foods and lumpy mashed food by 6 months, the same time at which blw babies start solids.

So why is the blw baby more likely to gag or choke?

meh.
I'm with Aitch here, what on earth do you care whether I BLW or spoonfeed my child? You spoonfeed and you're happy with it, you think it's best for your baby, well that's great, brilliant..really. I like BLW as it seems to be what my baby prefers and it suits our family. Why get so het up? Really, why on earth do you give a monkeys what I do if you're happy with what you do?
There were threads just like this when I weaned DS 3 years ago and before that I'm sure.....why do people get so over excited about this topic?

why be irked?

I don't know why I am! It just sets my teeth on edge, like 'baby wearing' 'UP' and all the other labels that people come up with.

"So why is the blw baby more likely to gag or choke?"

I don't know why but whenever I read BLW threads or people in RL that talk about it the gagging issue is mentioned repeatedly, I have read quite a few posts on mumsnet with mums saying 'my baby is gagging while blw what can I do' etc, and I always wonder why they are carrying on with someone that is making their child uncomfortable.

Can you imagine gagging at meal times that would be awful but yet people seem happy to inflict it on their DC. Obviously I know that not all babies gag while being BLW but it crops again and again on discussions about it.

The gag reflex is further forward in children that age as a defence mechanism against choking so I thought it was common for babies to gag when starting solids of any kind. My niece told me that her daughter would gag all the time when she started eating mashed food.

I think people seize upon it as a problem when they are ill-informed about blw. I remember hearing AK bring it up in an interview on Radio 4 once.

Gagging a bit while they learn to swallow is a bit like falling over while they learn to toddle, as long as you are keeping a watchful eye and ready to jump in if they get distressed, it's all part of the learning curve. Surely?

Gagging and spitting out a lump too big is not the same as inhaling a lump,bulging eyed and going blue. The latter is choking,and they can do that when not in a high chair for example if they are crawling and find something on the floor.So it's not just a BLW hazard.

I spoon feed or give spoons of things like porridge, mash up spaghetti sauce if it has big lumps of mince and spoon feed, and hand over finger food like broccoli and carrot and sandwiches as mothers have done for ages. I don't see why everything has to be the consistency of slop, but nor why eating with hands and learning dexterity precludes having things off spoons.

I can't make my baby eat if he doesn't want to, whether off a spoon or passing him something he can clutch.

He either eats or he doesn't.

This thread is MN at its worst. Or the 2 extremes of force fed v choking, at its worst. utter nonsense. of course parents don't force feed their kids. of course parents aren't 'gagging' for their children to choke.
I did a mixture, a bit of mashing of our shepherds pie, plus providing bits of breadstick/banana/strawberries. And I don't have such silly, ill-informed views of karmel'ists, or blw'ers. God give us strength, a strong G&T and a vol-au-vent.
This thread is horrible.

Horrible Oblomov or quite funny ?

Humour is a funny thing - depends on your perspective.

I liked the poster way back who said, with the wisdom of the passing years ...
"weaning, pureeing, bread-sticks ... it all seems such a long time ago and so unimportant"
(or something along those lines)

ach, no it isn't. nor is it two extremes. it's someone saying that blw is stupid, others agreeing with her, and other people saying look it might not be for you, but it's not stupid. that's one extreme and one moderate opinion, surely?

personally, purees aren't for me, but they're not stupid. nor are the people who do puree rather than BLW, or people who do finger food from the start and supplement with puree. but look at the OP... totally antagonistic and obnoxious and designed to get a bad reaction. i think that the replies of people who have actually done BLW have been very mellow indeed, under the circumstances.

I agree Oblomov-I don't see what is wrong with the middle way.
Last night I did shepherd's pie. I minced the leftover lamb and veg from sunday with the leftover gravy and put mashed potato on top with cheese that melted into it. I don't have babies or young DCs, but if I did they would have needed a spoon and I would have needed to help them. It seems madness that the adults would have had it mashed and minced but the baby needs it in finger form.

"weaning, pureeing, bread-sticks ... it all seems such a long time ago and so unimportant"

Exactly-it doesn't matter. I have no idea what my mother did with me-and no intenetion of asking. There is only one aim-to eat family meals-how you get there matters not one jot! Do what suits you. (quietly without labels)

it IS madness, exotic. what kind of a shitting moron would do that? (answer; no kind of shitting moron.)

my children loved shepherd's pie and managed to feed themselves it wonderfully without any intervention from me.

i really do think most people who are profoundly anti just don't know what they're talking about, tbh.

sorry, why quietly and without labels? seriously? why does it bother you so much, exotic? it's all a bit weird, tbh.

I think I had better leave it to you.
I am not against the method of feeding-just the ridiculous term BLW. (rather like treating a baby like a handbag!)

Very weird Aitch-I have no idea why but the term BLW is a bit like putting your nails down a blackboard.

oh i deffo don't like the term either, i think it's rubbish. if i was naming it i'd call it self feeding, i think.