Going from puree to BLW, and having a very big baby, advice please !

[jezebelle]

Right, ds is 7 months, 32 weeks, bottle fed having 4 7oz feeds a day. He started purees around 17-18 weeks, gradually building up too 3 meals per day. Breakfast has always been fine, and lunch is ok as only a yoghurt, but tea time he hates. He hates pureed savory basically, which sends him into great distress resulting in him eating little and getting very upset. I want to now let him feed himself tea, only issue is he has a really bad gag reflex, so bad he empties his whole stomach contents onto the highchair :( however i tried again tonight with some pasta and yes he sicked, but kept going after and ate a bit, so i think it could work ?? he then happily had a fruit pot after :)
So, what are easy foods for him to eat, foods that are wet seem to be better, can i go backwards ?? will the sick thing get better ?? and he is 28lb at 32 weeks and hv are hassling me to get him weaned off milk, any advice, i feel he needs the milk ??

If he is under 12m then milk (breast or formula) should be the main single food in his diet. Even after 12m it still makes a valuable contribution to his diet.

6-8m need 130 kcals of complementary foods and 485 kcals from milk - total 615 kcals a day

9-11m need 310 kcals of complementary foods and 376 kcals from milk - total 686 kcals a day.

12-23m need 580 kcals of complementary foods and 314 kcals from milk - total 894 kcals a day.

Full details here on page 18. Please note that there is different values for industrialised/developed countries and developing countries. I've listed the industrialised/developed countries figures.

If he is gagging on solids, going in slowly and letting him set the pace will help, as will giving him just a couple of pieces of food on his plate/tray at a time so he doesn't get tempted to ram a lot in because it is there!
Hope that helps in some way!

BLW is particularly good for allowing him to understand about his gag reflex because he's in charge of putting the food in, or the pre-loaded spoon or whatever. They soon work out not to put too much in at once, and not to shove it in so far!

Try steamed or roasted batons of veg, DS really liked baby sweetcorns to start with, or a chicken leg. The Jill Rapley (?) is really useful, I found.

And there's no way they should be hassling you to wean him off milk at 7 months, that's terrible! Milk should be their main food source until a year old!

This is a good site for food ideas (as well as advice on how to deal with the gagging!)

The book FetchezLaVache is thinking of is 'Baby Led Weaning' by Gill Rapley, worth getting out of the library but not worth buying as you'll only need to read it the once.

Definitely echo the advice not to be weaning him off milk yet - it should be his main source of food until he's 1! Milk is more calorie dense than most foods anyway, so if he needs more calories than most babies, milk is the way to get them into him.

The BLW cookbook is worth buying though - and www.babyledweaning.com has some good recipes.

I found slow cooked casseroles and patties were the easiest food - plus rice cakes and dips (which is also a good way of using up any stocks of frozen purées you've built up).

Have you tried offering things from the sweeter end of savoury? Puréed sweet potato, carrot and butternut squash all go down well here. I have coaxed my seven month old towards more savoury by adding more challenging flavours to a sweet base. Tonight he had puréed Irish stew that was heavy on the carrot and scoffed the lot. He will also eat pretty much anything that has cheese added for some reason.

I really don't agree with the advice to reduce milk feeds either.