Combining BLW with Annabel Karmel

[CoqAuFanjo]

This might be totally stupid but I've got the Annabel Karmel book (baby and toddler plan) which I want to follow as I'm the sort of person who needs to follow plans to feel confident

Having read the early stages it seems to involve all puréed foods but I'd like to give her some finger type foods as well, is it ok to combine? I really have no idea, nobody to ask, and my HV seems to have 'done one'.

She's 5.5 months and EBF and I plan to start the plan next week. Many thanks :)

It is fine to mix finger foods in with purees. It is not blw though, just finger foods. I use a mix of spoon feeding and finger foods and it works well for us.

That's what I did with ds1 and it worked really well. I was using the Annabel Karmel book and the Gina Ford one but preferred the Gina one as Annabel's were a bit hit and miss, if it said it made 4 portions it usually only made 1! With the Gina Ford one it was easy to adapt the recipe so we could eat it too.

If you read your Annabel Karmel book, it says to give finger foods. (Read the stage 3 weaning chapter). Purees + finger food = traditional weaning. BLW means exclusive self feeding. Unless you give your LO the spoon when you feed purees, it can't be BLW at all.

Iirc, stage 1 in her book is pre 6mo. Then it's 6-7mo in stage 2, and 7 mo and over for stage 3. If you start at 6mo, you pretty much speeds over all the single veg purees. HTH.

Iirc stage 3 is when you introduce things other than veg and fruit. Or I could be remembering it wrong. You are allowed to give meat by 6mo, see the NHS guide on weaning here and [[http://www.nhs.uk/Planners/birthtofive/Pages/Foodstoavoid.aspx here]. This means you can pretty much go straight to stage 3 if you like. My friends raved about the lentil recipe btw.