A couple of questions concerning BLW

[gemmeg]

I am interested to know how the rest of you set about BLW. My DS who is 6 months old has been eating pureed food for about a month now but I wanted to start giving him "proper" food too which I have tried over the past few days. I know the idea is that you just put the food down in front of them and let them pick what they want and play around with it etc..first I offered him some cooked carrots and broccoli on a plate whilst he was on my knee but he wouldn't touch it. The next day I put some pasta and courgette on his highchair table, but again, he wouldn't even touch it. Today I made some toast for him and had him on my lap- he seemed to enjoy this but got increasingly frustrated by the fact he kept dropping it and then became hysterical. I am still giving him pureed veg/fruits and porridge. Do you give them something at every meal time? or just when it suits? Also.......

I know part of the practicality of it is that you can just feed your baby whatever you're having but I was wondering about the salt content of the food. Say you're cooking spag bol - do you just cook it in exactly the same way as you would for the rest of the family? or would you separate a bit off and leave out the seasoning? I notice that a lot of mums say they give their babies cereals like weetabix or cornflakes, but aren't they full of salt and sugar?

The RDA limits for babies for salt are lower than the limits for adults in proportion to the number of calories they eat. So if you have a poor diet with excess salt then you could maybe worry about salt, but I can't see how anyone could make a spag bol with excess salt. Lots of adults do exceed the salt limits of course - but they do that with lots of crisps etc. Not from their regular meals.

I actually think a lot of the "healthy eating" messages have got very confused around babies - a healthy diet for a 6month old is different to an adult - they need more calories from fat, they need fewer calories from carbs (which include most veg) they need little fibre (because they have small stomachs) Salt isn't terrible, even when babies were being given evaporated milk (which is very salty) instead of formula, it was still rare for babies to actually have a problem, from regular food you'd have to be making it extremely salty to be a problem. The same with sugar, sugar is not evil - it's not that great for babies as they don't need as many carbs as older groups (they're not very active) and getting the carbs they do need from veg sources is probably better, but it's not bad in itself.

Anyway, yes, cook the meals the same - it may well be worth changing what you cook a bit - meals which your baby gets used to eating quickly more often etc. I would worry less about sugar and salt than if you have a particularly low fat diet where you might want to think about adding cream/full fat yoghurt or similar to your babies meals (which is also good for making spicy food less hot.) But in general, yes babies can eat the same.

We always gave DD food at every meal, we never care how much she eats, or try to play games to get her to eat more, just keep giving her food until she stops eating, if she exhausts what we put aside from the meal we just add fruit or cheese, or something that's easy to give in small amounts.

I have done BLW with both my children and its been fantastic. I think you have to be able to relax and focus on the 'LED' part of the process. Your ds will let you know when he is ready to eat. Just keep giving it to him and he will get it soon. Remember that solids are for 'fun' whilst they are under 1. Milk is their main nutrition. The only thing I am not sure on is that u have been giving purees for a while so you could maybe slowly replace thus with finger foods and then he might not get so frustrated. There is a v good blw website with a forum that will answer all your questions (dont have link but if you Google it it will come up. Good luck!