DD (8 months) forcing me down BLW route. Need some inspiration!

[CoffeeChocolateWine]

DD is almost 8 months and I've been weaning her since she was about 5 months. Things have been going pretty well - I've been doing a mix of puree and finger food but mainly puree.

She likes her food but in the past week she's increasingly refusing to take food off a spoon...she just wants to feed herself. She'll eat her cereal or porridge off a spoon in the morning but not really at lunch or dinner (apart from yoghurt). I've kind of been going with it but a little reluctantly as I really don't know what I'm doing with BLW...I feel a little out of my comfort zone. I just don't think enough goes in! I know that at this stage it's more about learning to eat, different flavours, different textures, but I do want to fill her up! And how do I get a reasonable amount of protein into her with finger food? She can't chew pieces of meat with her 2 teeth and I'm not sure she'd get that far with meatballs or something like that either.

If anyone can give me some inspiration for age-appropriate finger food that would be great! I give her veg sticks and chopped fruit, pitta bread, toast, mini sandwiches, omlette and sweetcorn fritters but then I run out of ideas. I love cooking for her (in fact I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to do with the freezer-ful of pureed meals I've already cooked!) I just need some inspiration!

Risotto. We did haphazard blw with my ds and risotto was great! All sorts went in and he could shovel it on or spend ages picking out small things practicing his pincer grip. Meatballs were good, pasta - I've no idea whether this could work as I didn't purée (too lazy rather than ideological) but could your freezer meals become pasta/rice/potato sauces so could be self fed and not wasted?

My dd was a spoon refuser too, but was just wondering why she can't eat strips of meat?

Things to try are fish pie, eggy bread, nut butter on toast, humous and veg. She should be able to manage most things you eat really though.

Just another thought. If you "still want to fill her up", have you thought of making the food more calorie dense if you can't control the quantity? By doing things like adding butter or cream to mash, giving avocados, putting mascarpone in a tomato sauce with pasta, offering foods like salmon and nut butters she should get all of her calories without you worrying about how much is going on the floor instead of in her.

Thanks for the suggestions. She had risotto yesterday and it was a hit...she was eating fistfuls of the stuff!

Re. the strips of meat...I haven't actually tried her with them, but I just thought they probably be a bit too hard to chew when she's only got two half-teeth! Maybe I should just try it...and fish. My DS who is now 4 was always a very VERY lazy chewer (which I realise now is probably because I kept him on pureed food for too long) and only started chewing meat properly when he was about 2.5 years old...anything that required chewing he'd just spit out instead. I know he was a bit extreme but it seems a bit strange giving my 8mo something that DS only started eating properly when he was 2 years older!

Yes, some of the stuff in the freezer would definitely work as pasta sauces...so using our full-size pasta, right? Or maybe just spread on toast...?

She eats loads of avocado...it's her favourite and she'll eat it in slices or off the spoon (one of the only other exceptions to spoon-feeding!), so maybe I am still filling her up. It hasn't seemed to affect her sleep yet so that's a good sign.

My DD seems to be exactly the same case. We started with purees and some finger foods like toast...it was going well but now she wants hold everything and is refusing to be fed!
Like you, BLW is really not my thing, at all...she's forcing me into it. I worry she dosen't have enough, that nothing really goes in, that she dosen't get enough protein...well, you know!
Fact is, I've been giving her more and more things and she's getting better and better. She had roast chicken yesterday for the first time, I chose the softer parts and she did eat it...took aaaggggeeeessss but it went in!
I give her loads of pasta that she seems to enjoy...the biggest shape I found and with hummus...anything with hummus goes for her! She's also loving tomato and cheese. Something that also worked out really well was a kind os spanish tortilla, full of veg and potatos and most went in!
What I still have to get around to is the mess she makes and all the cleaning in the end... :(

Meat is a great first food! Even with no teeth, babies suck out all the juiced and then sort of mush up the meat itself with and est a bit.

Really well-cooked meat is easy to gum/chew - stewed beef, slow-cooked pork shoulder or lamb, roast chicken - all of these go down well with ds. Fish is easy too.

I'd just try her with the meat. Our dd had a roast dinner the first week of weaning and scoffed it. I'm sure shell be fine.

And yes, definitely full size pasta, unless you're keeping her gluten free, just whatever you eat. If gf then just buy normal gf pasta; that's not cheap but I almost passed out when I saw 'baby gf pasta' prices! A bloody con.

Re meat, at 3.5 my ds still loves the stuff but much prefers it on a bone. So chicken drumsticks etc.

Love the comments about boosting calories, agree very much. This is excellent memory jogging, dd is only 14 weeks but it'll be upon us again before we know it. Eggy bread/boiled egg and soldiers were also loved here.