BLW - how to eat cereals, spag bol, etc

[Heeks1]

Hi.. My LO is 6.5mths. We are doing BLW. We cope fine with most foods however she's doesn't like to eat from a spoon (unless it's yoghurt). How do you feed foods such as breakfast cereals, porridge, spaghetti bolognese, etc..?? I added today's chicken curry dinner on to an English muffin which she picked up and chewed and sucked. Any ideas..? What do you do?

Will she put a pre-loaded spoon in her mouth? If not then fingers are ok. Make weetabix not too mushy and they can put fistfuls in their mouth. Grim and hideously messy but works. Spaghetti should be ok with fingers but pasta shapes eg fusilli might be easier.

If she has the hang of dipping stuff you could give her a weetabix to dunk in milk. My 6 and 3yr old still like to have a 'weetabix on the side' of their cereal and dunk it like it's a chocolate digestive

I like your dipping weetabix idea! Thank you.

Nope, not keen on taking food from the spoon. Only yoghurt!

She loves anything spread on toast.. But sucks the toast rather than chewing and swallowing.. I'm assuming this is how they start..?bx

Grab-able cerel like shreddies and shredded wheat bitesize are good along with toast for breakfast. Scrambled egg seems fairly easy to grab a fistful of!

Anything with mince is going to be messy until the pincer grip is perfected!

Purée the spag Bol sauce & chop up the pasta,or do spag Bol cous cous instead until she can handle pasta.Mush up stuff with a fork or back of a spoon & let her use fingers.use ready brek instead of normal porridge and move on to lumpier stuff when you can see what she can handle.At 6.5 m it should be about playing with textures and getting used to food rather than a massive intake so if she makes a mess and plays with food don't worry too much.

She's a total toast lover.. It's getting to the point where we are over doing the toast! Have tried scrambled egg and I cooked it quite dry so that i could break into larger pieces. Haven't thought of the bitesize cereals! Thank you :D

Think I'm just gonna have to bite the bullet and put a bowl of stuff in front of her and let her go in and grab handfuls. Currently putting pieces of everything on high chair tray. X

We pretty much ignored cereal, porridge and the like until our son got the hang of using a spoon (however messily), around 9mths. I was still bf a lot though, so wasn't worried too much about extra dairy intake. We concentrated on easily-grabbable stuff! In fact, I'd suggest the opposite of the advice above and say the chunkier the better when it comes to things like pasta and sauce, so she easily pick it up.

Laquila.. What did you give for breakfasts? Xx

Toast sounds good. Mine also loved a bagel (how middle class is 'bagel' for a first word?!-thank you for that, DS) and a few soft fruits or some banana mix it up a bit.

They sometimes take a while to get the hang of the idea that the plate should be less interesting than its contents!

You can make porridge pancakes..they are a bit grim though! (Basically microwave a small Layer of porridge and milk in the bottom of a bowl it all sticks together..
Normal pancakes are good, you can add lots into them.
Omelettes/eggy bread

I just gave mine spag Bol and let them get on with it..very messy though!
I suggest getting a dog..makes clearing up the floor much easier!!

Hahaha...

Bagel! Brilliant. How very middle class!

I invite my parents' dog round at the end of each day to snack on the food that's left on the floor ;). Haha.

Fab.. Great ideas. Thank you all!

Oooh, another question. If I premake an omelette, can I reheat? I could make a large omelette, and portion and freeze. Would make mornings a little more prepared!

I could have written this post myself so thank you!
I've kind of given up on the spoon able stuff too.

I have made porridge fingers as described above.

Banana pancakes, which is just an egg, a mushed up banana and a handful of porridge oats, pan fried like little american style pancakes.

I've got a recipe from a thread on here for cheesy lentil wedges which I'm yet to try.

So basically making usually wet good a bit dryer.

If I bake a curry or whatever I make sure I cut the near and veg into fingers rather than diced so DS can get a good grip.

We've made the banana pancakes too.. Yummy. Good to hear my baby isn't the only baby not to like spooned foods! Thanks for the ideas! X

Oh the lentil wedges are good and you can freeze them..
Veggie muffins are good again you can freeze
Banana bread (there is a great no sugar recipe on here somewhere..

We just literally serve anything up and let them eat it with fists. Its messy but babies wipe clean or bath then occasionally.

Dh does do a special boak hard porridge for them.

Pasta has always been an early weaning food here.

They can't shove stuff in very well until they have the ability to open their fists which I think might be 8 months or thereabouts. So until then you're better with finger shapes or biggish squares or spheres to be honest. Sauce is fine, but the lumps need to be big. So the curry would be ok, but with long slivers of meat and veg or chicken in big chunks.

My DS (7mo yesterday so similar age) will take a bit of Weetabix off a spoon sometimes but we mainly do toast, egg and fruit for breakfast. I then lay off the toast the rest of the day as he too would love it - strips of meat and veg mainly.

He will eat rice cakes too so they're a handy way of getting things like cream cheese, mushed up avocado, hummus etc into him.

Last night he had fusilli, broccoli and meatballs in sauce like the older 2, and was able to suck/nibble the meatball reasonably well. He got very messy from the sauce but ate a lot as he could handle it all. But he couldn't do a bolognese yet really as he can't shovel the meat in as he doesn't yet open his fist - still tightly clamped around the food.

Fusilli is easier for them to grab than spaghetti. But generally just pop it in front of them and let them go for it. There's no need to purée or mash it.

Sounds just like ours! Great idea swapping the toast with rice cakes. Thank you.

Been great to read everyones' experiences.

Sorry, only just come back to this thread - OP, for breakfasts we gave things like toast fingers, bit of hot cross bun, shreddies soaked in a bit of milk so he could pick them up, reduced salt and sugar baked beans, scrambled egg/strips of omelette, eggy bread fingers, and shedloads of fruit, with yoghurt to dip it in as he got better at dipping. The key is not to worry yourself that they're not actually getting that much in, and then all of a sudden you'll realise that they're eating you out of house and home!

Oh and there's a good recipe on one of the BLW sites for cheese and broc muffins - make loads of mini ones and freeze them, and then you're never stuck for breakfast :) we used to put whatever veg we had leftover in them, and they worked really well.