Ok since we are on food, lets talk about Baby Led Weaning - isnt it just ANOTHER set of rules for mums to fail at?

[Enid]

Because by NOT following baby led weaning I don't have any angst about what to give dd3 for breakfast. I give her porridge, I spoon it in, she eats it, end of. I mean, sorry, but porridge pancakes!? Why bother?

I liked the idea of it but there seem to be toooooooooooo many threads asking for advice and what to feed your baby etc - this suggests to me that it is just ANOTHER thing to angst over. I mean, if I am giving dd1 and 2 shepherds pie with peas, how am I supposed to feed it to dd3? so she gets the same thing mashed up and spooned in, hurrah.

I pretty much did this from about 8 months because I got fed up of fannying about with ice trays of pureed carrot and suchlike. I felt guilty about it too, as though I should have been lovingly blending it all for him instead of just dumping a load of hunks of stuff on his plate.

I wish I had known I was practising BLW. I would have been much happier

(oh and dd2 is twelve months old and eats pretty well with a spoon by herself. so I can see absolutely no reason at all why I would ever want to feed her, because god knows I have absolutely no desire to do so. and it is the dirt cheap option because she just gets mine and dd1's table scraps.
like having a very lovely puppy, in a highchair )

greeny you are a trendsetter

Filly...

Its funny how we all see different things as huge no-nos & others as ok. I was paranoid about avoiding spoon feeding, yet happy for DS to have raw apple with the skin from the start - he didnt have any problems with it at all (although he did show a preference for without the skin sometimes!). Carrots we steamed until he was a little older & he eats both quite happily.

I kind of get what you are saying about getting lots of tastes in the 1st year...especially the right kinds of tastes: I remember reading about a study showed what babies ate in their first year influenced their tastes for life. Dont know if you bfed yours - but babies who do are exposed to different tastes through bm as it does change slightly apparently...so the tastes argument isnt quite so urgent for bf babies imo.

We probably did solids a lot more anally than most as there are various allergies in the families and we & went very slowly - only introducing one new food per week - but it worked really well. DS got the chance to get used to new things & rarely refused anything & he was eating a huge variety of foods at 12 months, despite not yet having any dairy, gluten and not having started solids properly until he was nearly 8-9 months. IMO babies dont need to taste everything in their first year - I still havent eaten everything in the world yet & Im 32 - I try new things all the time & seem to like them ok

I have several thoughts/questions for blw proponents;
I've read some posts mentioning that some health visitors push mums to puree etc. I would be very concerned if Health Visitors were asked to push BLW. Afterall, I don't think their purpose is to give out advice to middle class parents, but more to support those really in need. In those cases, I'm sure that some vitamin laced jars would be more nutritious than a high chair laden with bits of twizzlers and pop tarts.
I also take issue with the premise that the baby leads. If you happen to share your own mealtime with the baby and have popped to your local market that day to buy a variety of foods, then combined with a nice breast feed, your baby will be ok, although, if it were mine, she'd be starving and probably wake me in the night. I guess what I take issue with in this case and in the case of child led play, and child centred learning etc. is the idea that you can learn without being taught.
Having said the above, I love to see my baby holding and munching different foods and I do think where possible, we should share meals, but in my case lumpy home made purees spooned in with ieces of food to play with too, works well and I know she'll feel nice and full after.

terra

you mark my words, in years to come, those babies who have had pureed apple with the skin on form 6 months will be 0.09 % more adventurous in their tastes than babies who had steamed apple. you mark my words.

oh yes, allergies. there is also a school of thought that babies will instinctively refuse foods that they are allergic to. (again, i dunno, i'm new to all of this). therefore if you hand over the food as one piece, it can be rejected as one piece, rather than as part of a lovingly prepped puree which is possibly mixed with other ingredients.

there is also a school of thought that if they hate broccoli (as is their right) then they will reject broccoli, not come to mistrust everything green that is offered them in pureed form. so it offers the baby a point of recognition.

don't know about either...

funny that this has blown up today, i was just going to post here and on the yahoo site something along the lines of 'have done BLW for five months, so what the hell happens when they get to 12 months old?'

but harpsichord my DS1 fed himself quite happily at 12 months, well so did DS2, but both of them at various stages between 2 and 4 decided that they couldn't do it themselves and if I wanted them to eat ANYTHING then I HAD to feed them!

I puree for dd3 - i never bothered with single veg and fruit purees as she was 6 months when I weaned her, but I mash and roughly puree whatever the girls are having. She has never eaten smooth purees, I started straight away with lumps. She has a biscuit/bread and butter/marmite snadwich/broccoli to hold and munch on while she is waiting. then I spoon in the mushed up lasagne then the yogurt then she has some other 'holdy' bits

I guess what worried me was the idea that you would starve a baby until they fed themselves - an idea from an earlier thread and I CANNOT see the need for it at this young age.

The idea about controlling portions and intake worries me too. It is just so...something. Anyway dd3 shows me by clamping her lips shut when she has had enough.

how old is your dd aitch?

I mean, I am 90% sure I didn't use spoons after dd was about 7 months or so, so she might be a useful comparator.

She was deffo eating with us all of our food by her first birthday, probably before.

well there have been times when dd1 has even very little ubt I would never have shoved anything in her mouth. if she is hungry, she can eat it herself.
that's surely a control and power thing, isnt it?

starve a baby who said anything about starving a baby enid?? good grief, that certainly isn't what BLW is about.

right so if they refused to eat anything at all for 2 or 3 days you would just assume they weren't hungry - even if they were screaming and tantruming because they wanted mummy to feed them??

for what its worth both DS's now happily feed themselves.

there was a thread the other day where the mum was worried that her baby wouldnt feed themselves and wanted the mum to feed her. So the mum was considering leaving her until she fed herself. and, much as I love aitch and her blog and really admire her writing and passion, aitch intimated that is what she would do. Shocked me tbh.

hi puffling,

some HVs are now pushing BLW apparently (Staffs, maybe?) but i would guess only after they've gauged the type of foods that the parents eat and the attitude they have to food. i can't see how they'd be pushing it exclusively, really. that would worry me too if they were.

i try to ignore the title 'baby-led', i find it a bit embarassing frankly. how about 'healthy finger foods from six months and don't sweat it if they don't eat as there is always milk?' it's a bit long... but more how i think of blw.

i didn't understand the bit about how your dd would be starving, though, unless you don't eat good food. that's up to you, of course, but i have seen quite a few people on Yahoo and my blog commenting on how their own diet has improved dramatically since weaning. after all, a puree-fed baby will have to fit in with the rest of the family at some point so from a long-term health perspective is it not better for the child to influence the parents in this regard?

and honestly and truly, this is not in any way a debate like the BF/FF ones. my sister and i were puree-fed, my younger brother and sister were BLWed (more by accident than design, they nicked food from our plates) and we all have good relationships with food and are clever and funny and love our mum and each other. so, whatever floats you boat...

I'm also suspect about the controlling portions thing too - sometimes the DS's would simply get BORED of feeding themselves, ate it quite happily when I or DH took over but, being still little, they had a short concentration span and get bored quickly when they had to do it all themselves.

If I didn't help them then they'd just demand food between meals because they were still hungry, or I'd end up with irritable children

no I didn't say that fannyannie, I don't really understand why everyone is getting so upset.
I just said I have never spoon fed dd2, and I probably haven't spoon fed dd1 since she was about twelve months. It just had never been an issue. if they were tantrumming over food I would just deal with it in the same way as any other tantrum tbh, I wouldn't see it as any different. I can't imagine any circumstances under which I would spoonfeed a three or four year old though tbh.

I find the idea of HVs "pushing" anything rather alarming tbh. Most of the ones I have encountered couldn't be trusted to push a wheelbarrow.

If the only guiding light a struggling new mum has is the average HV, god help us

you see I don't really get this "between meals" thing either.
if s child stops eating, then he isn't hungry. if you force him to eat when he isn't hungry, then you are giving entirely the wrong signals. if he is then hungry in two hours time, then give him a nutritious snack. that would seem to me to be the sensible thing to do from a nutritional perspective, rather than teach a child to carry on eating after he is full to fit in with some notional idea of mealtimes which is artificial and won't necessarily fit in with the feeding patterns of a baby with a tiny stomach and varyong energy needs.

The point about BLW is that it is another method of weaning for a parent to choose, or if more conventional methods of weaning fail the baby, as was my case with dd2. I am very thankful I found out about BLW when my dd consistenly refused pureed food day after day week after week. But I do feel it is a harder method of weaning, and if I have another child, I will let that child lead me into choosing the best weaning method for him/her. I would prefer puree weaning. Far less messy then BLW. All babies are different, it's only logical different ways work for different babies.

It is precisely BECAUSE dd3 has to fit in with the rest of the family that BLW doesnt work well here. The girls eat stuff like sheperds pie , chick pea curry, chicken stew with couscous - all of this I have mushed up and fed to dd3 who loved it all. She would have missed out on this stuff if I had insisted on her feeding herself.

well, not necessarily Enid. she could just eat it with her fingers.

puffling- yes, if i carried on as i had been dd would have been doing blw on quavers and not much else. but doing blw has made both dh and i look at what we're eating and think more about our diet so that we can provide properly for dd. so yes, i do go down to the market (well, sainsburys usually) every few days and stock up, and yes dd gets a bf. so yes, as you say, she'll be fine.

i'm not sure what you're getting at with the child led play and learning without being taught. dd sees us eating and copies us. she hears us going yumm yumm and she says yumm too. if she starts to gag on anything we making big chewing faces at her and she goes back to chewing. she sees us take a drink and she reaches for her cup for a drink. so are we teaching her? is she leading her learning? whatever it is she's enjoying her food.