BLW - 6 mo struggling to pick up food at all...

[MessalinaOfTheSuburbs]

DD is nearly 28 weeks and for the last couple of weeks we've been putting chunks of banana, cooked carrot etc in front of her to see what she makes of them.

Despite having apparently quite good manual dexterity with toys etc (has been passing toys from hand to hand for weeks, can efficiently rip up a piece of paper etc) she seems to really struggle picking up food - it rapidly gets slimy and just oozes from her grasp! Any tips? Am I cooking stuff too much or is this a usual stage?!

I think it can be quite common. If you're giving her something quite soft, the textual interest will be greater than the desire to taste it at first. If she can squeeze it to a pulp, she probably will. You can try less squishy stuff. From 26 weeks, ours just had whatever we were having. Other veg and fruit has better structural integrity if you're keen to stick with those sorts of things at first. Things like broccoli, asparagus, sweet potato and so on. You can give anything tbh but at first, she will just mash it into oblivion and repaint your house with it. It's fine. Give her a clap and a smile and sigh quietly to yourself.

DD had all sorts of problems with banana for a while. She got the hang of it, as will yours :) You don't need to restrict it to fruits and veg either, she might have better luck gnawing on toast fingers, rice balls, strips of meat etc.

My 6 month old just mashes banana too. Try, as other suggest, other foods (roasted sweet potato, carrots etc keep skins on), plus remember that banana mash is being tasted on their hands so is still BLW.

I used to cut the banana up with the skin still on - maybe into thirds, then I'd quarter each section. That gave it a bit of a non-squishable handle to make it easier for her. She just ate the banana off the skin.

Thank you all very much - feeling reassured and will try some less traditional first foods/the clever banana skin idea!

DS struggled with banana, he just couldn't get a grip on it. I found that tearing it into chunks rather than cutting it made it less slippery and he found that much easier. Also good for when you are out and about you can take a whole banana and don't have to have a knife.

We had luck with a crinkle cutter like you'd use to cut chips - not great for banana but good for cucumber etc - much easier for them to grip on.

I would second the crinkle cutter - was helpful in the early days. Also, with banana, instead of cutting it you can split it down the middle into its three sections. These are then much easier to pick up as they're not slippery:

theheadlesscook.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/back-to-the-basics-banana-thirds/

My dd are almost all foods smashed onto rice cakes. There was a while I genuinely believed it was all she would ever eat. It was helpful though and she got to lick off lots of new tastes

Crinkle cutters are great but should come with a warning, I 'crinkle cut' my thumb whilst cutting parsnips
Avocado is good crinkle cut.