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Weaning

Find weaning advice from other Mumsnetters on our Weaning forum. Use our child development calendar for more information.

So is baby led weaning just not pureeing it and giving jars or is there more to it?

124 replies

dejags · 07/02/2007 11:03

DS2 was weaned very early (advised by Paediatrician [anger]).

We kept his diet very simple until he was 6 months old and sitting very confidently.

After that we just let him eat what we were having (obviously prepared with him in mind with no salt/sugar and taking care to introduce different foods slowly).

I never bothered with jars or purees, I just mashed what was mashable with a fork or let him gnaw on it when that was possible.

Is this baby led weaning or is there more to it?

I am currently pg with DC3 so am interested in this for obvious reasons.

TIA

OP posts:
oops · 09/02/2007 11:25

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oops · 09/02/2007 11:26

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dejags · 09/02/2007 11:26
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PinkTulips · 09/02/2007 11:27

have people actually been starving their babies?

hope not..... that would be very worrying. if ds hadn't been interested in self feeding i would have helped him out, and i think that is the essence of blw, following you babies leadand letting them tel you how and what they want to eat

Enid · 09/02/2007 11:27

ah but that misses out the social and loving aspect of feeding your child - which I do think spoonfeeding can give you. If we must persist in utterly pointless comparisons with animals, look at mother birds and baby birds.

I don't cajole I must say.

PinkTulips · 09/02/2007 11:28

sorry dejags.... i'm in a rotten mood and took it out on you...... agree to disagree it is

dejags · 09/02/2007 11:29

Yes oops - I totally agree with you. I just phrased it differently and dared mention finger feeding and BLW in the same sentence.

OP posts:
oops · 09/02/2007 11:29

Message withdrawn

dejags · 09/02/2007 11:31

No worries PT. Have a good weekend

OP posts:
oops · 09/02/2007 11:32

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DetentionGrrrl · 09/02/2007 11:33

now now ladies, let's all take the kiddies for a Happy Meal and cheer up, shall we? ** Disclaimer: I have never fed him a Happy Meal.

PinkTulips · 09/02/2007 11:34

exactly oops.... i've never walked off and left ds eating on his own, he eats with us as a family and i can be tending to hiom and my 2 year old while feeding myself as well

PinkTulips · 09/02/2007 11:35

DG

oops · 09/02/2007 11:36

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Enid · 09/02/2007 11:37

I must say dd3 is very accommodating at 9 months.

feeds herself whatever we are having quite happily or is content to be spoon fed if I am a hurry

dejags · 09/02/2007 11:38

I agree.

Basically what I did was share what I was eating with him. My original question was, is if I mash what's on my plate - is it BLW. I was corrected - quite nicely by a few posters that if I give it to him on a spoon then it's not BLW.

I was not suggesting that BLW is terrible or that I have a problem with it. I was just curious as to how my weaning methods differ from a fairly new method and if I could incorporate it into how I do things (I am always open to new things).

I think for me - weaning will go something like this:

DD will get to eat finger foods
I will assist her with messier and more difficult foods - obviously I would never force a child to eat.
I will encourage drinking out of a cup from an early age.

I find the no-spoon part of BLW a bit difficult - I'll have three to get ready in the morning and won't have time to hang around and wait for DD because her older brothers will have to go to school.

Moderation for me.

OP posts:
Enid · 09/02/2007 11:41

dejags yes waiting for a baby to feed herself on a school mornign with two older ones is not always practical

also I found if I was making fish pie for the other two it was much easier to spoon it into dd2 than let her eat it herself (quite gloopy stuff)

my theory is that BLW much easier when you only have one or two little ones

dejags · 09/02/2007 11:43

Enid - your DD, sounds very much like DS2 at 9 months - he was a fab (and still is) eater.

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Enid · 09/02/2007 11:44

yes she is very easy going

dejags · 09/02/2007 11:48

We had that with DS2.

I have a sneaking suspicion that our latest addition (once born) is going to be a horror. It's just too much to hope for that we'd get lucky twice.

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Enid · 09/02/2007 11:49

no, dd2 was a fabulous eater too. Shame about her sleeping though

dejags · 09/02/2007 11:52

ah we've never actually had it all

DS1 slept like a dream, was a useless eater and hard work during the day

DS2 ate like a dream and was heavenly during the day but didn't sleep more than 30 minutes at night until 8 months old.

Who knows what we'll get next time round.

OP posts:
Enid · 09/02/2007 11:53

you'll get it right next time of course

dd1 - fab sleeper, fussy eater
dd2 - poor sleeper, great eater
dd3 - fab sleeper, fab eater

I darent go for number four

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 11:56

but i was referring to posts plural, dejags, not just yours, although your 'just another thing to make mothers feel guilty about' crack does get on my nerves as what is anyone supposed to make of it? it also got on my nerves, frankly, when enid made the same crack a few months ago and it was roundly and politely rebutted.

guilt is an endemic condition in mothers, i know plenty of women who've felt guilty about their child not eating healthy enough purees etc etc etc ad infinitum. so, just another thing? join the queue... all this superior/inferior stuff is a yawn... we all want to try to do the best for our children and we make our peace with ourselves when we don't. Not that BLW is by definition the best way, but it is a way and if it works for people it's hardly surprising that they'd want to evangelise about it. if you don't fancy it, step away.

the point is that you can't fail at BLW, nor can your baby. you can, if you think that it's not making either of you happy and well (such as soupy's wee girl who really didn't take to it) sensibly abandon it in favour of something that does work, which was a classic mix of finger food and purees in her case. as it happens, soupy's dd is the only BLW refusenik i've seen on this site (not a scientific sample, i'm aware).

and i think that the research does make it completely clear why it's not just finger foods. i can't help it if you feel condescended towards, tbh dejags. i'm not in that great a mood myself this morning, i've got too much on as usual. but i've never seen a on a BLW thread, i must've missed that.

and what enid refers to, re starving, is about a thread i was involved in. you can't starve a child who is being milk fed. you can, however, dial back the solids if your child is not responding well to weaning and up the milk. the mantra is 'until they're one it's just for fun' ergo, if it isn't fun you can drop it for a while. dd, when she's teething, very often goes back onto milk for a few days and pretty much ignores food. that's not uncommon, of course, but at least BLW gives you the leeway not to give a stuff about it.

dejags · 09/02/2007 12:03

I think you are being oversensitive about the guilt comment I made. I was making an oblique reference to my well-publicised ex-sensitivity to the BF/FF debate.

It's something I have long-since made my peace with.

So let's leave this be.

FWIW - I didn't intend any offence.

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