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Weaning

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

Original poster

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:
Enid · 09/02/2007 12:04

it wasn't a 'crack' actually Aitch

it was a concern

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 12:07

but everything is something for us to feel guilty about, if we're mothers, so it's a concern i don't understand... you might as well post the same line on every mn thread,

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 12:14

it also gets on my nerves when people say 'ffs what about the starving in darfur and here you all are talking about free slimfast'. such a non-point and one made principally to make people feel stupid... [sigh]

Enid · 09/02/2007 12:16

I dont feel massively guilty about stuff as a rule, but do remember that I am an old bat and feel suspicious of anythig that doesnt come naturally to me - I am 40 you know and too aged to learn new stuff

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 12:20

for the record, dejags, i didn't know about your ex-sensitivity about bfing, why would i? nor do i think i am being too sensitive about your 'guilt' line. having suffered in the past from the guilt of not being able to exclusively BF, it's not a word i would use lightly.

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 12:23

but you're very spry of mind for such an old duffer, enid.
you know, that's the funny thing, i am emphatically not guilt-ridden by nature - path of least resistance, me - but the bf thing really killed me. i hate to think that anyone would have those feelings about weaning their child as well... christ it would be endless.

Original poster
dejags · 09/02/2007 12:23

again we'll agree to disagree Aitch.

There was a much heated BF'ing thread yesterday which I contributed to freely. I think that's where it may have come from - I thought the world and his wife had been on that thread. So apologies if you hadn't.

I am much more relaxed about things seven years into this parenting malarkey. IMO a lighthearted reference to the guilt that perpetuates motherhood may be a good thing every now and then. Sometimes we take it all a tad too seriously.

OP posts:
Original poster
dejags · 09/02/2007 12:26

I used to curl up in a ball and cry my heart out at some of the posts about FF on here. I suffered a severe bout of PND because I couldn't BF. But as I have said - I've made my peace with it.

I will be embarking on this whole thing 3rd time round soon and I had to let go of my guilt - it was crap and controlled me.

Once again, sorry if I offended.

OP posts:
AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 12:29

but it's a website and we are typing and i didn't think that your light-heartedness came across. in fact i read it as you being rather ungrateful and impolite to the people who had come along answered your first, utterly reasonable, question. i've just read it again to check and it's still the impression i get.

clearly that was not how you meant it, but i'm just reading words on a screen here. i do object to your characterising me as 'over-sensitive', such an attitude surprises me especially if you've had guilt yourself over bfing etc, but if you want to leave now it then that's fine.

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 12:30

x-posted dejags... not bfing really sucks doesn't it?

Original poster
dejags · 09/02/2007 12:50

If you look at my post about the guilt it was followed by a - I am not sure how much more I could have done ensure the tone of my post. I have not been ungrateful (see my post of thanks to DB who was kind enough to point me in the direction of the research). I have used many smily emoticons and the like. I have also on more than one occasion agreed with the principle of BLW. I am not adverse to new ideas - hence the request for more info.

I really think you are giving me an unecessarily hard time Aitch

OP posts:
AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 13:38

look, i'm not giving you a hard time, but you seem to think it's okay to keep calling me over-sensitive when i don't think i am. a , to me, means a good-natured piss take. good-natured, but still a piss-take.

my last post to you had a and a note of sympathy about the bfing and the previous one agreed with you to leave it alone.

i understand that you are genuinely interested in BLW, but i didn't get why you would think that repeatedly saying it's something that it isn't, even with a smiley, wouldn't get up anyone's nose. "just a fancy name for something we've always done if you ask me... glorified finger food... something else to feel guilty about etc etc"

And there you go, it got up mine. a bit. not loads, although it took me a full day and lots more posts for me to finally tell you that. if i'm being honest, it appears to have got up others' noses also. But that clearly was not your intention, so there's no harm done really and it's best left. BLW's supposed to be fun, for goodness sakes!

kels666 · 09/02/2007 16:22

Dejags I feel exactly the same way as you do about weaning - why the fuss and why the labels? Neither of my babies have ever had purees. They have mashed food and finger foods. I don't go on outings with little tupperware tubs - they eat from my plate. I sometimes choose to spoon feed my 6.5 mth old for 3 reasons, (I wouldn't dream of cajouling him - he gets a spoonful, when his mouth opens in excitement) Firstly, it is the norm in our society to use cutlery. Secondly, I am a frazzled mother of 2 under twos. I simply don't have the time to sit there while he chucks lumps of porridge around the kitchen & smears it in his hair and thirdly he is an extremely hungry baby. At 5.5 mths he was no longer satisfied on breastmilk. He was dropping centiles and feeding non-stop. There's no way he would have been satisfied on finger foods alone

PinkTulips · 09/02/2007 16:32

kels, my ds is 95th centile and was feeding every 1/2 hour to an hour at 4/5 months (has eased to every 1/2 hours now) and fingerfoods are more than enough for him and trust me, he lets me know if he's hungry!

i'm also a mom of 2 under 2 and i find BLW far easier for that exact reason!

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 17:21

re fuss. have you ever seen an annabel karmel book? telling people they don't have to do all that is hardly a fuss. and you know that she's a multi-millionaire and her books are never of the NY Times bestseller lists, don't you? which rather suggests that people are buying into her system, so the fact that you didn't is not the general experience.

re the label. NHS and other 'weaning' info without exception ime refers to using baby rice, puree and mashed foods to start off. the label BLW merely differentiates from puree feeding. it is a slightly wanky name but nothing to get steamed up about.

re cutlery norm. a red herring. it's not the norm for adults to be spoon fed. they feed themselves. as does my daughter, by the way. it used to take about half an hour for her to eat when she was little, now it's less. and she can easily eat on the run if necessary, some oatcakes, cheese and a pear are easy to eat in the buggy when time is pressing.

i can't comment on the convenience or otherwise for you as a mother of two because i am a mother of one. i note that without having tried BLW you nevertheless assume that it would not have worked for your baby. how can you possibly know this?

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 17:22

never off the bestseller lists.

mabel1973 · 09/02/2007 21:06

blimey - didn't expect all this when I logged back on.
i just wanted to say two things - I think reading about BLW has just opened my eyes to the fact that there are alternatives to pureeing - I pureed everything at 1st for DS1, i didn't know there was another way - that's not to say i won't do ANY pureeing for DS2, but will be more inclined to let him try things for himself.
the other thing is that I wanted to say is i didn't really think it was necessary to type out the ingredients and nutritional content of petit filous!!! - i am well aware of the ingredients, I can read, writing ingredients lists was part of my job my job before I became a mum. I don't have an issue with my Ds1 having something like that when he has a balanced diet, which he does. I just felt that was a little OTT.

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 21:15

i didn't type out the ingredients, i don't have petit filous in the house...
i googled 'petit filous ingredients' and copied and pasted off the company website.
i'd said apropos of the 'how do they eat yoghurt?' question that petit filous were gross, you came on and argued the point and it seemed the easiest way of explaining why i think what i think. it was the work of ten seconds, tbh.

PinkTulips · 09/02/2007 21:30

If you're happy feeding them to your kids, knowing whats in them, why would it bother you to see the ingredients typed out?

i give my dd chocolate.... i don't get mad when someone tells me what's in chocolate as I'm aware of its contents and am happy with my decision to allow her to eat it

AitchTwoOh · 09/02/2007 21:32

i pmsl when dd gets chocolate from her grandma... her eyes roll back in her head, it's like a scene from trainspotting.

PinkTulips · 09/02/2007 21:34

dd is a little chocolate monster... she nibbles and suck and savours it like charlie in the Roald Dahl books!

she's milk intolerant too so the little minx gets better quality chocolate than any of the rest of us

mabel1973 · 09/02/2007 21:43

i wasn't aware I'd 'gone mad' ...just felt it not necessary, especially as I have a dozen of em in the fridge i can read perfectly well what's in them.

PanicPants · 09/02/2007 21:53

Can I butt in and ask (genuinely) when do you stop blw? I've been doing it for a few months and ds is now taking an interest in my cutlery. Well interest isn't really the word - more like desperately trying to grab my fork and refusing to eat.

So I've given him a fork and all he does is spend hours trying to stab sweetcorn and peas (ignoring all other food) and not actually eating anything.

But try and take the sodding fork away or not give him one at all results in hyteria and obvious stares directed at the cutlery drawer.

Any ideas?

PinkTulips · 09/02/2007 21:59

panic pants, dd is 2 and wasn't BLW and behaves like that about her fork... drives me mad. if she's really not managing much i get her to take a few bites off my fork, or load up hers for her, whichever she's more amenable to.

i'm trying to nip it in the bud with ds by letting him play with spoons already and giving him yogurt on the spoon to suck, hopefully it won't be as much of a novelty to him then!

PanicPants · 09/02/2007 22:04

We do load up his fork, but the little monster then picks it all off, puts it back on the plate and then trys to stab at it himself. He has really found his independent streak atm [sigh]

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