BLW is all very well if....

[babybore]

1. Your baby has very good gross motor skills
2. You are not concerned about their weight gain
3. You have the time and money to prepare a wide variety of foods, most of which end up on the floor.

My dd is 7 months, weaned at 6. I was looking forward to weaning her as she was under her growth curve and I thought it might help her get back on it (it has). I have been trying finger foods but have mainly relied on home-cooked mashed or pureed food as she does not yet have the dexterity or the brain development to understand that the stick of brocolli put in front of her is her lunch, no matter how long I leave her with it.

If I had done BLW, my baby would be unhappy and underweight (she loves her solids) and I would be miserable and worried. So while it works for some babies I really think a degree of caution needs to be exercised in believing that all babies can eat finger foods from 6 months.

it's called finger food, saucymoo. as has been explained endlessly on these threads BLW means that you let things take their course and let the baby feed themselves. if they are bored with the finger food but still hungry, then you offer them milk.

i'm going to have to retire from this soon, i spent the whole of yesterday here, trying to correct misunderstandings of the Rapley research and the theories of BLW and still people are here pretending that they don't understand.

and in answer to your 'we should be more open-minded' bit, saucymoo... i don't want to be. i just never wanted to feed her with a spoon because it looked like a big fat hassle. is that okay? do you think my one-year-old daughter, who can now feed herself with a spoon and fork btw, has been somehow diminished by not eating pureed sweet potato?

Aitch- I think you do a wonderful job!

you are taking it all too personally aitch. Your blog is brilliant, BLW seems like a great idea, but if some people don't like it/don't want to do it/don't feel comfortable with it then just move on. A lot of people aren't 'pretending not to understand', they genuinely don't understand the obsession behind not spoon feeding! I am sure you are right and as BLW grows more people will do it and love it. If you are genuinely thinking that people are 'pretending' just to make your life difficult it is time to take a step back.

i think that if you have read this thread and still come on saying that you don't know what finger food is then you are trying to get a rise out of people. and you keep saying that i'm taking it personally, enid - you are wrong. you were wrong yesterday, as i explained i felt soupy had insulted every person who'd ever come to Mumsnet looking for weaning advice with her 'chill out fgs' 'advice', and you are wrong today.

what i do feel, though, is a burden of responsibility here to answer questions on BLW, as there aren't that many of us who've done it for any length of time, and i also remember how desperate for info i was when i started.
i can only imagine how off-putting all this ill-informed sniping from people who've never done BLW (as opposed to a mix of purees and finger food) would have been then. can you imagine if i started a thread saying 'purees are all very well if...' followed by three things that were untrue, just to kick things off? (as the OP said she was doing). all hell would break loose.

but it isnt ill-informed sniping! It is mums trying to help other mums who are struggling!

Lets get one thing straight, butternut squash is butternut squash wehther it is pureed or roasted in chunks. All we are arguing about is the way we give it to our baby.

Saucymoo said" what do you call feeding normal food with your hand to your lo cos thats what i have to do with him! Its not blw and its not puree-ing "

You feeding your LO with your hand is still adult led though isnt it- thats the point - BLW isnt about purees vs unpureed food imo. Its about baby vs adult led feeding.

you honestly don't think this OP is sniping? cos i can tell you that it's ill-informed.

agreed that it's just the method, enid, but i also don't really understand why the 'antis' get so hot under the collar about it while proclaiming our need to chill out.

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I think the problem is that people on all sides of the debate forget to couch their argument in terms of their personal experience and it makes people think they are trying to talk generally about something that should be applicable to all babies.

Re-reading Babybore's OP, the second half of it is more reasonable than the first because she talks about what happened with her.

Also it may be the case that those doing BLW are so impressed by how easy they find it that they reckon everyone would find it as easy, but some people don't, and I think this may be why some people not doing BLW might get annoyed to be told 'oh it's much easier than pureeing'. Easiness is in the eye of the beholder.

I'm not doing BLW because I find that in my really small cluttered house I can't be doing with allowing DS to throw too much food around. It's hell trying to get porridge out of a sewing machine. Also I can't really feel too convinced about the intake control aspect of it, but that's just me. I for one still get lots of good tips from the BLWers.

And Aitch, I always find your posts very reasoned and open-minded!

Can we all be friends again now please?

see, i suppose what i read babybore as saying in her OP (not so much later on in this thread where she seemed to get it more) is 'i didn't do BLW because i don't think it would have worked, so without ever havin tried it i think these three contentious things. and i've written a slightly patronising thread title just to get thigns started'.

but you are right, fluffy, it is about personal experience... the thing with BLW is that it's can be a slow burner but still work out perfectly well so you do have to stick at it a bit. and of course we are all friends, why dd feasted on Enid's Lamb Stew with Barley (as published on the blog) only the other day.

also, cod. dd and i much enjoyed our dorset cereal thingy today, the brown pack. hadn't tried it before but found myself thinking of you in the supermarket (as one does) and bought it. it's lovely, i ate the muesli while dd absent-mindedly lifted the sultanas out and watched Justin on Cbeebies.

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although for the record, fluffy, i find picking up a stick of carrot or somesuch much easier than when she gets her hands in a yoghurt tub. surely all babies must go through a stage of wanting to squidge their fingers through things? i fear for your sewing machine in the long run...

Locksikas, you come over here and de-gunk the threading mechanism and then you can PYSL!

We also have horrible horrible highly textured artex on the walls (waiting for building work in the summer to rectify this) so even something as innocuous as a steamed carrot baton can cause a hell of a mess. Oh yes, every baby must surely like to squidge things through their fingers. I have no difficulty with that part. It's the waving one's hands in delight thus flicking squidged food all over that I have difficulty with. I'm still finding sweet potato puree from three months ago on the underside of the dining room table.

Bless DS, he loves to try feeding himself with the spoon, but I long for the time when he will have learned how to take it without snatching and catapulting its contents half way to Timbuktu. he is always very puzzled when he puts it in his mouth and finds there's nothing on it.

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Aitch - having had what I considered to be a fairly reasoned debate with you about BLW earlier in this thread, I was a bit dismayed to be attacked for it latterly. Nevermind.

Actually I think this thread has really thrashed out what BLW is (a method of weaning) and I now understand that I never really tried it properly ie I did try finger foods at the start (before spoons) but I didn't hold off offering her a spoon-fed meal when she didn't take them. Although there has been some negativity here it is an interesting point of discussion and people have had plenty to say

I guess my OP stemmed from the fact that I always thought that some of the BLW posts could be a little smug and self-congratulory. And in a way, why shouldn't they be? IT IS clever that your baby can feed him or herself at 7 months - but I also wanted to say that spoon feeding doesn't make you a less liberal, anal retentive type of person. I now understand WHY there are so many BLW threads as it is one of a few web sites where it is discussed. So I also understand why the threads seem a bit evangelical about it at times. I get it now, thanks to the discussion on this thread.

Is there anything left to discuss on the topic?

My days of weaning are long gone.

I think the confusion comes from the new guidelines of 6 month old weaning.

When a baby was weaned from 3 months, all they could manage were pureed foods. By 6 months, most babies were onto feeding themselves with fingers or spoons and were able to cope with foods with lumps or whole foods.

Somewhere along the timeline of weaning, the old methods were lost. Ready made slush in jars were born and many parents went along this route. And at 7 months the foods turned lumpy. Babies fed from jars didn't get the opportunity of feeling the different textures of mashed or even pureed food (pureed avocado is a very different texture to pureed carrot for example) I don't understand when people say pureeing is a hassle. But then, neither is giving the child whatever the family is eating, it's all relative

I weaned using homecooked food that was mashed, never pureed. I never had to cook anything separate. I'd make a little extra and that would cover lunch too. No hassle. My children regulated their intake and would eat anything and everything. They would sit with us in a restaurant being spoonfed mashed versions of what we were eating and later (6 months plus) lumps of what we were eating

They all went through a faddy eating stage (like all children) as they get to an age where they want to control their lives and parents. All came through and are back to eating all foods. This is a developmental stage, nothing to do with how they were weaned

IMO BLW has come to be as babies are now weaned at a developmental stage that allows the child to hold their food. It seems to be a new way as before developmentally the newly weaned infant couldn't physically hold the food. It isn't a new concept

I had a child that drank very little milk but would devour food from 4 months (3 meals a day from week 1), another one loved milk with very little interest in food ( no solids til 7 months, unusual as should have weaned at 4). Both are hulking late teens with very healthy and varied diets

Food is something we want our children to enjoy and as long as they get to experience lots of textures and tastes, it doesn't matter how they get it. I do believe that BLW has come to the front just because of the developmental stage the baby is at for weaning, baby has just skipped a step. After 2-3 months of mashed/pureed foods mine were all at the feeding themselves stage.

I'm a strong believer in parent led strategies, you do what is best for you and your family

Babybore- i agree with you!

Aitch, your site is really good, and i really am not pretending to not understand BLW...each to their own, whatever works for your own baby . I have to do everything with mine from purees to finger foods, to eating himself as no one method works, so no1 can really slag off one method compared to the other!

Babybore, sorry if you felt i attacked you, that wasn't my intention. in fact i specifically wrote it so that you wouldn't think i was attacking you, (see bold, wink and brackets below), but if i didn't make that clear i do apologise.

"see, i suppose what i read babybore as saying in her OP (not so much later on in this thread where she seemed to get it more) is 'i didn't do BLW because i don't think it would have worked, so without ever havin tried it i think these three contentious things. and i've written a slightly patronising thread title just to get thigns started'. "

you did say that you'd written your OP to get people talking, and you succeeded. the problem is that you are not the first person to be writing nippy things about BLW without really understanding it, and it does get a bit wearing. i open the weaning topic with a sigh now, and it used to be such fun.

You're right aitch - I did open it deliberately contentiously. I feel weary now of the whole thing so I can imagine how you feel but keep up the good work.

Each to their own - as long as the baby is happy

right on, sister.

Sorry, just wanted to clarify something enid mentioned.

Oops actually said "the less open minded thing is to just do the smae traditional way, just becuase it is a traditional thnig IMO"

in other words, doing things the same way as before, because thats how its always been done is less open minded than trying something different that people say works very well.

Not "People who don't do BLW are less open-minded!"

Its quite a leap, i think, and needed clarifying.

"i think it is the open minded people that have looked at a differen way of weaning their children, and given it a go,, in spite of RL and cyberfriends giving them a whole lot of grief TBH "

Okay...you got me. A little.

But, it doesnt specify that you have to do BLW to be open-minded, just be prepared to try new things.....