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Weaning

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

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Original poster

BLW is all very well if....

330 replies

babybore · 14/02/2007 13:51

Your baby has very good gross motor skills
You are not concerned about their weight gain
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.

OP posts:

DizzyBint · 15/02/2007 09:38

mumsnet is bound to be lop sided towards blw because it's one the very very few places a mum can find out about it, discuss it, ask questions etc. if you're doing puree etc there are a million and 1 books out there about it, plus a lot of your mum friends are probably doing it. i talk about it a lot on mn because no mums in RL i know are doing it.

FluffyMummy123 · 15/02/2007 09:38

Message withdrawn

Enid · 15/02/2007 09:50

tiktok - the whole of mumsnet is extrapolated from people's experience only.

I certainly do not need someone who 'knows a bit more about' weaning to tell me how to do it, after three children

Aloha · 15/02/2007 09:59

Agree with Enid that there seems to be a bit of an air of martyrdom - ie what kind of useless mother are you if you aren't prepared to eat bland much for the sake of the baybee.

FluffyMummy123 · 15/02/2007 10:00

Message withdrawn

fibernie · 15/02/2007 10:03

Just an aside on the 'no teeth no chewing' issue... My DD was a spoon refuser so I kind o fell into the blw side of things.
She had no teeth when we started finger foods (8months) and has no teeth now at fourteen months. She happily chews (well, gums) slices of pizza, roasted veg, breadsticks, broccoli, sandwiches, pasta... just about anything she can get her wee hands on.
Of course she couln't manage a raw apple or carrot or a steak, but anything that can be gummed down is fine.
She's living proof you don't need teeth. She's even been known to throw bowls of mush on the floor in disgust at nursery!
Every child is different, I know, and I think her 'chewing' skills have developed as a result of refusing spoons...but I'm glad I discovered she could eat all this stuff - she's able to eat a huge range of foods, and mostly what we're having too.
F

lulumama · 15/02/2007 10:04

i don;t think anyone has ganged up, but if you make an OP deliberately contentious, then you will get people jumping in!

BLW is not for you

it is however, great for others

BLW as Dizzy has said is not widely known, so MN can appear skewed towards it....does not mean Aitch is going to march into your kitchen and make your baby eat finger foods!

DizzyBint · 15/02/2007 10:04

i don't don't eat bland, neither does dd. she loves my moroccan cooking, anything spicy, flavoursome. if anything, the things she's not so quick to wolf down are the bland things. she's not keen on toast with butter on so much, but she'll wolf it down with a highy seasoned houmous on top.

Enid · 15/02/2007 10:05

god they all get fussy at 4 anyway

SoupDragon · 15/02/2007 10:10

It's a wanky name.

It is no more "baby led" than spoon feeding. Take DD (1) Last night meatballs, vegetables and pasta. She p*sssed abut with the finger food version, ate about 6 pieces of pasta and 6 chunks of vegetable and spat the chunks of meatball n the floor. So, she was self regulating her food intake and was full was she?

Was she b*llocks because she then went onto eat a jar sized portion of the mashed up version of the family meal, meatballs and all. If I'd not spoon fed her she would have still been hungry but too bored, lazy, whatever to feed herself.

So, would it have been more baby led for me to have made her feed herself or go hungry or is it more baby led for me to have ascertained that she was still hungry and spoon fed her as she clearly wanted to be?

True "Baby Led" weaning is doing what your baby wants to do, following their clues. Not following the rules of some plan be it Annabel sodding Karmel or Wanky Named Weaning (finger food). So, although BabyDragon is having mashed food and finger foods, I am still doing baby led weaning because I'm doing what my baby wants.

"don't call it 'BLW and purees'" No, I'll call it baby led weaning because I'm doing what my baby wants me to . Actually, I won't call it blw as it's a wnaky name. I'm just weaning my baby how she wants to be weaning.

I promised myself I wouldn't post on weaning threads again and I'm having a MN break anyway but I had to come out in support of babybore. Chill out FFS! Unless you're tying your child into their highchair with their mouths wedged open and spooning puree in whilst they protest, you're doing fine and are probably weaning how your baby wants to be weaned. (and fwiw, BabyDragonwould not have got "ooh isn't she eating well!" comments in a cafe witha sandwich becauase she would have been chewing each peice and spitting it on the floor,getting all manner of other different comments. Bless her )

Having stopped stressing out that she should be just feeding herself finger foods (resulting in a month where she lost 14 oz) I have now reached an uneasy truce with BabyDragon and have a baby who will happily be spoonfed yoghurt, porridge etc but will also feed herself blueberries, grapes, pizza, pasta and as much of the family meal as she can be arsed to do before she gets bored and throws the plate on the floor (and googly eyes, sand, dry rice, buttons, playdough... ). It's all baby led, just not wanky named and certainly not Annabel sodding Karmel

Enid · 15/02/2007 10:19

fab post soupy

we do a mixture too

RustyBear · 15/02/2007 10:38

Food doesn't have to be bland just because it doesn't have salt in & you don't want to use spices - both my two had herbs with their food from a very early age- I always put herbs in the gravy that I pureed veg with and on the food that DD ate from my plate.

hippmummy · 15/02/2007 10:52

Soupdragon - you've summed up exactly how I've been feeling!

I've never posted on a BLW thread before, because I completely agree that it's each to their own and don't have a strong opinion either way.
I have, however, always felt uneasy about the idea that BLW allows the baby to regulate their own food intake, and if they don't want to eat it's cos their not hungry.
I still mostly spoonfeed my DS2 because he does mess about with food, and does get bored before he gets full.
He will eat with his fingers, but I know that he will eat a lot more if I feed him - and if he really has had enough he'll refuse the spoon.

AitchTwoOh · 15/02/2007 10:57

we really do not eat bland food at all, aloha. last night we ate moussaka, the previous night boeuf bourgignon, the night before roast chicken with pasta, lemon, pine nuts and rosemary. we didn't add any salt, but as it happens DH and i haven't added salt for years, so our diet hasn't really changed at all.

and soupy, while i agree with you that Baby Led Weaning is a bit of a wanky name, it is a name for a philosophy of weaning that is quite different to 'traditional weaning'. it may be that in time we will talk about BLW and Trad weaning, who knows, but at the moment it's simply a matter of differentiation. it's daft to get hung up on the name that Gill Rapley chose as a major point of contention.

AitchTwoOh · 15/02/2007 11:00

hippmummy, the idea is that you give them milk for calories and food for fun, certainly until 12 months. so they're not running short of 'food' ever.

podywody · 15/02/2007 11:03

hi all, sorry to just jump in but you seem to be the experts on BLW, this is something i want to do with my ds, but he is only 20 weeks and is waking 2/3 times at night hungery, I breastfed and have tried to give him a bottle of formula but he refuses to take the bottle.hv says to wean him and start with baby rice, how old does he have to be before i can start blw ??? and do i just have to interduce 1 new food at a time, How DO I START ????

MrsBadger · 15/02/2007 11:04

pody, sounds more like he's having a growth spurt and needs more milk rather than solids.

hunkermunker · 15/02/2007 11:05

Oh, heavens - I don't eat bland for the baby's sake!

Noooooo!

Is that what people think? That I'm just eating chunks of pear, butternut squash and rice?

Nooooooooooooooo!

I just eat...well...food. And so do the boys.

hunkermunker · 15/02/2007 11:08

And I really, really don't get why people get so wound up about it.

hippmummy · 15/02/2007 11:08

Hi Aitch,

My DS2 was just one of those it never worked for - he's 16mths now and has always preferred softer sloppier food.

He will quite happily eat all manner of finger foods - toast, fruit, any adult food, but in tiny quantities. If we sit down to a dinner sized portion he will just lose interest very quickly.

However - if I make that same portion sloppy and spoonfeed him he'll guzzle the lot

I think he's lazy... can't think where he gets it from

AitchTwoOh · 15/02/2007 11:15

hi podywody,
it does sound rather like a growth spurt to me as well, so more milk is the answer. hopefully because of the amount that you are bfing him, particularly at night, your milk supply will catch up with his demand and things will settle.
it's not really my area of expertise, though, as i never managed to exclusively bf (well done you on that score) so you might want to post a message on the BFing board asking about growth spurts and your feeding. (or asking about how to get him to take a bottle... dd positively leapt on hers as she was ravenous).
BLW is generally best done from around 26 weeks as by and large that's when the babies start pick up food and eat it. hope you get the answers you need soon.

podywody · 15/02/2007 11:17

hi mrsbadger think you r right but ds wont take bottle with extra milk so not sure what else to do

MrsBadger · 15/02/2007 11:24

can you breastfeed him more often?

AitchTwoOh · 15/02/2007 11:29

thing is, hippmummy, i've never spoonfed my dd other than loading a spoon and letting her take it, so i don't suppose that she was aware there was a lazier way, iykwim?

i didn't not spoon feed her out of badness, though. we started off with tiny amounts too, of course, and as i said earlier it took quite a while to build up to three meals a day but i think that the fact that i was doing 'BLW' (a positive thing/concept/philosophy/whatever, rather than the more negatively-geared 'not spoonfeeding') gave me the confidence not to care about amounts at all and just give milk if she wanted milk.

Look, it's been great for us, and lots of other people seem to want to try it. the whole western world, all the literature, HVs and our families and friends are geared to puree-feeding and we weedy BLWers have a yahoo group, a few blogs and a corner of the MN Weaning board... i'm sorry if people hate the idea of BLW for whatever reason but i really don't think it's going anywhere. in fact, being perfectly honest, i think it's the way that all babies will be weaned in 20 years time.

by which time it will have dropped the wanky name, of course, and will just be called Weaning. something that only takes a few months out of our long lives and will be forgotten about by the time they're 2. (at which point they will all stop eating anyway, just Because They Can).

Jimjams2 · 15/02/2007 11:36

rather like cod's enid's and soupdragon's posts.

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