Is BLW actually safe? (*not* about choking!)

[caughtintheact]

I am currently in the early stages of BLW my DD, she's a week off 7 months and I've been having major doubts. I'm hoping people can help me work out whether my concerns are valid or just first time mum paranoia!!
So, who first said "food is just for fun until they're one"? Where does this come from? It seems to me to be extrapolated from "milk should provide the majority of a babies nutritional needs until the age of one". But- that is not saying that complementary foods are not important, just that they do not form the majority of the baby's diet...
It seems that most BLW babies (from what I've heard and read and IME) eat much less than spoon fed babies for about the first couple of months. Even though it's hopefully a relatively short time until they start feeding themselves significant amounts could it be that babies actually need adult help (i.e. spoons) to get enough food into them for this period? From the point of view of the critical vits and mins if not calories?
Also, might they actually need food to be mashed, minced or pureed to enable them to actually digest enough of it to get the goodies out?
I do realise there are lots of people on here who have done BLW and their babies haven't faded away or anything, but I was not very reassured when I found out that Gill Rapley's study was only on 5 babies...

Hello!
There are many posters on here who know soooo much more than me about BLW, but in my own experience I did chicken out a bit, and took the best bits from BLW which there are many, and supplemented with a bit of mashed up food for one meal a day just to make myself feel that I wasn't starving my ds......he's a very healthy happy 10 month old...and to be honest were even missing out that one now as he just loves feeding himself! Don't worry....mix it about a bit until you feel a bit more comfortable knowing they are getting what they need , plus look at the nappys they tell a story all of there own!
Good Luck!

Hi, ds2 is 8 months and I'm sort of muddling by in a shambolic fashion. I do spoonfeed him baby cereal for breakfast, which he really loves, then he feeds himself blw-style for the rest of the day.
Bit like puddingchef i guess.
Today he has supplemented with a bit of hula hoop he found under the dining room table

I found I felt like this in the early stages too, it was hard to see if the whole blw approach would work when just a few weeks in she wasn't eating much, combined with pressure from others.

However my dd will be ten months next week and she eats really well(but is teething at the moment so either want to chew and chew or not let anything near her mouth depending on the pain.

IME spoon fed baby go through the stage of eating less a little bit older, as the learn to say 'NO' and would prefer to play with the food/feed themselves or just relish the control! So I'm sure it evens out eventually.

I'm still exclusively breastfeeding (as in no formula/cows milk apposed to truely exclusive) and I think that gives me confidence as i trust my milk will be enough, not sure if i'd feel the same about bottle feeding but as i've never done it and know nothing about it I'm probably talking rubbish!

thanks for you reply!
actually, i will confess that approach is partly what has worried me! i tried spoon feeding some veg purees i was given by a friend with an older baby and dd was really receptive! i also tried yoghurt and she was almost vibrating with glee...
i'm now wondering whether to carry on with a finger food/spoon feeding mix or go back to 'pure' BLW...

but, i'm also interested in discussing the theory of different weaning methods cos i is a nerd!

oh cross posted there
that's interesting that you think spoon fed babies eat less later on...good point

I BLW my now 9 month baby girl and she may have taken a while to eat a lot of food in one sitting but now eats just as much as anyone her age if not more and more effeciently than they do.

There are a few people I know that have struggled with their little ones weight gains and now through picking to feed the right foods through baby led weaning are doing fantastically.

Also a lady who was in my music class was saying she started weaning her baby (was very young it was too early) and when we came back after half term it looked enormous... too big and weighed far too much (can't remember the exact details) which I thought was down to being spoon fed and too early.

The thing about baby led weaning is they lead... So control how much they are eating this prevents them from being over-fed it doesn't make them fade away.

I didn't know Gill's research was only on 5 babies but what I can say is I know of atleast 20 with parenting sites that all put on weight fine.

Also the mums that went the conventional route hit a wall when they reached aroun 7/8 months where the baby refused a spoon and stopped feeding until evenutally they realised they wanted to feed themselves and went onto fingerfood. So why wait?

It was ano-brainer for me when i decided to BLW... if you do get worried then just read the millions of blogs that are about and other mums experience. (i have one in my profile hehe)

Hope that helps your worry.

Good luck

when you spoon feed, unless you are sitting counting each spoonful, or weighing and measuring, you arenlt really going to know how much they are eating

how much puree ends up on the bib , the high chair tray, scraped off the chin and back into the mouth?

we started on purees with DD and ended up BLW as she did not eat. losing weight. was not interested. gave up on spoon feeding , fed her off my plate or gave finger food....have never looked back !! i did not know it had a name as it was before i joined MN....was delighted to know what i had done was ok ! and it had a name ! so i felt vindicated that i had done the right thing for DD

well,she had done it for herself really

she will eat anything now, absolutely anything, and feeds herself with cutlery or with hands if she is really hungry !

milk is the main source of nutrition until a child is one, and food is for tasting and for exploration until then , i don;t really get the hurry to have the baby on 3 meals a day asap when milk is so much easier !

and contains plenty of nutrients

i don;t know, but a lightly steamed carrot or courgette baton, that a baby can munch on or a chunk of peach or a mini pitta filled with hummous, is as nutritious as a carrot that has been boiled and then pureed into pulp...

and there is the cuteness factor of a baby holding a big floret of broccoli in a chubby fist !!

yoo hoo Lulu

I love BLW and do it in conjunction with spoon feeding as DS loves feeding himself - i have learnt it is sometimes better to strip him down to his nappy tho!! He is a very adventurous eater and has never refused anything i think because we just chuck whatever at him and don't make a big deal out of any food left etc ... good luck with it all - i love watching DS eat toast and fruit and smack his lips with pleasure!

yoo hoo tm !!

Taylormama;s DS is certainly well nourished and gorgeous !

it is soooooooo hard not to worry about everything as a first time ( or second and third time! ) mum

you will know if your baby is hungry and when they have had enough after a while!

when DD was around 8 months old, she was really ill and ate no solids at all for well over a week........just milk...and she was fine...once she felt better , she ate again

also, teething put her off her food and she would only want milk

if you think about it , when you are ill you don;t always want to eat, and some days you are hungrier than others, DD can eat 6 small meals some days, and one the next..over the weeks, it averages out....

no-one, babies included, eat and drink the same every day...

try not to over analyse, just enjoy this wonderful stage of development..

the numbers of babies in the study isn't particularly relevant, as Gill worked from teh widely held premise that babies nutritional needs are met largely by milk for the first year. what she was looking at was when self-feeding would begin if allowed to do it from 4 months, and how well babies took to self-feeding.
i see what you are saying about 'help', but it's a point that might be more relevantly made to peopel starting weaning earlier, when babies need help. there was a small piece of research in canada that seemed to suggest that a % of exclusively bfed children went through growth dips in their first year but remember BLW is not about exclusively giving milk, so it goes along with NHS and WHO guidelines.

it's a leap of faith, though.
either you buy into the Rapley thinking, that babies choose foods containing vitamins they need and tend to avoid what they are allergic to, or you don't. plus, you are the one offering the food. a diet of cake is not going to be nutritionally useful. and if necessary yo ucan always use a vitaimin supplement if you are really worried.

i never really had to get fussed about it because i could see my baby wolfing down apricots and peaches the first time we let her.
i think that's the thing, you're maybe assuming wrongly that your baby wouldn't eat very much... you don't know that yet. my dd always ate more than her puree-fed friends, for example. but that may have been because her friends became bored with the palaver more quickly, who knows? if you give it a try and it's not for you then just spoon feed as well... the good thing about having tried blw is that you will be confident about giving finger food from the off so you will presumably get the benefit of missing out all that weird 'won't eat lumpy food' bit that some babies get.

Thanks for all your responses.
What is frustrating me is that it is clear that, at some point, milk alone isn?t enough. Nearly all the research is so focussed on how early is it appropriate to start solids and not how late?.so it is hard to know whether or not to worry about intake.
Just to clarify, I have been doing BLW for about 4 weeks now and was wondering how different it would be if I were spoon feeding, which is why I tried it to see. So I am not assuming my baby won?t eat much via BLW, she isn?t!

I think it's pretty well accepted that babies eat more when it's pureed and spoon fed into them - and that is certainly what I saw with my postnatal groups. And they all commented that when babies went onto feeding themselves lumpy food, they ate significantly less than they had been. DS on the other hand ate very little, in comparison to the other babies, until about 9 months when he caught up very quickly. He is now 20 months and is known as the Dustbin.

I didn't really worry too much about how much he was eating because he was still having lots of bm so I was confident that he was getting everything he needed vitamin-wise. I was, however, worried about his weight which was entirely unnecessary as it turned out. He's the thinnest dustbin in town!

maybe you are just finding it hard with comparing yourself to other mums around you who did, or do, spoon feeding.

a big part of the leap of faith that goes with BLW is the belief that your baby's ability to eat food himself increases as his need for solid food increases. his body knows exactly what it's doing. some babies take longer to get the hang of self feeding, others take to it extremely quickly.

if you don't feel comfortable doing it this way, ie..being out of control by and large, then it just isn't for you.

i see what you meand and echo the leap of faith sentiment..
however, no baby has starved themselves...whether milk fed , BLW or puree weaned...it will all average out over a month or 6 months or a year....

your baby will eat the right amount for her needs, and drop milk feeds as and when

don;t get hung up on milk feeds having to be droppped at a particular date

DS is 7 and i still like him to drink milk, and dd is 19 months and i like her to have 2 good big drinks of milk a day

don;t look to drop milk entirely for a long while yet

keep going, you will become more comfortable with it

also, if you puree etc..then you can get caught up in the 'oh, she only had 2 ice cubes of puree and yesterday she had 4 '

appetites differ and vary , day to day , baby to baby..

My issues are not really about comparisons or control, I just want to do the best by my daughter and am a bit nervous about using her as a guinea pig...
I do understand the theory of BLW, and I think it makes a lot of sense and would like to follow it. However it is just a theory which to my mind has not been totally proven, which is why it takes a 'leap of faith' to follow as has been said.
On the other hand, I am aware that it is not the case that 'traditional' weaning methods have been researched much either! I guess that, as I have a background in scientific research (though not medical/food related), I am a bit disappointed at how much of the available advice on weaning is cultural and not evidence-based.

thanks lulu x-posted

if she is happy, content, smiling, developing well, you can presume she is well nourished , however she takes in food

if you are not comfortable, don;t continue !

me too !

caughtintheact - i have discovered that a lot of stuff with babies is theoretical anyway. You know all that stuff you read that babies should sleep through by 6 months, drop at bottle at 7 months, nap for 2 hours after lunch etc etc - my DS does his own thing and is happy for it (9 months and only one tooth and no sign of crawling lol!!!) ... try to follow your instincts and your baby's. As a PP said babies are really good at regulating their eating and drinking. If my DS has had enough milk or food he clamps his mouth shut and that is that ... if he wants more he opens his mouth like a baby bird. Go for it!!

You'll know what's right for your baby. I think 7 months is too early to worry about how much she's eating and I speak from my experience of DD (12 months) who, quite frankly, has been a completely f-ing nightmare to wean.

Her weight gain tailed off, which didn't worry me one iota ,but then she lost 14 oz in 4 weeks (which again didn't really worry me as such but set warning bells ringing) and we moved onto a mixed approach which suits her better. She was, and still is, far more interested in the science of gravity, shredding and squishing and has the attention span of a gnat. I think she sees the spoon being a more efficient delivery system, allowing her to get the food lark over and done with so she can go an cause havoc somewhere.

It's all led by her though, I just hold a spoonful in front of her and if she opens her mouth keenly, fine, if not, I don't put it in. Sometimes this is even a spoon loaded with the things she's refusing to feed herself and she wolfs it... There is never a one-size-fits-all approach to parenting, you find what fits your baby best.

caughtintheact. re the cultural rather than intensively research-based methodologies... imagine how different it would be if men were in charge of weaning their children. there'd be acres of paperwork on it.

At only 7 months I really wouldn't worry yet. Not one bit of food passed ds2's lips until 8 months and I've heard of many babies who waited until later.
Ds2 has got atopic tendencies and I did read somewhere that quite often babies like that do choose to start later. They must know when their digestive system is mature enough to handle solids.

Just my theory, I don't know if anyone's actually researched this.... but to me, it's a good thing if babies start off weaning quite slowly.

Surely, starting to digest food must be quite a different process for the gut to "learn", and it makes sense to me to make that transition as gradual as possible.

Could it be that some later-life problems in the gut arise from suddenly being overwhelmed by foreign proteins at a young age?

It also makes sense to me that while the gut is getting used to food, it won't be quite as good at getting all the nutrients out, so milk will still be more nourishing at first.

Mine have both enjoyed their food at 6 months, but only really started to eat big quantities at 8-9 months, and that has a feeling of "rightness" to me (of course other children will be different, but it seems right for mine).

Anybody got any facts (as opposed to my ignorant airy fairy theories)?

I am a huge fan of BLW and have manged to convert my initially sceptical dh (also happens to be a GP and now an enthusiastic BLW fan too), MIL and Mum.

My ds, now nearly 1 has always been on the light side - ie on the centiles his weight was always lower than height etc. When I started weaning at 6 months he certainly didn't eat loads to begin with and his weight gain slowed...

Cue anxious health visitor who spotted this when he was in for an injection and has insisted on me bringing him to be weighed monthly for the past 4 months.

At no stage were we worried, he eats well, loves his food and has a quite 'adult' palate, like many BLW babies! He's also incredibly active and crawled and walked quite early.

Anyway, I think I've now convinced my health visitor too, he's so clearly thriving and happy. Interestingly his weight gain has picked up slightly in the past month, coincidently since he discovered the joy of hot cross buns, and since we (by which you understand I mostly mean dh) have been willing to let him try wee bits of chocolate and real biscuits. I'm wondering whether part of the weight gain thing may have been because he was eating our (fairly healthy on the fat front and definitely low sugar) food.

In terms of the original OP, the more you mess with veggies etc the more vitamins they lose. As others have said even puree fed babies actually eat very little to begin with. If you're really worried you might try something like Readybrek which is fortified with iron etc. I did this because I know my own iron stores are very low (was badly anaemic post birth)