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...

i wonder if you'd have to look into things like crohn's disease, welliemum? my friend has it (really, really, really, really badly, she's got a feeding tube thing and is the person who has lived longest in the UK withit). anyway, she's very involved in awareness campaigning so she's amazing to talk to about all this stuff as a. she is now seeing a vast increase in babies with crohn's . imagine that, a stoma at a year old.

and b. she says that the whole leaky gut thing was being looked at decades and decades ago, and that crohns-related thinking has always said that weaning should be left to 6 months or later.

it seems to me there's a big disconnect there between the doctors and that someone should insist on more research, but twas ever thus.

That is scary, Aitch.

Anyone know a physiologist? Any millionaires who'd care to fund a weaning study?

Seems amazing that this hasn't been properly looked at.

caughtinthe have you read Gill Rapley's study, I'd be very intrigued to read the original document. On the web I can only find summaries of it: one by a Dutch dietician (were they working together on this?) and the other on the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers. From what I gleaned, it was a small study as a small part of GR's masters. Didn't realise that 'small' was only 5 babies. Of those 5 babies involved how many were offered finger foods from 4 months and how many the purees? Or was it 5 'BLW', and another 5 pureed? And were the purees allowed to have finger foods at 6 months as was the tradition (Annabel Karmel et al) or not?

This from the ABM's report had me gagging in amusement at the picture it created in my mind and reaching for the handblender -
"The Study found that....
The study babies were able to attend a picnic at 8-9 months. They ate pizza and sandwiches while the other babies had to put up with babyfood from jars. The other mothers, who had been sceptical about the study, were envious of the study babies? independence and dexterity" - sounds like a jolly picnic and it kind of implies that finger foods hadn't been introduced, because if they had they would have coped with the (Goodfella?) pizza and (Shipham paste?) sandwiches.

I'm in the midst of a tiny study of 1 baby who has had purees and finger foods from the get go at 6 months. At seven months he will quite happily chirrup and waggle his legs as I spoon feed him soups and porridge, sit on my knee whilst I hold slippery fruit taking my hands in his to guide the food to his mouth, or get on with eating fistfuls of veg. Nutrional value? haven't a clue. Although as digestion begins in the mouth with saliva...Another way to wean apparently is for the parent to pre-chew the food before offering it to the baby, so their saliva helps break down the food for the baby. Guess I'm trying to cover most bases.

gosh i had no idea crohn's could develop so early

anyway, thanks everyone for helping me get some perspective! i do trust my instincts most of the time and dd is certainly happy, active and growing well so far so we'll see how it goes...

zebedee: no i haven't read her original study as it is an unpublished MSc thesis, but I have read a paper she wrote following on from it in this book .
In answer to your q it was 5 babies that did BLW, the paper doesn't specifically mention a control group. It actually is mostly theoretical and doesn't go into her study methodology at all. Part of me would like to read her thesis but I have already got far too obsessive about this!!!

i don't know how the dutch guy got interested in BLW perhaps Aitch knows? I think Gill Rapley presented her work at a UNICEF conference so maybe that's how it started?

i have talked about blw at length with my friend who is a paediatrician and has a baby 3 weeks older than mine. She is taking the same approach as you - mixing finger foods and spoon feeding from 6 months...so now you know you are using the medically approved method

i don't think it's really regarded as research per se, there were no controls as far as i'm aware. what is it called, qualitative rather than quantitative?
i'll ask stefan how he got to hear about BLW if you like. he's a dietitian and works to promote bfing in the netherlands. seems to be their kellymom iykwim?
the thing about blw is that it's what people with more than a couple of children have been doing for ages. or so my mum (of four) tells me. as i said before i've heard of a piece of canadian reserach into exclusive bfing that found growth dips in some of the children (another small study though) but given that blw babies usually eat something it's not really an issue. and expecially not at 7 months. if you're looking for somethign that proves it's harmful/not harmful then i just don't think it's out there. but there is evidence that not learning how to control appetite (structured ff v demand bf) may be a factor in childhood obesity so it seems to me to follow that premise.

I'm sure neither method can affect the baby adversely as long as mum is not too stressed and the baby picks that up. But I do kind of think some help is needed for the baby to eat, of course not forcing but basically they do need help from you. I think a mix of guidance and the baby's own exploration is better.

It seems like it's one of these big Issues which as a mother you have to take up your stance on, which people think means you then are a certain type of person etc... a bit sad really!

Aitch:
Well, it was research inasmuch as it was the basis of her MSc thesis; but yes, I would say it was qualitative. I'm not trying to pick it apart for that though! I suppose I think that there may be an impression out there that a more in depth study was done...

re what i am looking for - i had already come to the conclusion that it doesn't exist! but that's why i started this thread. i wanted to know how others rationalised their decisions, and it has been very useful from that respect.

The canadian study - is that cited in a WHO publication? i was trying to find it a while ago (was mentioned on another thread IIRC?) but my eyes started to bleed

yep, it's in teh WHO study... nightmare.
and gemmity, that is divisive rubbish about taking a stance and being a certain type of person. my baby simply does not need any help from me at all. not a bit, other than i put the food in front of her. so maybe it's a certain type of baby, rather than mother? it's all just food at the end of the day, and by five you likely won't be able to tell who was fed what and when, so why bother to take a stand. just do what you're happy with.

aitch, I agree, spose as a first time mum I feel everything seems to have potential for doing something wrong and not giving the baby the most perfect start etc, and it's all quite competitive as well, that's all I meant, that even feeding becomes a divisive issue. Of course it shouldn't be...

i'm a first-time mum as well but i couldn't exclusively BF so i've already had to alter my perspective on the perfect start quite substantially.
there may be some interesting future possibilities to do with BLW and possible health benefits but at heart i do it because it's less work for me and fits in better with DH and i. if it didn't, i'd do something else.

Thanks for the link caughtintheact. Mmmm wondering if that?s the sort of the thing the local library has in. I admit I am a little obsessive. The reason why I was googling around on weaning in the first place was I was hunting out an 'anti-allergy' weaning plan (being an asthmatic eczema type, so erring on the side of caution) similar to the one I had used for my older two children. It was something like no milk/eggs/tomatoes until aged one and then see how it goes. Meats/fish were introduced at particular months depending on the type, and wheat and other cereals introduced in some other order. It was in a book called Alternative Maternity which I shall have to hunt out before baby zeb is having an unnecessarily limited diet ? although I do know Rapley?s sandwiches and pizza would have been out of bounds. On what research this intro to food was based I was never sure but did ponder. I?m interested in what your friend with crohns says Aitch, do they have any thoughts about when particular foods should be introduced/delayed? Haven?t the guidelines about weaning at 6months been in place for about five years, so if people were following them the incidence should be going down rather than up (so could it be partic foods ? although didn?t they in days gone by, add rusks to bottles, and it never to them any harm ? or did it?) Isn?t it said that allergies are on the increase, so something is going on ? or maybe they are better diagnosed. There does seem to be a need for more research and maybe a collation of existing knowledge as answers to specific questions are hard to find/contradict eg iron depletion in breast milk/babies stores.

It is interesting how such a small study (which I am not knocking), seems to have spawned a movement and I could understand if people thought it had rules and regulations which must be followed ? and then if they deviated, with a spoon or a helping hand, had failed. And it would be less than helpful if people stuck rigidly to it and struggled because it didn?t fit into their/their babies disposition.

oh i don't know... at the risk of sticking my neck out i'd have to say that you'd be a bit of a fruitcake imo if you seriously thought you'd 'failed' at blw by doing a bit of spoonfeeding. it's just food at the end of the day... someone like that would probably also be the type of person who'd get stressed out about purees too so there isn't much point in blaming BLW. now that is where i'd agree with gemmity about certain types of mums.

and my friend is in hospital now so i can't ask her... as i recall she thinks it's a lot of things, pollutants etc that are just 'out there' that are kick-starting things. but she says that intensive farming, cross-breeding of stock and seeds and GM is also changing the size and structure of the foods that we are eating. i do remember reading that wheat is now something like 100 times bigger than it would be a century ago. also, we just eat a lot more and have a lot more food available to us. i will ask her in more depth though.

we have spoken about it but she can get upset so i don't always bring it up. she also (gulp) is pro single vax as she feels that part of the discredited reserach into measles in the lining of the stomach was valid with regards to crohns. she is 40 and found out that at her surgery when she was a girl she was part of some test regime for an early mixed vax. and three of her pals who also had the vax have crohns now so she thinks there's something going on there. it's all a bit of a worry...

by the way zebedee, there are a couple of allergy-friendly weaning shcedules on my blog. www.babyledweaning.com. hope you find what you're looking for.

Wow, this thread has got really interesting!

That book looks good too but not sure DF would be happy with me spending £35 on it! haha!

I did scan a lot of it as came back to 40 posts!

I just wanted to agree with Aitch on the point of someone saying they failed at BLW is the same person that would say they failed at puree too. I have a friend that is a nightmare and started blw and said "it's crap" and then did puree which incidently was also "crap" and went back to blw! hmmm! some people do just fuss and panic over these things and it's not just first time mums... there a few 2nd and 3rd time mums having trouble on my birth board. So maybe there are certain types of people... who knows!

The whole thing about Crohns is scarey. Definitely more research needed, it;s just such a dodgey area researching anything when it comes to babies and pregnant women... hence every slightly medical product telling you to consult a doctor if pg or breastfeeding. It's down to lack of research but I can't see many ladies putting there little ones up for the guinea pig!

I'm off to do some more reading! also a lady has just written an article for me about allergies her website is all about feeding children and babies with multiple allergies have a look at this

One of the main reasons I do BLW and am so passionate about breastfeeding is I want my children to have the healthiest bowels possible. I have ulcerative colitis (similar to crohns) so I do everything I possibly can to try and prevent poor gut health in my children.
In my case it's also stress related...and there is research suggesting a link between stress in babyhood and my condition. Hence my anti stance too.
The way I see it is that it's not just Gill Rapley suggesting BLW, LLL have basically promoted a similar approach to weaning it for years anyway.

I speak to 20 mums every day who have a child the same age as mine, and I am the only one who is waiting until the 26 week mark to wean. The majority waited until the 17 week mark but some started before.

Just because the advice is there doesn't mean that people actually follow it. Even my dimwit of a HV would have had me on the baby rice at 17 weeks as I have a "big" baby [grrrrrrrrrrrrrr]

If a large proportion of babies are being weaned early (and we're working on the basis that weaning and allergies are related) we're not going to see a decrease in the number of allergies.

Hi,

Sorry to be so thick but have been reading around weaning as having some problems with my 10 month DD and have never heard of BLW before can somebody enlighten me please!

Many thanks

Blog about BLW...really interesting and lots of good info!

haven't read all of this thread. We are doing a combination of BLW and spoon feeding. I think babies do sometimes want to be fed. I can see the frustration sometimes because DS doesn't have the co-ordination to eat as much as he would like. However tonight he did very well with Roast beef, Yorkshire's and broccoli. It so cute to watch them munching away and enjoying food so much. He positively shakes with happiness when i give him a whole pear. If they don't they will let you .

Check out this link too...if it has not already been done.
have a look at\link{http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintroductie/vast_voedsel/rapley_guidelines.html#introduction}this

again have a look at this

sorry - you mentioned Gill Rapley at the beginning, that'll teach me for not reading all the thread fully!

Lulumama off track but i was looking at your doula site yesterday! oooh actually I'll mail you through that i reckon! haha!

ok !

or

lulumama 21 @ hotmail. com