Do Not BLW!

[user1494494728]

Yesterday was the final straw, I can’t keep my mouth shut any longer, Baby Led Weaning has gone seriously, dangerously wrong (if it was ever even right to start with).

I attend a weekly mums group, of which I (as far as I’ve worked out) am the only one who is doing traditional weaning. Yesterday, I sat quietly and watched a 7 month old baby have a bacon sandwich for her lunch. A BACON FUCKING SANDWICH. After producing this nutritional feast for her toothless child the mother then looks around and asks where she needs to go to get baby vitamins. It took everything in me not to scream out ‘try the vegetable aisle in the supermarket you stupid bitch!’. I asked if this was the childs lunch or just a snack, to which the reply was, oh no it’s her lunch, she loves bacon and it’s so easy for her to hold’, well… so is a fucking shoelace but I wouldn’t give it to my baby for lunch. Meanwhile, another mother next to me opens a tub of humous and gives it to her 6 month old baby (yes, the whole pot) with a handful of toast. The other mothers chimed in and said how incredibly healthy the baby was because it was eating chickpeas, clearly they have no idea how much salt is in a slice of bread let alone a full sized tub of humous (some pots of humous are known to contain 4 entire crisp bags worth of salt). For dinner that night this same child would go on to sit at the table and gum at a piece of carrot and lump of chicken. Try and working out how much nutrition this child has had today?

In reality there’s only so much you can give a 6 month old baby who hasn’t got any teeth and has swallowed nothing but milk it’s entire life. Going from this to sticking a lump of celery of even chicken in it’s hand is bloody cruel. Naturally it’s going to want to play with it before it eats it, which is why all BLW mums say 99% of the food lands on the floor and very little in the childs actual mouth.

I recently found out that not only has virtually no research been done on BLW, but it was also invented by a Healthvisitor. We have been feeding babies on healthy, nutritious purees for thousands of years then a health vistor comes along with no research whatsoever and starts a fad. The only clear research done on BLW shows that it can be harmful to babies who are struggling to gain weight, doesn’t that tell you enough? (for the mum who’s thinking blenders haven’t been around that long remember that in third world countries today women are still chewing food up and feeding it to their babies, it’s naturally what we are supposed to do, BLW is NOT natural).

Then there is the choking hazard which I’m only going to step on lightly, the day you see your own child properly choke (and one day it will happen) will possibly be the worst day of your life. Why risk this earlier than need be? It’s ludicrous, what’s the rush and what’s the point other than putting your child at risk for a fad? One of the mothers at the group recently said ‘oh he’s only choked a few times’. Well for me that’s a few times too many. And no, a baby CAN NOT choke on puree, if you’re confused as to why look up the definition of choking.

Bread is easy, cheap and soft, it’s fast becoming the staple food of choice for BLW mumies and there’s no arguing that, I’ve watched it happen first hand. In those first years of life a babies cells are developing the fastest they will ever develop again, this is the time that as their mummy we need to step up and make sure we give our child everything they need, it not about giving the baby a choice it’s about giving them a chance and a healthy start. Yes if you want to give your child hand held snacks, great - do it all day AS SNACKS, but please get in your kitchens and make up some healthy, nutritious pureed or mashed foods and spoon feed every last little drop into their mouths, this time will go so fast and least then you can look back and say you gave them the best start you possibly could.

I think the title of this thread should be 'do not feed your 6-month old baby a bacon sandwich'. It has nothing to do with the method of feeding.

Rogue Borrow a copy of Gill Rapley's book 'Baby Led Weaning' (obviously). It's really interesting. It's so much more than 'give them finger food'.

Op. Your rant is ridiculous, as is your inability to change your user name.

Rogueantimatter - I thought you were being rhetorical! I wasn't a BLW'er as such but your understanding of the philosophy is pretty accurate from what I've read.

Jar sizes or portions of puree always seemed a bit arbitrary to me, so it made sense to me to be guided by DS on how much he ate. My friend and her DH are both over six foot, their DS is going the same way, so he towers over DS, who was prem and has two shortarse parents. Makes sense they wouldn't need the same.

As long as you're feeding them, and not exclusively bacon butties. That's my philosophy. (and from what I've read and been told and the studies coming out, get them to try nuts). I don't think I'll get a book deal though.

The anger you feel is so far out of proportion I don't even know where t start .
Chill the hell out OP

why does everything have to have a title?! sometimes baby has chopped up bits of stuff, sometimes he has pouches. I just feed then. there doesn't need to be an argument here. everything in moderation.

OP

Therapy.

I did BLW with DD - not because I wanted to, I was quite jealous of the other mums in my NCT group spooning mush into their compliant babies - but because the little bugger wouldn't let me get a spoon anywhere near her mouth, and was visibly disgusted by purées.

We started with pieces of fruit and veg - avocado, banana, steamed carrot, broccoli, figs (she LOVED figs), then graduated to other food once she'd got the hang of it. Penne with homemade (so no salt) pesto was a huge hit, she still loves it actually.

When her brother came along, he was much more amenable to being spoon-fed purées, so that's what he got, plus the odd bit of finger food that he mostly played with.

They're now 5 and 3 and both tall, slim and healthy. However, and this could well be a coincidence, DD is a much less fussy eater. She'll eat - or at least try - most things. She loves fish, especially salmon, and has a varied diet on the whole.

DS is much fussier, and quite a lazy eater - he still asks to be spoon-fed quite often, and doesn't like food that takes much chewing. Given the choice, he'd live on potatoes and yoghurt.

Anecdotes are not the same as data of course, but certainly BLW doesn't seem to have done DD any harm. And parents who give their tiny babies bacon as a first food just sound like they don't have a very good grasp of nutrition generally.

Surety what matters is WHAT is eaten rather than the delivery method?

Yes, a 7 month old should not be eating bacon. However, if that parent was weaning onto purees, it is possible that lunch might not have been a home-made chicken casserole with lots of vegetables and no salt, carefully mashed, but a commercial highly-processed puree or 2 petit filous and a pouch of fruit gloop.

My children are old enough for various 'things' to have come and gone in the weaning department, but it seems to me that as long as:

• weaning doesn't start earlier than the recommended guidelines
• the diet is low in salt and not too high in sugar
• milk remains the primary source of nutrition up to 1 year
• a wide variety of foods are used regularly
• there is progression over time towards a child eating a normal range of family food in its normal format
• care is taken not to feed a child beyond satiety

then the precise nature of exactly what form a child's food is delivered in at a given moment is less important.

Purees may encourage too-early weaning. BLW may encourage the too-early introduction of adult foods high in salt / sugar. If parents follow the basic principles with care, then one, the other or a mixture all seem to be capable of meeting the child's needs.

Sirzy I am with you I did a mixture of pureed/ mashed foods and finger foods.

Well, I think you've convinced precisely no one to alter their existing viewpoint, OP. A good day's work.

I kind of agree with you but you are going to catch a load of flack!
Reminds me of my ex who complained that my friend was over protective of her baby and gave him pureed veg.
He said babies in Africa don't get treated like that,
I said ; I rest my case.
I am not very enamoured of all this suckling of large tots either. Give your tits and the kid a break.

I asked my sister (who is a paediatric registrar) about this. She says:

It's not HOW you feed them, it's WHAT you feed them. And babies under 1 get most of their nutrition from milk.

So on that basis, YABU (unless you're suddenly going to tell us you're a consultant paediatrician, in which case which studies back you up?).

This thread has cheered up my morning

I saw a parent at a baby group spoon a jar of spaghetti bolognese and then a jar of chocolate pudding into a young baby. I have therefore concluded that PURÉE IS DANGEROUS and clearly responsible for obesity.

DS has refused to be spoon fed from day 1 of weaning, so I'd love to know how I should "spoon feed every last little drop into their mouths?"

I'm not really fussed what other people do, but making sweeping generalisations and insulting other parents based on minimal evidence does rather irritate me.

So is a pureed bacon sandwich better then? That's lunch sorted in our house...

Like someone else said. The delivery method isn't as important as the nutritional value.

We did blw it worked for us. I never considered feeding bacon sandwiches. Everything was made by hand from fresh veg and decent quality meat.

a jar of chocolate pudding into a young baby

A jar?!?!?! They could have choked on that!!! You'd think they'd take it out of the jar first. Honestly, they need educating some of them.

If I didn't do BLW my children wouldn't have eaten. They both point blank refused to be spoon fed. They're 3 and nearly 2 now and have still never allowed me to put a spoon near their mouths. Should I be pinning them down and force feeding them?
However I didn't wean them on bacon sandwiches. They are low/no salt, homemade, age appropriate foods. Which is what BLW experts recommend. If the people you know are ignoring actual BLW advice then that's another matter.

My 10 month old daughter would LOVE a bacon sandwich.
This week so far she's had tea with her brothers of sausage/mash/carrots, fish fingers/chips/beans. One day she even had some spaghetti carbonara! Aaah the shame.

I don't think what you witnessed was blw. I did blw and never fed them anything inappropriate like bacon sandwiches. I do have someone on Facebook who claims to be doing blw and she posts pictures of her child eating adult ready meals and at the weekend she had given him a donner kebab

Thanks for engaging with my Qs.

I wonder if blw or its label started partly as a reaction to the commercialisation of feeding babies. I'm thinking of jars, baby rice etc. As is the way, attitudes have become polarised and some parents have taken it to extremes.

I don't really remember that much about how I fed my two. They were definitely spoon fed and I remember DD clutching a floret of broccoli and eating chunks of banana. That's about the height of my memories.

DS who was EBF until 4 months - those were the guidelines then - slid down the weight charts from 4 months onwards. But he's a tall skinny-minny at 18Y despite eating an impressive amount so he was obviously meant to be skinny.

One reason we went for BLW was that we wanted to give DD the taste of each type of food. Purees don't taste of very much unless you just puree each ingredient separately. Also we weren't hung up on how much she ate before one year. She had milk to ensure she got enough nutrients to grow but by 9 months or so she was eating plenty of fruit and veg anyway. She also loved gumming steak occasionally. It went in lovely and juicy and came out grey so we figured she had had the best of the pieces we gave her.

I would say that as an eater now at 7, she is better than some of her friends and less adventurous than others. You couldn't tell her apart from her puree fed friends though.

If i were you i would go back to that group and comment on the salt content when you see bad choices. You are quite right about that and that sort of useful tip is just what baby groups are for. At an NCT one I went to, it came to light that one of the mums was feeding her baby only smooth purees at one year because she was so scared of the possibility of choking. The leader of the group was horrified, explained all about the risks to her speech and that baby had her first solid food (a baby rice cake because that was what we had) at that group in a safe place with a trained leader. That was useful rather than someone just coming on the internet and banging on about bad nutrition to a bunch of strangers.

I agree a bit (although yes, you could have worded it with a bit less anger!).
Here is an honest reply...
My first we did BLW. He was hungry and in reality his diet was fairly limited. He is a good eater now though and not fussy.

With my second, we fed him purée and finger food. I often buy Ella's kitchen because I'm a bit lazy and have a two year old. He also gets some of our food which he eats a little of and most on the floor.

I'm not a perfect mummy. I do love me children though, and I reckon that will probably mean they cope with life however my tired, a bit overwhelmed, self feeds them.

for the mummies

Oh and my 2 BLW children are both 50th centile, and have been since birth (EBF until 6 months)