Questions about BLW - and I've read the blog :-)

[jetjets]

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Am I right in thinking that with a prem baby you need to wait until 6 months adjusted age (so 7 months actual in your case) before weaning? If so, then there's no reason why you couldn't use blw at this point. Obviously avoid food that is most likely to cause allergies until later on - I think one of the links from the blog gives a suggested schedule for allergic types.

Yes you can combine purees with finger foods, but then it is actually traditional weaning, rather than blw. Nothing at all wrong with this if it's what you want to do, but do be aware that it's then not blw (Aitch will get v upset if you say it is ).

Depends on your baby. For me about 11 months, but by 12 months she was eating like a horse - I just had to cut back on her breastfeeds to encourage it a bit.

If you do want to do blw, then I'd also recommend joining the yahoo group - you could pose the prem question on there to see if there's anyone who's done it already.

My DD1 was 10 weeks prem and yes, you do have to adjust their age to EDD for developmental milestones - for at least the first year.

Am currently BLW my 6.5 mth DS and have no idea how much if any goes into his mouth - although i do see banana seeds in his poo (nice) - anyway he's still a bit of a blob so I guess he's not fading away!

I would start at corrected six month 'birthday' following allergy schedule on blog, avoiding puree in the hope that your ds will avoid food s that could trigger a reaction, feeding himself the 'safe' ones

indiajane, i thought those banana seeds were worms when i first saw them... nearly had a heart attack.

for the record i don't get upset when people get mixed up between finger food and blw, but i do tend to correct the misunderstanding. just because, well, if you google BLW you do come up with a lot of MN threads so if people are talking about doing BLW and purees then someone new might not get the gist.

tbh, the brilliant thing about BLW, the blog, the photos, all the chat about it on MN, is imho the fact that everyone who's remotely peeked at the BLW thing knows that their babies are capable of eating finger food from 6 months. whereas my HV told me that if i waited til 6 months i'd be pureeing and spoon feeding for 2-3 months before giving DD finger food.

so the way i see it, whatever you do is great if it works for you, but the fact that there are so many babies self-feeding from 6 months should give us all more confidence about finger food, even if exclusive self-feeding doesn't fit with what some people want or need to do. but as a lazy git, the fact that dd could sort herself out while i ate my dinner was great.

(but if you do decide to do BLW would you consider writing something for me when you find out what to do about the prem thing?)

just thinking with the prem situation... the idea of blw is that your baby will show you he is ready to wean by the fact that he is capable of picking up the food himself, chewing it, and swallowing it. until he needs the food he won't be able to do all this. then he'll get better and better at it as his need for food increases. this way it stops him weaning too early, and consuming too many solids.

soooo, if he can do it at his adjusted age, then so be it, or if he can do it at his birth date age then so be it. that's what i think anyway! it's not like spoon feeding puree where you just make the decision. he will show you when he's ready. easy!

very true, dizzy. if you're not interfering in the process then the age is much less relevant, isn't it?

I did BLW with my dd who was eight weeks prem. I took the theory that if she can eat finger foods at 6 months then it will do her no harm as she's meant to be able to eat them. In reality she played with her food until she was about six months corrected then started to shovel it in and we've never looked back.

I once gave her some pureed spinach as it was what we had eaten and I couldn't see how she would feed herself with it. Then I thought "well, she doesn't really need to eat spinach so if we have it she will just have to have something else."

Dd is 10 months now and everyone, even family members who were sceptical of blw at first, comment on how great she is with food, in fact I might try her on non-pureed spinach soon...

I never asked my hv about weaning, I declined going to the weaning party when she was 12 weeks and when ahe came to do her 8 month check and asked how weaning was going, was she trying lumps etc I just told her that she'd only ever had finger foods and lumps weren't a problem at all .

Go for it!

DD just picks spinach up by the fistful and jams it into her mouth, ladidadi. although she wwent through an 'off' phase where she picked it up by the fistful and dropped it onto the floor...

I just wanted to echo the others. TBH I hear of some HV's telling people to wean at 12 weeks still!

I am not the conventional BLWer as I am told I should consult my HV as I FF my baby as are you for having a premmie baby. But what do they know! lol! Like pp said the whole point is that the baby eats when he/she is ready so probably better for a prem baby as they can let you know rather than being stuffed with baby rice at 6 months if they're not ready iykwim.

I honestly wouldn't worry about their intake until they were around 12 months... i may worry about 11 months if it wasn't great but why worry now about something that may never happen?

With the allergies in the family history you just need to be careful what you introduce and when. Being pureed or whole makes no odds to this. have a look at this Allergies & Intolerances Article it may help.

Good luck and don't worry just relax

mum at baby grop had a prem baby. she was telling me the earliest time you can start is the midpoint between 16 weeks after birth date and 16 weeks after EDD, but to try and start before 7 months.

so her baby was born at 24 weeks. 16 weeks after this is EDD. EDD + 16 weeks would be 16. mid point is EDD + 8 weeks, when baby would be 24 weeks.

yes, but the trying to start before 7 months bit might refer to the utterly bogus 'window of opportunity' theory. i think that dizzy's point is best, so long as you're not forcing the issue and are prepared to wait for the baby to start by themselves then you'll be fine whenever.

oh yes i agree about that too. was basically just trying to that it's fine to start at 6 months like everyone else.

Aitch - I've got a quick question if you have time (or indeed anyone else who may be further along the BLW road than me)

I'm trying to do "pure" BLW - no puree at all. My DS is 6.5 months old and is doing fine. Except he LOVES mango. This is great but he gets really cross because he can't hold it for long enough (he is very little still ) so I've been holding chip shaped bits for him - he sucks and sucks for about 20 mins until I'm left with very sorry looking bits of mush.

Now is this ok? I'm concerned that he sucks so hard that if I let go or if it slipped out of my fingers, it would go straight down his throat and possibly choke him. Should I just stop giving even this much help on the ground that he should only have that much mango if he can keep it to his mouth for that long?

Sorry if this is a stupid question...

i used to hold onto bits of apricot for the same reason, i don't think it does any harm. for the record, i just give mango to dd with the skin on. it's not unpleasant, the skin, and she doesn't eat a lot of it anyway, preferring to suck the flesh off the skin. i give it to her in a slice as well, rather than a chip. (i actually think that 'the rapley chip' is a bit useless, tbh, and they are better off orientating themselves around bigger, easier to hold onto bit of food.)

have you tried leaving the skin on? lots of fruit is very very slippery. leaving skin on helps a bit. otherwise he'll get better at holding it in time. is he using two hands yet? that really helps.

He's nowhere near 2 hands. it's a bit of pot luck if he gets his mouth rather than his hands!

I'll try leaving the skin on. Do this with the melon (read on a blog somewhere that this is a good idea) He distinctly prefers honeydew to other kinds by the way!!

The pieces are pretty much the full length of the mango but about the width and thickness of a chip.

whoops I mean it's luck if he gets it in his mouth rather than his EYE!

try the skin on. but it's amazing how fast things change anyway... give it a week and he'll be using both hands and calculating fermat's last theorem at the same time.

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it is really not true. the iron levels don't drop like a stone, they tail off over time. by the time it's worth worrying about the baby will be chowing down on broccoli and steak.

i've got a question too. how long is it generally between picking the food up, waving it around and dropping it on the floor, and them actually putting it in their mouth?

Tried the mango today with skin on - much better. In fact a really impressive bite sized piece was gone - so big that I asked aupair and DH if they had had a bite (both denied it).

I will watch his poo with interest

please do, indiajane.

dunno the answer, nappyaddict. does the baby grab food off you if you're holding it? i suppose it depends on the baby... how long has it been so far?