Baby led weaning - do they eat less?

[SeaShell33]

My HV told me last week to stop giving my 10 month old purred food and give her finger food.
I have tried this but she seems to eat a lot less.
Is this normal?

Thank you

Just give a mix e.g. give puree/mashed foods alongside finger foods and phase out the smoother stuff gradually. Did you give finger foods already?

Yes, I believe so. If you think about it the skills babies learn when eating liquids via a spoon and baby led weaning are just reversed- when spoon fed, babies learn to swallow first and then to chew. Baby led weaning means baby learns to chew first before they can swallow, so it's often accepted that babies being weaned via BLW might not eat food in great quantities til much later. (I have a 9mo DS and he's still eating much less than his peers who have only been spoon fed but then he is quite confident with biting and chewing food- we do a mix of both spoon and blw) Hope that helps? X

It might take a bit for your DD to learn how to do it but I find my daughter eats more when she can feed herself. For example, for breakfast she'll eat a whole peach or a banana plus a slice of (salt-free) bread.

They probably do initially. If you've been spoonfeeding purees, it's pretty much like starting over and learning something new. So she'll go back to not eating much like in the beginning until she learns how to do it. There isn't really a point when that won't be the case. They have to learn to eat some day. But they don't need food for nutrition really at that age, so it doesn't matter how much they're eating anyway. Just top up with lots of milk in between until she gets the hang of it.

Thank you so much everyone!
I've been beating myself up that she either isn't eating enough or isn't eating her fruit or veg.
She's turned down boiled carrots and broccoli and raw strawberries all foods she normally eats puréed.
I'll go along with a mixture of finger foods and puréed then I know she's still getting her fruit and veg.
Thank you again!

I don’t think you need to go all one way or all the other, my 9 mo old has more or less half finger food, half purees. Does your DD have teeth? Mine got a lot more into finger food once she had the first four teeth.
The other big leap for us was once we got her sleep sorted. She suddenly started eating in a completely different way.

She doesn't have any teeth yet which is also why I'm reluctant to give her too much finger food. She tries her best to rip foods with her gums but it does limit what I can give her.
So far I've been giving her finger foods for one meal a day and the rest spoon fed

They dont need many teeth. Gums are hard and can mush up lots of foods

Mixture is good. You should be able to see from her poo if she's getting much?

Gums and sucking the food can be amazingly effective . Once she has got used to the new textures of her old favourite foods she's bound to enjoy them again.

We're doing "mixed" feeding - ie, he does some / we do some / we share.

So for lunch, he might have a slice of toast cut into fingers, topped with veg purée. He gums and sucks the toast and is swallowing it reasonably well now (but only the last few weeks, since about 7.5 months). Then we'll load a spoon with the veg purée and give it him, and he kind of rams it into his mouth - or sometimes throws it and then we'll try and spoon a few last bits in.

Then he might have chicken curry or spag bol for dinner - so small bits of meat he can gum and swallow. Sometimes he'll take a spoon, but sometimes he wants it piled up on his tray so he can pick up handfuls and shove it in. It ain't pretty 😄

He doesn't have any teeth yet, but the gumming is surprisingly effective. The best tip I ever read was if you can squish the food between your fingertips, they can gum it to a swallowing stage. This does however take maybe a good 1.5-2 months of practice. And they gag and it's awful... but they learn If he's only been doing mush up til now, he will have to learn to gum, but if he's a bit older it might come quicker anyway? Good luck x