Why is traditional weaning now looked down on?

[tlove]

I feel like traditional weaning is the 'lesser cousin' to BLW recently which is quite frankly bizarre! Anyone hazard a guess as to why this is?

I'm currently weaning my 7.5 month old first with purées and now with much chunkier sauces with pasta for example, and some finger food such as toast and banana.

Some people I know are doing total BLW and seem to almost brag about it! Weird.

Most of it is new terminology for old ways of doing things. Eg “baby wearing” above - strapping your baby to your body is hardly new-fangled. My mum calls BLW “finger food”

@Namelessinseattle I too think weaning (however one chooses to do it) amazingly fun!

Things go in cycles. I was the only one of my circle not to use purees when I did BLW with my twins ten years ago and I got loads of hassle about my choices.

And it's been pointed out to me that BLW leads to children that snack, rather than sit down to a proper warm meal - any credence to this?

I’m not sure why that would be the case. BLW is all about eating with the rest of the family, so BLW is done at meal times. Why would that lead to snacking?

It certainly hasn’t with my children.

I’m a bit about your response to Flower? I couldn’t see anything aggressive in her post?

Laughing at chufty badge

Lots of the principles are sound, it's the idea that it's 'new' that's silly and inventing lots of rules to try to legitimise it as an approach.

Gill Rapley is a marketing genius though, hats off to her.

Just feed your baby real food and make sure there's a variety of texture.

All the fuss about who holds the spoon/whether a spoon should feature at all is nonsense. Different things will work for different babies.

@hersymphony - totally agree.

The incessant labelling of things seems to rile people.

Feed you kids / parent your kids / teach your kids / no need to label it!

Meh. I tried it with my eldest, he was ravenous. It’s also a lot more effort to give healthy range of food before they have teeth. That said it works for some.

There is so, so much anxiety about motherhood (and it is mainly motherhood rather than fatherhood) that I think being seen to be doing the right thing has become so obsessively important. I’ve had people tell me my daughter would choke and die if I did a mix of some finger food and some purée. I can safely report she is at school and doing just fine.

@Happyandshiney I found @flowery 's "um, no" to be aggressive but maybe benefit of the doubt is required there. Soz.

I guess it depends on how BLW is done i.e. sat with family or not etc etc. There are myriad ways of skinning the cat and some are perhaps better than others.

Merely open up a discussion about the pros and cons.

I haven't met anyone who looks down on traditional weaning, in fact I think I am quite rare among my acquaintance to have done BLW. It wasn't from any feeling of superiority and was in fact laziness. I cooked one meal which all three of us ate together and I didn't have mine go cold while I fed DS. Now they are all toddlers I have no idea which were weaned which way.

I must also admit here to laziness. BLW properly means letting your baby loose on spaghetti bol. I had time to faff around cleaning up with my eldest, but second time I really couldn’t be bothered with the mess

The mess and waste would drive me mental I think

My friend (who was BLW her pfb at the time) told me I was basically ‘torturing’ my DD (my second child) by giving her purées alongside finger foods because I was forcing her to eat something she might not want
I was furious, naturally, as you can imagine. I have an older child who eats perfectly well from a mixed style of weaning & didn’t appreciate her obsession with BLW. I mean her 8 month old was humming on a corn on the cob!
Luckily I live 250 miles from her so we don’t see each other often!

Current research suggests that BLW has benefits to the child, so that's considered current best practice.

No, it doesn't. There is no clear evidence that BLW is helpful or harmful.

I also don't know if it has any claim towards being particularly "natural"--in traditional societies, mothers and other carers tend to pre-chew some early foods, although babies also snatch chunks of things off plates (in other words, babies have probably always been fed a mixture of things in different ways. Which is also roughly what I did).

@Kokeshi123 interesting knowledge re the pre-chewing of food. Makes sense

@LulusMiniEgg Hope you told her to f off!!

All things, with children, feel big/important/an issue at the time. With hindsight, you feel like a bit of a pratt.
how you feed them, whether they will only eat organic quinoa, tantrums.......
when they are teenagers and you worry that they aren't snorting coke, or getting an STD, I guess you look back and laugh, and wonder why you cared whether they blw'd their courgette.

@Oblomov18 Hahaha your wisdom shines

Personally, I fed some food off a spoon or offered chunks of things depending on what we were eating, how much time we had and how much cleaning up I was prepared to do.

Yes, it is true that letting your child self-feed saves you a few minutes of food-offering, but I found it usually involved hanging around endlessly and then dealing with craploads of mess, getting food out of their hair, changing clothes and so on. I tended to encourage self-feeding in the evening when we would be clearing up anyway. No way would I want that amount of mess 3x a day.

@Oblomov18
Yes, I think there is a crazy amount of anxiety over things like breastfeeding and weaning, when realistically these things are relatively minor in the course of a child's life. Of course nutrition is important but we should try to keep everything in perspective and not to beat ourselves up if our child won't eat their seven portions of fruit and vegetables each day.

@Bumpitybumper SEVEN? Faints

I found @flowery 's "um, no" to be aggressive but maybe benefit of the doubt is required there. Soz

I took the “um,no” to express confusion at your statement - probably because I also found it a confusing assertion.

I guess it depends on how BLW is done i.e. sat with family or not etc etc.

But even if BLW wasn’t done with the family at the table why would it lead to snacking rather than proper meals?

BLW is just eating finger foods. Why would that lead to snacking?

I’m still confused at the connection?

I’m happy to debate, but you have to hold up your end, quoting negative comments about BLW and then saying “well it depends” isn’t really helping the debate move on...

@Happyandshiney I said someone had said to me that it could create 'snackers'. I have taken on peoples comments that it doesn't necessarily so there's no debate. I'm not arguing, why are you?

My friend (who was BLW her pfb at the time) told me I was basically ‘torturing’ my DD (my second child) by giving her purées alongside finger foods because I was forcing her to eat something she might not want

Ridiculous. Babies turn their heads or spit out or refuse to open their mouths if they don't want anymore. Better than them massaging it into their hair or the carpet once they're done!

I can't find any solid research into it's benefits so if anyone has any I would be genuinely interested to read it

I did 'hardcore' BLW with my first. He was a great eater until he was around 3 and then started refusing all dinners. Hes 5 now and has a very limited diet but will eat lots of fruit.
My 4 year old had a mix of BLW and spoon fed (but never pureed). Also a very fussy eater he eats no fruit or veg .

My friend did purees and her two children eat absolutely everything.

So I think it makes absolutely no difference when they're older how food was introduced. Just do whatever suits you.

I said someone had said to me that it could create 'snackers'. I have taken on peoples comments that it doesn't necessarily so there's no debate. I'm not arguing, why are you?

Because you said you wanted to debate!

If you don’t, that’s fine.

OP, I think you’re pretty rude by telling people to ‘chill’ when no one has seemed particularly het up. They are just sharing their perspectives.

In any case, I did BLW. I had twins and didn’t want to spoon feed two at once. I also researched a lot with regards to things like the gag reflex and the risks of choking. The swaying point for me was that BLW teaches babies to chew first, then swallow, whereas when they have purees they learn to swallow and then have to go ‘backwards’ sort of and learn to chew first when lumps are introduced. It worked well for us and we never had any issues with choking. They didn’t eat much to begin with but by about nine months had dropped a couple of their milk feeds and at nearly three they are still good eaters. So, like most people do, I explored my options, did my research, made the choice that was right for us, and I’m pleased with the outcome.