Advice please!

[MeadowHay]

I also end up having loads of random weaning questions! DD is 7.5mo and we've been weaning since 5.5mo.

1. Thought we've offered regularly, she still can't eat a 'mashed' texture off a spoon, e.g. mashed potato or mashed vegetables, she doesn't know what to do with it in her mouth and sometimes gags still or just sticks it back out of her mouth with her tongue and then won't try anymore. I thought she'd be able to manage this now...is this normal? She's my first so maybe I'm just a bit ambitious??

1. Over the last fortnight she's been draining her 4 9oz bottles whenever I speak to people IRL with similar-aged babies, they drink much less milk than DD! She has 3 meals a day and we were mostly doing a baby-led approach of self-feeding, but spoon-feeding maybe a few times a week. Her intake when she is self-feeding is usually close to zero tho (I can tell from watching, and from her poo!), and it seems a bit daft to increase her milk intake at this age when it's supposed to start decreasing soon? We have started spoon-feeding at every meal now alongside self-feeding. What do people do if they're doing BLW? Would you just offer more milk feeds even at this age? And I guess my other question linked to this is, is it normal to still be having very little intake of finger foods? She loves it and plays with them but she can't figure out how to chew food/move it to the back of her mouth/swallow, almost all of it just comes back out of her mouth again .

I am an expat and with the kids we have lived in many countries and everyone has a very different approach to weaning. In a couple, France and Italy, the evening meal is a soup or a broth. In France, the soup is given in a bottle and you just cut a tiny tiny piece of the bottle tit to allow more flow, in Italy, the broth is the base of most meals, they add baby pasta, or rice or small pureed veggies. Maybe it is with a try.

Mashed potatoes is not the easiest consistence to learn to swallow. Maybe try some boiled zucchini with a bit of parmesan and extra virgin olive oil, or make a broth with zucchini, carrots, potatoes, in a pot, cover with water, let it boil, remove veggies , maybe blend a bit of the veggies to add to the broth to make it slightly thicker, then cook some baby pasta (stars, risoni, dots) in the broth .

She has had 2 different types of soup before I think and she has liked both of them and ate them fine but one was a creamy soup, no bits, so essentially just a puree, and the other only had tiiiny bits of herbs and stuff rather than chunks of veg. But yes, I could try with chunkier soups, thanks. I've tried to mash up various vegetables/fruits but she won't eat them off a spoon, she just doesn't seem to understand how, e.g. mashed up peas/carrots/potato/banana/avocado. She'll happily self-feed any of these things but she doesn't really actually eat any when she does that.

Soups are a great way to introduce her to a whole range of veggies and you can combine them and make them in every consistence you like.
Deglutition with sucking and mastication is not the same process and involves different muscles so to improve mastication+deglutition you should avoid pouches.

Try poaching the banana. Put 3 fingers of water to boil, slice the banana into it, remove banana add a bit of liquid and blend. For apple and pear, put 1 finger of water, cube apple and/or pear, let it simmer for 10-15 min covered (check it is not burning) blend with all the liquid.
Make a pea+potatoes soup which basically is pea and potatoes in a small pot, add enough water or broth just to cover them, blend it into a thick cream, add a pieve of butter or extra virgin olive oil.
In a small pan, slice onion, make it melt, add cubed carrots, a couple of slices cubed apple, let it simmer, add a but of water for 5 more minutes, and when nice and soft, blend.

It takes time, but she will get there. Just prepare nice food. A oven roasted pumpkin with rosemary and oil until the natural sugars have caramelised, and crushed it wth a fork or 2 seconds on the blender.
Sliced oven roasted zucchini are nice and you can hand her one and see if she will tear a piece

Can I also add, your DD needs to be hungry to eat the food. If you offer often as you said, where is the urge to swallow. Do not offer food or milk or any drink except water for an hour before her lunch or dinner

It’s normal to not like to be fed mashed foods off a spoon. Purée is one thing, but food that is mashed and textured is quite hard to control in the mouth to prevent choking. I’d stick to finger foods or put some of the mashed food on her tray and let her feed herself. She’ll have more control that way.

And yes, normal to not eat much in the way of finger foods at only 7 months. I’d offer milk on demand still as much as she wants and carry on letting her explore. We did blw with both of ours and they didn’t really eat loads until about 9/10 months. Both are excellent, adventurous, non-picky eaters now. It’s a marathon more than a sprint, so you just have to sit on your hands and be a bit patient.

King I thought advice was to offer milk before solids though, as milk is their main source of nutrition still atm? Although the only meal that I offer milk immediately before is lunch atm. But in the general schedule, milk comes first before each meal just with varying gaps.

Thanks mind, that's reassuring. Will not worry about it then. I love watching her self-feed, it's sooo cute and interesting. She fed herself loaded spoons of yoghurt the other day, I was so impressed!!

My LO loves his milk and was still having 4 X 9 Oz at 9 months ish when he started to take more of an interest in food. We usually fed half an hour before his meal. If she likes to self feed her food why not just let her do that? She be eating more than you think.

Of course milk is the main source, but you were saying your DD does put the food in her mouth but doesn't swallow it, not having a full stomach at 7.5 months might help her.

As I said, we lived in many countries, every single one has very different recommendations on weaning. Some say milk before food, other food first, milk after.

Is she seating with you while you are having your meals? My DC always reached for my plate and I would offer

Yep, she eats her meals with at least me. It is really interesting hearing about weaning in different countries though, I always wonder what they do in other places. DF is from abroad but I asked him and he doesn't actually know about weaning practices in his home country (he has lived in the UK since his early twenties).