Aitch, you'd have been proud....

[margosbeenplayingwithmynoonoo]

...of my Great Aunt

We were talking about my LO eating solids and she said

"have you heard about feeding your baby finger food?"

She then proceeded to tell me about why it's not advisable to spoon feed a baby.

I was dead impressed. She's in her 70s.

wow, how interesting. what were her reasons?

that reminds me a book my MIL has that belonged to her mum. It's a household book I guess from the 40's or something and in the baby bit it tells you to wean at 9 months.

in canada in the 1930s the weaning age was considered 6-11 months...

Indeed...weaning from 3 months was something that became popular in the 60's and 70's. Along with the very medicalised pg's and labours (stirrups, showers, enemas, shaving pethidine etc).

did she read about it in the papers when it was in every broadsheet a couple of weeks ago by any chance?

if she managed to take that message from the papers, when everything i read was rubbishing Gill Rapley's claims, then she's a better woman than i, Gunga Din.
I have it from the horses mouth, btw, that she said nothing of the sort and was OUTRAGEOUSLY misquoted.

are you calling gill a horse?!

my dear old gran is 86, she read the stuff in her telegraph and saw fit to call me up and tell me how fabulous it was that i was doing it before the papers caught on. i think she thought i thought it up myself or something. she saw the article she read as quite positive. i didn't read it myself.

i think the telegraph one was quite fair, apparently. i didn't get it myself... am boycotting all Barclay Brothers publications as they are stingy bastards who treat their staff appallingly.

No - one of her friends children was blw-ing.

She was saying her friend told her how very young children didn't know how to get food from the front to the back of their mouths

is her friend's name Annabel Karmel by any chance? she's always saying that, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Oh, have I misunderstood blw? I thought that it was on your website as well

I must revisit your blog.....

if by very young you mean pre-6 months on average, then you're right that the gag reflex stops foreign objects going in... but AK is convinced that the only way for babies to learn is via purees, funnily enough.

"Many parents worry about babies choking. However, there is good reason to believe that babies are at less risk of choking if they are in control of what goes into their mouth than if they are spoon fed. This is because babies are not capable of intentionally moving food to the back of their throats until after they have learnt to chew. And they do not develop the ability to chew until after they have developed the ability to reach out and grab things. Thus, a very young baby cannot easily put himself at risk because he cannot get the food into his mouth in the first place. On the other hand, the action used to suck food off a spoon tends to take the food straight to the back of the mouth, causing the baby to gag. This means that spoon feeding has its own potential to lead to choking ? and makes the giving of lumpy food with a spoon especially dangerous."

This was the essence of what my Great Aunt said to me and this was taken from the blw guidelines adapted from Gill Rapleys research.

I'm confused.

AK says that babies can't move food, ie solid pieces of food around their mouths without first having learnt on purees, that's all. and she still keeps sticking to this theory despite all evidence to the contrary. i thought that's what your friend was saying in your other post but evidently i've picked that up wrong.

Phew! No, she's great and quite willing to go with the flow.

She doesn't tend to read the newspapers, so she wouldn't have read any mud slinging directed at Gill Rapley.

BTW - dd2 is getting on fine with BLW and I keep dipping into your blog for info.

Keep up the good work!