help! blw nightmare

[bunnyhunny]

so ds (9mo) is refusing to be spoonfed, so we are resorting to offering our food / finger foods for meals. not really blw, but not feeding purees, so near enough
anyway, he will only eat:
potatoes, bread (breadsticks, toast etc), and so it turns out, sausage (a 70% meat one, not a totally crappy one).
he eats a little bit of peas, cucumber, sweetcorn etc, hated pasta.
(we have only just started so he hasn't tried too much). I am worred about getting a balance and him eating enough, he throws pasta / veg on the floor and scoffs the bread.
does it matter? what do we do?

It all sounds completely normal to me. Just carry on doing what you are doing, keep offering different foods, don't stress too much and make sure you are keeping up the milk feeds - until they are one that is where their main source of nutrition/calories come from anyway.

And just becuase he hated pasta once, doens't mean he always will. Just keep offering a variety of foods and don't worry about it from a nutritional point of view at the moment.

Have you tried lots of different fruits. My dd was and still is a complte fruit bat.

hth

oh, and he just scoffed some pear and peach. that's a bit more variety in his diet.

shall I go down the sandwich route?
btw he can't eat many things I eat as he has a dairy and soy allergy..

Don't panic, he's still young, and milk should be taking care of pretty much all he needs.

Don't restrict his milk, and just let him have a try of loads of stuff. Try not to mind if he seems to hate it, he might not be in the mood that day. And don't go crazy if he seems to love something either, because in a fortnight he'll have gone off it (it's what they do!)

thanks for the quick replies!

I was imagining him just eating bread and jam, weetabix (the only thing he will let us spoon feed him still), potato and sausage for the next however long!

As an ex-puree person, I still think in terms of how many cubes, and the variety he has eaten in each meal. I guess that'll have to stop!

spread stuff on the bread. try toasties too. or dip bread in soup. with the pasta try different shapes. he might really enjoy spaghetti, but find penne difficult to handle. have a look on babyledweaning.com for a ton of ideas

bread in soup!
different shaped pasta!
why can't I think of these things?! [dumb emoticon]

sometimes it's easy to get bogged down in a problem.

Try to look at the balance over a week, at this age it's difficult (and not important anyway) to get a varied diet in a day.

We give Weetabix to Tink and she loves it! What we do is drizzle the milk through it so that it isn't soggy but soft enough. She then picks it up with her hands. She doesn't even make a mess, maybe a little around her mouth, but everything else is clean.

it's not a blw problem you have as much as a quite normal weaning problem... he's just gone off spoons, that's all, it seems to happen a lot. he might go back onto them at some point, or he may want you to load them up for him. just unclench about it all, you've got no choice in the matter now that he's put himself in charge.
in terms of his food for the moment, make sure you're feeding milk on demand as at the moment there's probably a gap between what he can eat (before he gets bored/tired/whatever) and what he's used to eating, so he may need some 'extra' milk.
pasta-wise, dd did best with fusilli in the beginning, and no matter how nice you thought the sausages were, he may just have found them a bit salty or peppery for his taste. personally i wouldn't overly stress about finding things he'll like, just give him stuff you like and fits in with your life (within reason, of course) and then see how you get on. he might surprise you.

I found my dd was about 90% fruit and veg based until around 9 months when she got some teeth and started eating more pasta and bread.

Milk is still her main food I'd say (at 11 months).

For the first 3 months it was mainly strawberries, pears, brocolli, chips, rice cakes and fish finger (tiny amount).

She ate so many strawberries even her poos smelt of strawberries!

It's such a relief to read this post as i am going through exactly the same with my 7 month old daughter. She loved the pureed veg and fruit in the beginning, but it all went down hill when i introduced the meats (and yes i mixed homemade chicken stock in to veg puree to start with to get her used to the meaty taste!) now she pretty much rejects spoon feeding all the time and the only way i can give her food is handing her solid food: cherios, toast, breadsticks, Organix finger food, rice cakes. Compared with the yummy homemade purees i was making her filled with organic food and meat i panic that she isn't get the same nutirents and goodness and i'm going out of my mind! I've tried giving her veg like carrot batons, babysweet corn, green beans, pasta etc but she doesn't cope well with them and it all ends up on the floor or in her seat, i don't care about the mess, i just want her to eat!

asampras- if she wants to self feed you don't have to stick to giving her 'figer foods' like toast etc. give her normal food like you eat, like lasgane, fish pie, cottage pie, whatever. a lot will go all over the place but she'll get the hang of it. don't worry at all that she won't take food from a spoon, lots of us choose not to use spoons!

I put a small amount of food on the tray for her for a few weeks now but she either plays with it or ignores it. Will she just one day start to pick it up and eat it?

yes! look!

I've seen photos on babyledweaning.com of baby's putting their hands in bowls and taking handfuls and putting them in their mouths, but my DD doesn't do that

she's 7 months old isn't she? lots of blw just play about for the first few weeks, then they get the idea, see you eating etc etc, get it on their hands, taste it, like the taste of it and so on. when she's playing with it you can put your hands in, lick your hands, show her a big yummy faced smile etc etc. is she bf or ff? lots of bf babies don't have much interest in eating until nearer 8 or 9 months. no problem, just keep up the milk.

Total snap asampras! My DS is 7 months and only accepted puree for a couple of weeks before we had tantrums and mealtime battles because he wanted to feed himself and didn't like the mush. We're now going down the finger food / our food route and everyone's happy. I found a brilliant book called Finger Food for Babies and Toddlers by Jennie Maizels who had the same problem with her own daughter. Basically all the recipes are things that can be cut into strips (pre pincer grip) or eaten by hand. Good if you want most of the food to go in before the babies can do handfuls / use a spoon / you want less mess. Also lots of them are yummy anyway so you can make them for yourself too.

Also have you tried loading a spoon with something not too runny like thick porridge mixed with fruit puree and giving it to your dd to put in her mouth herself? That is working quite well so far . . .

I had the same worries about nutrients etc. because at the moment not that much food goes in (especially veg as you say) and I am topping up with a milk feed. I keep reminding myself that in loads of countries babies are breast fed for a year or more so all this stress about shoving in meat and 2 veg can probably wait a while.

I thought I was the only one having these problems too until I found these threads and babyledweaning.com. The books all make out that if you lovingly puree 86 kinds of veg your baby will just eat them. Just think we'll be having the last laugh when all the puree fed babies won't eat solids!

the thing is, asampras, that we don't expect babies to all start doing the same thing on the same day with anything other than eating. smiling, laughing, crawling, walking, we all get that our kids won't be the same about that stuff. i think it's fair to include eating in that as well, so long as there's plenty of milk around for appetite.

our last message must have crossed! I really appreciate you taking the time to respond, my antenatal friends don't understand as they are having an easy time weaning, though they are supportive.

She's ff. I think i need to relax, but it's like bunnyhunny said i'm worried about her getting the right balance and enough food, she doesn't seem to eat much, so little in comparison to when i was feeding her puree.

Last night i gave her some toast, a stick of asparagus some grated cheese, 5oz of milk and a 7oz top up before bed, but she was up at 02:11, 03:41, 04:44, 05:29 and 06:20 hungry!

mum2tom, it's such a relief to see i'm not alone, i really really want to relax going down the BLW route. Aitch your website and the advice you give on mumsnet is just brilliant.

Aitch do i need to worry about slat content, i'd like to try giving her smoked haddock and fish fingers and things like that but worry about salt contents?

Good question about the salt. What does anyone think? My ds eats a LOT of cheese on toast - am I too paranoid to worry about the salt in bought bread? Now I've discovered pastry things I'm wondering if I should make my own or is the ready rolled fine?

asampras we're still waking up our ds for a full 6oz feed at 10p.m. which I'm sure is a heinous crime but it seems to keep him going until around 6.00a.m. - is that what you mean by 7oz top up before bed?

mum2tom, yep the so called 'dream feed' my friends have all dropped the feed and their baby's sleep 7pm to 7am, i know all baby's are different and you shouldn't compare but its hard not to feel a bit envious. I'm glad to hear you are still doing the 'dream feed' too, again it makes me feel less alone!

well, yeah, i'd worry a bit... but not a huge amount if you're keeping an eye on everything else. if you're having fishfingers, for example, just keep an eye on everything else that day. watch out for bread, cheese and ham, salty little buggers. i asked the women on the blog about it here and we were all doing our best but kinda chilling out about it at the same time.

Yes everyone I know has babies sleeping 7 til 7 too (or so they say . . ) and we'd love to not have to think about ds once he's gone to bed. We tried cutting it back a couple of weeks ago and he just starting waking around half 5 which was really not a good move. I think this whole baby thing is 2 steps forward, 1 step (and sometimes 3) back.

Hang in there with the food - I try to cook one 'proper' meal a day (preferably something we can eat too so I'm not too sad when it all ends up on the floor like the fishcakes today) and ds has toast/rusks/rice cakes/fruit for the other meal. I'm working up to a bit more variety but the whole thing has been a bit stressful so we're just going with what works for a while and he looks pretty healthy. Oh breakfast is usually banana and toast/pancake but I eat the same thing for breakfast every day so why can't he?!