Stupid BLW problems

[StealthPolarBear]

I've been doing BLW for about 5 weeks now. Started with just vegetable sticks on an evening then when he was 26 weeks gave him a bit more variety, chicken, bread, pasta etc. My problem is that I can only be bothered to give him one meal a day, as otherwise I feel that by the time I've prepared the food, he's eaten (very little) of it, I've cleaned him, the chair and the floor, it's time for the next meal! I don't really know what advice I want, and I know BLW is messy and time consuming. When should he be on more than one meal a day? Am I causing any problems by doing this? He still has as much milk as he ever did, is putting on weight and sleeping well.

I think the problem is that people try to make things too complicated. BLW is supposed to be easier. Also, don't compare your LOs to the babies on YouTube or the blog - you don't say "Oh but look at that baby walking, why isn't my newborn?"! Those babies HAVE been where your LO is now!

I'll give you an idea of what I do for food, have followed this since she was quite early in, but it has been worked up to.

Breakfast
Toast soliders,
Weetabix drizzled with milk to make it soft but not soggy,
Banana
Clementine
Grapes
(toast in, do weetabix, sort fruit out, do toast, serve. A little longer than it takes to toast a slice of bread)

Lunch
Egg Bread
Omellete
Cheese on toast soliders
Pancakes (see my recipe on the blog)
Scrambled Egg
(do LO's first, put in fridge, do mine, eat together)

Dinner
Version of what we're having. It doesen't take much to think of ways around preparing food for self feeding and it doesn't take long before you can serve things as it comes.

I don't feed her anything - I might catch something she dropped or let her try what I have, but she does the hard work, it'seasy really if you take the lazy route and try not to be too clever...

Breakfast:

porridge pancakes
eggy bread
muffins
crumpets with cheese
toast with cream cheese
shredded wheat bitesize
yoghurt
boiled egg with soldiers
scrambled egg
poached egg
omelette
bagel with cream cheese
cheese on toast
random pieces of ham

occasionally:

pancakes
hash browns
potato waffles
bacon
sausage

Lunch:

avacado
quiche
egg or cheese on toast
slices of ham, chicken, beef etc
pre cooked and cooled potato wedges
omelette (cooled and cut into squares)
use tortilla wraps or pitta bread instead of bread to make a wrap instead of a sandwich.
rice cakes
home-made crumpets with cheese
bread sticks and cheese
rice with sweetcorn and peas
baked potato
pasta with sauce
savoury pancakes
risotto
cauliflower, broccoli and leek in cheese sauce
mashed potato with cheese, onion, bacon and tomato
mac cheese

Dinner: takes a bit more time than the other meals but generally we rotate this sort of list.

courgette fritters
chickpea burgers
mini pizzas
quesadillas
kedgeree
chicken kievs
chicken with pesto
lentil and carrot cakes
turkey twizzlers
cheese, leek and broccoli muffins
pumpkin wedges
fish cakes
chicken goujons
potato cakes
hash browns
waffles
chicken curry
lasagne
spag bol
sheperds pie
moussaka
pasta and meatballs
fish pie
chilli con carne
burritos
fajitas
curried eggs with rice

I can't remember how long it was before ds2 was on more than one meal a day. Quite a while I think because breakfast time was too busy getting the big ones off to school, and he napped over lunch.

Also in the evening he could have bits of pasta before you put the sauce on. Or just rinse the saauce off [slattern emoticon] My ds2 was eating pizza at quite young too

Thinking of trying BLW, but still not sure what to start with, even though i've read stuff on internet. Does it matter if you start with more than one flavour, e.g ham sandwich or should I start with single veg or fruit. Can I give ds apple raw or is that too difficult to start on? Thought boiled carrot might be good start, but where on from there?

Your best bet is to start with chips and trees (chips are carrot/ swede/parsnip/ potato sticks lightly boiled, soliders, oranges, bananas etc and trees are cauli and brocolli).

I'd hold off on raw apples because they can splinter and that makes them have hard and sharp points.

At the start they can't open their fist which is why it's best starting with chips and trees (handle food). When they can open their fist you can vary what you give them to include food that is eaten out of the hand, when they have pincer grip they can eat anything.

Where do you live? babyledweaning.com has meets happening in different parts of the country which you could join up with.

Ta! Just checked out the site you mentioned - very helpful! How long do you stay with chips and trees... just thinking about how much my health visitor is going to freak out...

"i always use the jarred stuff."
Aitch I love you! I thought I would be in trouble for not preparing everything from fresh ingredients (that I had grown myself - that's what the little voice nagging in my head says!)
Also thanks to nappyaddict and TinkerbellesMum for suggestions.
Well I feel like today has been loads better, we went to mum's and he was given quite a bit of bread and cheese - he ate the lot, apart from the tiny bits he couldn't pick up (better work on that pincer grip, kid!)
He then ate a fairly substansial evening meal, followed by greek yoghurt with chopped fruit in it (nectarine, mango and dried apricot) which he absolutely loved! I put it on the spoon, he took the spoon from me and then smeared it round his face, but quite a bit went down And yoghurt on a dark carpet is very easy to clean, honest!
So, hopefully he's more comfortable with the swallowing thing, and this is the start of him actually eating instead of just chewing, spitting and squishing! I will try to keep up with him...

DD started out on spag bol. Just lob whatever you have on the tray - also buy some really big cloths from the el cheapo shops (old teatowels work as well) and just swab everything afterwards and fling them in a bucket, then put them all in the machine - job done, no mess.

See my profile, I have to have a high mess tolerance at mealtimes but my house is pretty clean at other times (and if you don a sou wester you can avoid most of the pelted watermelon pips!)

We have this week discovered the delights of fromage frais (even the cat ate some) again, messy but nutritious and how much hardship is it to dollop some in a pile and chuck fruit on top?

amen, sleepy. it should be, but i think that certain writers with big hair and shoulder pads have made it all seem A Lot More Complicated. there are some theories behind BLW and a small piece of qualitative research, but basically you're just letting them please themselves and not getting your knickers in a twist.

I'm still not having much luck! I prepared pasta with a tomato based sauce and added some cheese, and put in a pile infront of DD and she was completely uninterested didn't even try to pick anything up. After 10 minutes i handed a piece of pasta to her, she nibbled the very tip of the pasta twirl and let go and completely ignored the pasta and moaned. So i tried a dried apricot, one tiny tiny nibble and lost interest and moaned. So i tried a small slice of mango again a very very tiny nibble and lost interest and moaned. I tried eggy bread for breakfast and it was the same, she ate the very tip of one finger slice and moaned. Lunch was some boiled new potatoes and veg sticks, nothing at all went in. There is definitely no grabbing food in my household! I've tried toast fingers plain butter and with marmite; toast with cream cheese, toast with hummus, brocolli trees, apple, rice cakes, rusks, chicken, weetabix, cheerios, egg mayonaise sandwich home made and cut in to strips, yogurt, porridge, grapes.....We eat at the same time as her, i smile and encourage her, What am i doing wrong?

leafy, until they can open their fist to get that bit rather than dropping it when they get the next bit.

It's one of those things that's more complicated to explain than do, you understand it as you go along and see changes.

As has already been said though, there's no reason why you can't give anything. Babies are a lot cleverer than we give them credit for!

och, you must be getting a bit stressed out asampras, especially if you're meeting the HV tomorrow. i take it that you've given a bit of spoon feeding a try by now, what happens when you do? cos you know, babies can bloomin' well smell stress so if it will freak you out less to spoon feed her then you should deffo give it a shot.

Spoon feeding is much much worse, she cries so hard she can barely breath as soon as she sees the first spoon coming towards her. I try so hard not to get stressed, as soon as i feel the anxiety rising i get up slowly and do a bit of washing up or tidying and watch her from the other side of the room. If BLW fails i'm not sure what else i can do?! It makes me cringe i'm always here worrying and seemingly moaning, it's just there's no one i know IRL doing BLW and i need the moral support!

Yikes! oh well, you're screwed, then.

look, this is Exactly The Place to come and moan, of course it is. you're worried and it seems like everyone else is getting on fine and racing away and here you are trying your best and He Doesn't Eat! [scream] But come on, give yourself a break... he's only been doing this for a very short while, he's just not that interested yet, that's all. it's no reflection on you, not at all. how can it be?

if you have a look at the www.babyledweaning.com site there's a good few posts on the subject, where we've talked about when they got the hang of it. also have a look at the forum there, 8-9 months seems to be a common breakthrough time. remember, we don't expect all our babies to walk or smile at the same time, viewed from that perspective it strikes me as even a little unfair that they 'should' be eating at 6 months on the dot.

good luck with the HV tomorrow, come back and tell us what she said. if your spider senses are tingling and you think that something is wrong, that's not good, but if in your heart you think that the baby is fine, alert, clever, moving around, interested in things, then i think you really need to give yourself a break and admit that you're doing the blooming best you can and in time your effort will come good.

whoops i've written he and i meant she, sorry.

asampras, she is still only very little. plenty babies have no interest in solids until they're nearer 8 or 9 months, sometimes even nearer a year. honestly, just keep up the milk, give her the food toplay with and see how things are after another couple of weeks.

I'm sure they can smell the stress you know. DD is 7 months and for most of the last month she hardly ate anything just little tastes but recently we've had some good days and all were when I wasn't paying too much attention talking to DH or out at a group.
I stopped making a lot of effort to make things specially for her as it was causing so much stress to see it on the floor. What do you think about just backing off from an expectation of her having 3 meals a day and just letting her grab for yours if she wants it?
Not sure what your HV will say though..

how did it go, asampras?

Haven't read the whole thread but when dd started on solids I went through a few weeks where I felt I was just lurching from one messy meal to the next! It does get better! Good luck.

I offer ds food everytime I eat so he tends to eat 3 meals a day. He is 7 mths but I have done this since we started (about 5 weeks ago too!) I dont often prepare seperate food though, just give him whatever we are eating (he slurped down shepherd pie tonight!) so it doesnt take any extra time/effort. If i'm honest, on days where we arent having visitors I have been known to leave the floor cleaning until after the evening meal

So in a nutshell, lob him a bit of your food, babywipe the face and hands, leave the foor it can wait a bit

I only really clean up once a day (I've figured that if I leave it til after dinner, DH will do it ) Have found though that if DS3 really likes something, there's not s much mess

also, DS3 doesn't always have a meal - he seems to be sleeping alot over meal times at the moment for some reason.

I am so much more relaxed with the BLW way of doing things - I can'r believe how much easier it is!

Good for you!
I was worried there that I was the only one not scrubbing away at every crumb all day .