I feel I'm doing this all wrong!

[kagerou]

My baby is now 6 months and i really want to do baby led weaning but she doesn't seem to eat any finger food given to her!

so far i have tried fruit and veg sticks (raw and cooked), pitta, toast (with spreads), rice etc.

she will hold it or smoosh it, put spme in her mouth or wipe across her face, but im I'm not sure any is actually eaten so i end up giving her puree to supplement.

I also don't know if she should have water or how she should have it.

I feel like a total failure with this and am wondering if i should give up and go puree all the way :(

For context she is otherwise exclusively breastfed and is average size, she has been having tiny bits of food since 5 months bit i have started trying to wean her properly with at least 1 meal a day for the past 2 weeks.

Thanks in advance for any tips x

Yes to water, any cup you like. I use a miracle cup. Just to avoid the mess, and they last into toddlerhood.

Food isn't for calories or nutrition until 1, so take your time, keep at it. Try different foods, textures. It can take 10 goes to get them to try something! Some of my weaning hits:

Squished blueberries
Little squares of cheddar
Crumpets
Homemade few ingredient pack cakes
Scrambled egg/omelette (but not everyone wants to give eggs early)
Porridge fingers
Quiche
Pinwheels

But don't sweat it, it'll come.

I'm old fashioned and did purees to start and then a bit of both. As long as they eat

Hey I’m in the same place as you. DS 6 and a bit months. We do preloaded spoons with purée. DS sometimes will eat nothing at all. Sometimes will eat loads. Everything is new to him so if he puts the food in his mouth or has 2-3 spoons of food (we’re doing a combination of BLW and purée) then I see it as a win. DS seems to hate baby rice, broccoli, cucumber, banana, pasta but likes sweet potato, carrot (purée not cooked batons), pita, prune, porridge. He’s taken water twice but I try with every meal, he usually turns his head. After his meal I offer milk. He’s been ill this week so has been having more milk than last week. Only been doing it a few weeks and had to pause due to a milk sensitivity. Oh and he eats more in the afternoon. I think you’re doing everything right!!

*cow milk sensitivity

I use an open cup for water.

It sounds entirely normal! No need to supplement with purées if you don't want to. Most of their calories are from milk and, especially in the early days, it's more about exposure. More and more food makes it in day by day!

Food for fun before 1, they don't actually need to eat a specific amount and will be getting what she needs nutritionally from breastmilk. I think BLW is 90%+ smeared on themselves and the furniture with a selection on the floor for good measure. You're doing just fine.

Thanks for the reassurance, she has an open cup (a doidy) which she loves but she tends to just tip it down her self then enjoy bashing the cup around while ignoring her food!

I'll try not to stress so much and hopefully tonight's omlette (thanks for suggesting @ohthejoysoftoddler ) will go down well!

DS3 would put anything in his mouth except food until he was 9 months old.

She actually ate a bit today!

'meal' was 6 pasta twirls with cream cheese, 3 slices of avocado, 5 slices of banana and probably around 1/4 went in her mouth!

she also went mad for the water when i helped her to drink which made me feel guilty i didn't do that before when she might've needed it :/

I could have written your post a couple of weeks ago, in fact it was worse as she was pretty much ignoring the food I put in front of her after about 30 seconds. I felt shit. However I have since then given my head a wobble (in fact I made a thread on here and one of the posts told me to ignore the BLW brigade!!) and made myself accept that BLW is not necessarily the best/only way.

Yes I'm sure it's great for development and not being a fussy eater blah blah blah but tbh it's a fairly recent trend and it's not like everyone that was ever weaned with purees is now a fussy eater.

I now make purees of varying thickness and she's literally gobbling everything I feed her. I do the preloaded spoon thing too sometimes and she's getting better at that. I still put a bit of finger food on the highchair tray and she's getting a bit better at inspecting it/picking it up and putting in mouth but still not much, however I don't stress too much about it anymore, it's not like they will still be being spoonfeed purees in their 20's is it.

Sorry pressed post too quickly. But basically don't stress and don't feel like a failure for not following the latest weaning trend, do whatever works best for both of you. I'm sure by the time my little one is a few weeks older she'll be trying to grab a lot more.

thanks @Luckyelephant1 I think i needed to hear that and glad to hear your little one is eating better now!

tbf I'm not a picky eater and BLW wasn't even a thing when my mum had me so maybe i just need to stress less about it and not feel so rubbish when i 'give in' by feeding her puree

Exactly! I'm pretty sure I was mainly spoon-fed purees until the age of 1ish by the sounds of it, and I'm not a fussy eater at all. My mum was horrified when I told her about BLW, she can't get her head around it not being a choking risk.

The other bonus of not doing BLW is there's way less mess and waste.