High calorie demand and BLW

[madmumNika]

DD (just 7 months) has cystic fibrosis and hence a very high calorie demand. Her care is overseen by a specialist team including a dietician who has been closely advising us while we wean her onto solids.

I am keen to try BLW, and have tried half-heartedly to give her some finger foods. But we are under a lot of pressure to pile the calories into her so I rely heavily on mashed up food mainly & have to add oil, grated cheese, greek yogurt etc. to most of her meals.

Any BLW tips for high calorie finger foods or ideas?
I am a novice to BLW as my DS was a puree baby- followed Lucy Burney's recipes which are fab but the pureed food I think were responsible for DS's hatred of lumps...which lasted a LONG time... So would like to avoid these issues with DD!

Thanks for reading this far xx

Have you looked at aitchs blog? it may have some ideas, if not I'm sure someone will be able to help.

bump

potato cakes with grated cheese
cheese on toast
sandwiches with high calorie fillings - peanut butter, avacado and banana mashed together.

There was a note on Aitch's blog (or here - can't remember) where someone got a canape maker from Lakeland and made little pastries for her baby - you could put anything in those - the pastry just holds everything together - I guess you could even out your mashed potato in there

can't find canape maker on Lakeland's site but little quiches would do the same job - you could make the filling with veggies and egg and cream to bind it together

cheesy pasta homemade with double cream (intstead of the flour and oil palava) and proper cheese.

what about getting pure hazelnut or almond spread and adding it to toast.

make a pine nut pesto and add to pasta or use as a dip for veg sticks / spread on piece of flour tortilla / pitta etc?

Just ideas. I haven't been in your position before

ooops, are you concerned about nut allergies?

I have recently been re-evaluating dd's diet (a toddler) and have given some of my recipes ideas i've come across as she is allergic to egg and milk.

the cheesy pasta one was my fave stand-by before we got the diagnosis

Stuff on toast is good like others have said - cheese and butter, nutella (if you don't mind hazelnuts) and quiche/canapes are a great idea. You could make cheese straws? Or other pastry based things - my DS is a complete pig when it comes to canapes

I do give my DS yoghurt too (with a spoon) which you could stir a blob of cream into so I think a mix of BLW and spoon-fed can work.

we do a bit of a mix here too as DS3 always wants some of my dinner, whatever it is and I haven't found a fool proof way of feeding him soup the BLW way!

you'll be waiting a long time, spicemonster, truly no-one gives a hoot how you feed your child so long as you're both happy. even the govt advice is currently a mix of finger food and mash from 6 months. (not that most HVs seem to have read it... )

madmumnika, if your baby didn't have CF then the general advice would be 'just let the child eat what they want and provide calories through milk' but it looks like you just have to make every morsel count. i agree with the other posters that avocado oil, cheese, cream, olive oil, nut butters etc will be good, even stirring nut butters into sauces can be good. i think there's a nice cashew butter from holland and barrett, which can be good as a dip for veggies (you might have to loosen it with more oil). you can bake a lot of veggies in cream as well... mmmm pommes dauphinoise etc. (you'll be ENORMOUS! )

but it looks like you're on top of all that dietary stuff anyway. my sympathies over the diagnosis, by the way, but she sounds lucky to have got you as her mum as you're clearly have your head straight about taking the best care of her.

i just think that her calorific intake supercedes the easy-oasy, take life as it comes thing about BLW, but if you wean with a BLW 'head' on rather than an old-fashioned puree 'head' (so basically as i said what the govt is suggesting, mash and finger food from as soon as she can manage), then you shouldn't encounter the lumps problem that you had before. i can't imagine why you would.

here's the canape-maker thing... it sounds like it could be right up your street. babyledweaning.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/5/10/2938095.html

knew I'd seen it somewhere! - and's it's been reduced now as well....

I know that aitch - BLWers are not in the least judgemental. Makes me happy

You are all stars, thank you

I am not the best cook in the world so the canape maker looks like a great idea!!
Yes will have to avoud eating DD's leftovers, or eating the same food, or I will be enormous !! At the moment she has what we're eating & I just supplement it with the aforementioned high cal foods. She eats tonnes for such a small child, which brings home how much she needs (& breastfeeds a lot too).

Today I gave her my sandwich to play with and she managed to eat a fair bit of the bread & butter & tuna mayo (& some cheese) so I know she can feed herself a bit- like you all said I think I will do a combination of mashed and finger foods..and the nut butters are an excellent idea...trip into town tomorrow to stock up!

I'll be watching with interest Nika, do post any succesful recipes you find.

My dd is just 6 months and severely underweight. I started BLW this weekend, but can't really afford to be quite as easygoing as your average BLW-er, because the pressure is on to put weight on dd.

As Aitch said - every morsel counts.

i really think you should get one of those bonkers machines then, vlc, they're only 13 quid now and won't be stocked again. honeslty, whomoved used hers a lot.

Ha! Already showed the link to dh an hour ago. Will prob be surreptitiously purchasing it tomorrow...

Has no-one mentioned the weaning staple that is Philadelphia yet? I use it to (a) get more calcium into her (b) make sandwiches stick to bread better (stir anything you like in and spread) and (c) cool food down quicker (eg pasta)

Verylittlecarrot- I had a bit of a breakthrough with DD yesterday- we had a roast dinner and she LOVED the roast potatoes- as they are so soft & mushy inside she kind of squidged them between her fingers then ate quite a bit of the mush off her hands... And also she loved sucking the yorkshire puds DP had made (he's brilliant at them)- not sure how much was eaten but her face was glistening in oil!! She also quite enjoyed the broccoli, some of which was soaked in gravy (I know, watch out for salt content- actually that's another 'bonus' about DD having CF- they can have more salt!!).

Today she's happily sucked on fried bread, and on top of that had all her usual mashed foods (which I add various high fat foods to- linseed oil, olive oil, butter, mild cheddar cheese, greek yog etc.). I make sure her meals are fairly healthy except for the addition of fats... Fromage frais I've discovered has far more sugar than anything else in so it's greek yogurt all the way for us. I ordered one of the canape makers!
And am roasting all her root veggies from now on too.... Off to but the nut butters and lots of cream cheese tomorrow!

Good luck with your DD, I know how much pressure you probably feel. I'm sure by the time she's a year old a lot of these weight issues will be behind you (my DS was 10 weeks prem so pretty small for a long time and it really wasn't until his second year when he really started to pile the weight on and look more 'normal'). Big hugs xxx

Nika, that sunday roast sounds great! I think next week I'll take her to my parents for the same - my mum will be thrilled if babycarrot gets to eat her food and I get out of cooking (I am truly heinous at it and quite despondent that I can't just breastfeed exclusively for ever)

I think she hasn't quite sussed the food concept yet, (two days in, surprise) but definitely has the desire to put stuff in her mouth and suck or chew. I'm in two minds about whether to do a bit of mashing, as I'm tempted to get calories into her fast, but suspect that she has the desire to self feed. I was quite proud to see her grab the tiny spoon off me after I'd loaded it with fromage frais and she had a jolly good go at feeding herself with it too.

And Habbibu, yep, rice cakes with philly today. Top tip! thanks

I was kind of in a similar position to you but in reverse. Tink has never been on the chart but she ate everything in sight. I mentioned it to my BLW-loving neonatal midwife and she said "she can afford it". Since then we have given her a similar sized portion to her older cousins (ranging from 2-6) and she will help the others out when she has finished.

We always have snacks on hand, Squashums are great (but maybe a little older), normal yoghurts, cheese on its own will get eaten till it comes out her ears (looks like it is at the moment ) biscuits and crackers are a great way of getting cheese and philli into her, bananas are higher in calories than a lot of fruit; we give her what we're eating often covered in grated cheese with lumps of cheese on the side, lots of eggs (scrambled for example with lots of cheese in it), I've even done her pancakes and sprinkled a mini pack of white buttons over it.

Spicemonster, I find it's us mums who don't use spoons at all that get bashed most! lol (not mentioning any particular places, but it's not the blog) I don't use spoons because we could see a way around everything and didn't see the need for spoons, but there's no reason that you shouldn't use a spoon if that's what you want to do. BLW is a way of thinking and bypassing the stage of baby being passive in it's feeding, not a set of rules.

Re cream cheese/Philly, Sainsburys have a cream cheese in a brownish pot in their Taste the Difference range that is way more calorific (and fat-laden) than most cream cheese. Might help some of you. It is also bloody delicious so buy two pots if you are like me as you will probably want to eat it all yourself.