Feeling discouraged...8 month old doesn't like lumpy food!

[Nessamommy]

My son started eating solids at 5 months. He has been really enjoying all of his food and eating lots..but everything is pureed. He will be 8 months in about a week. I have had occasional lumpy foods up till this point but mostly everything is pretty smooth. I have also been the one to feed him so today I put some food on his tray in front of him on his high chair. He just smeared it all around and put nothing to his mouth. I was advised to let him do this so that he could try to feed himself a bit. He had broccoli and potatoes for lunch today...the potatoes were mashed so they were a bit more lumpy. He gags on them and hates it. What do I do? Is this normal at this point? I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but he does not have any teeth yet. Direction and advice please!

Once he learns which foods he really loves he will snatch them out of your hand before they reach the highchair tray. Once he is grabbing his favourites he will quickly get the hang of the technique to feed himself.

missbumpy I was thinking about this today. (am not an expert btw but have 2 dds and they have approached weaning completely differently)

Anyway, I realised today that with both I have kind of skipped the "lumpy puree" stage. With dd1 we did use a few jars and I remember being a bit worried about whole peas and chunks of veg in the stage 2 jars. Seemed such a jump from the very smooth purees.

As I mentioned earlier on the thread we did purees for ages, but then moved on to more everyday food, sandwiches etc etc.

Apart from avoiding salt, honey and other obvious stuff, dd2 does what she wants. Sometimes stuffs it in herself, sometimes opens her mouth expectantly if she sees a yogurt or bowl of porridge!

One of the lightbulb moments of reading up on BLW, for me, was the realisation that they dont have to go from milk to purees to purees-with-lumps to lumpy food. Finding out that they can go straight from milk to real food with nothing in between was a real surprise.

dd2 did this - her first food was a broccoli floret, her second a lamb rib, and she never looked back. I was amazed.

Reading threads like this, I wonder if it's not just that babies don't need the gradual progression from liquid to solid - but that some stages like the lumpy-puree one are actually harder to eat than proper solid food.

So I wonder if there're a lot of babies out there like nessamommy's DS who're getting "stuck" in the progression from purees, and it doesn't mean they can't handle lumpy food at all, just that they don't like that particular texture.

Without sounding cynical it's rather convenient for the baby food manufacturers isn't it that not only do they market purees at 4 months plus, they have "invented" as far as I can at least 3 stages of weaning?

Stage 1, smooth purees, plus flavoured "waters"/juices. Stage 2 the same but with peas and chunky lumps suspended in the puree, plus special chocolate biscuits and all kinds of other things. Stage 3 "toddler meals"

Some of the products that not so long ago most people would have considered "baby food" are now labelled "from 4 months - 36 months"

Lumpy foods are very difficult for some babies to cope with - they slurp the sauce/runny part then come across a lump that they weren't expecting and gag.

Remember that gagging is very different to choking. Gagging is normal as babies learn what to do with more solid food - it happens when they use the tongue and throat muscles to push the food back to the front of the mouth so they can try again. Choking is less common.

I would recommend offering soft finger foods that he can hold and chew himself - toast fingers, fruit and veg chunks, bread, cheese.

OPOL, I think there's a PhD in there for someone on the way the food industry is busily creating a market for themselves by teaching us to believe that babies can't eat real food.

And inventing different "stages" of food - with specially colour coded labels etc etc - is just one more way of turning it into a pseudoscience.

Agree Welliemum.

I have even read (more than once) of adults claiming how lovely baby food is; how good it is if you are on a diet; etc etc. (Jennifer Aniston being one such example)

I boycott C & G after hearing some very "old fashioned" advice from their rep who felt that weaning was fine from 12 weeks and other dangerous comments.

Is it normal for them to sometimes ignore the food on the tray and just keep opening their mouths for me to feed him...because he kind of has been doing that today.

Lol at chocolate buttons comment - my ds manage to feed himelf those pretty damn sharpish as well.

At nearly 9mo ds is still toothless and it doesn't seem to be affecting his ability to eat toast, fruit, veg, rusks etc. We also seem to be skipping the lumpy puree stage although I hadn't thought about much until now. All I know is that he gets stroppy if I try and spoon something into him without giving him some finger food at the same time.

Nessamommy that is absolutely normal imo if your baby (like mine) is used to having a mix of finger foods and purees.

My dd2 sometimes wants a puree as a "starter" if she is very hungry or tired. So she might have her "pudding" first, such as a yogurt of mashed/blended fruit. Other times she wants to be independent and tries to turn everything into finger foods - e.g. upending a bowl of rice pudding. If in that type of mood she will carefully observe dd1 (4 years) and copies what she does. Very very cute to see her eating broccoli or whatever like her sister.

Am finding the comments very interesting about so many babies not coping with the "lumpy puree" stage.

Yes, true blw means no spoons afaik, but the most important thing is that the baby enjoys the food and has a good range, rather than you getting hung up on doing blw (or indeed any other approach) "properly"

I am feeling sooo much better about everything. Thank you all! I too find it interesting about the "lumpy" stage. I was thinking about it though...my husband made me a smoothie the other day and he didn't blend it up enough so there were some chunks of berries and bananas in it still...I have to say, I was grossed out by the chunks among the liquid and couldn't drink it.