after 2 weeks of dd squirting purees out am wondering if blw is the way to go - a few questions...

[deaconblue]

So yesterday she had roasted courgette "chips", carrot and a tiny roast potato and managed to suck the flesh off the courgette, ate the carrot and had a go at the potato. All good. But this morning I tried a hunk of banana and she got really frustrated every time it squirmed out of her grip - so I held it and she yanked my hand to her mouth. Is it "spoiling" the point of blw I do this with squirmy stuff?
next Q - how do you convince yourself that she's getting enough food? Will she just take what she needs if I make sure there are plenty of bits on her tray?
next Q - protein. With ds I would have pureed a roast dinner for eg and would know he'd eaten enough chicken for a day's protein. If she just sucks the juice out of a chunk of chicken, for example, will she be getting enough protein in her diet?
lots of q's, sorry but ds had purees and is still crap with lumps at age 2.5 so really want to try to do things differently this time.
thanks

Phew!! Calm down!!

Firstly, how old is she?? The good thing about blw is that there are no 'rules'. Just go with the flow! Milk is her main source of nutrition until she is one. Weaning is just giving her tastes and blw is good because she can regulate her own intake of food. Just offer her anything you have (minus sugar, salt etc...) and see what she does!

You sound like you are doing the right thing anyway!

I would mash the banana and put it on rice cakes or toast fingers at this age. Aitch has a suggestion about giving it peel-on but with peel trimmed down on her blog but I couldn't make that work for us. I think you holding it and her manoeuvring your hand to her mouth is fine, though.

She's getting plenty of protein from milk, so don't worry about that. You can also give her cheese if you want, though.

this is why I think although dd wsould probably like blw I might be too high maintenance to cope!!! She will be 6 months next week, sits well and is super dextrous (well compared with ds anyway). Like I say, she's been having veg purees for a couple of weeks but squirts them and tries to grab ds' toast.

oh should have said she has 5 or 6 bf a day too

First question - no, imo. I did BLW but I still held things for DD sometimes (including, shock horror, a spoon for her yoghurt ). DD used to hold her banana with the peel still on so it wouldn't squirm out of her grip, you could try that.

In terms of nutrition, I really wouldn't worry about it at this stage. Is she still having a lot of milk? If so, most of her nutrition is coming this way and food is about taste and texture and experimenting.

Hope this helps.

I poke my finger down the centre of a banana and it splits neatly into 3 baby size pieces.
It's really a case of - if she eats it.. great, if she doesn't... never mind.

i do the 3 sections of banana thing too! seems to help a little and if a bit goes on the floor you still have the other 2 sections so not as much waste.

you need to chill out about the nutrition, SBUE - the idea is they have as much as they want, as they know what they need. I do things to help, i.e. held the mango slice as it was too slippery, as long as your DD is moving to bite it then it's fine I reckon. You don't get any prizes for being a BLW purist - just follow what works for you both.

i did trim the peel back (to leave something grippable) but that was cos i didn't know about the splitting in three thing so i'd have tried that first tbh.

shoppingbags, if the baby grabbed your hand and used it as a tool to get food to her mouth then it's no different imo to her grabbing a spoon. it's entirely and wonderfully baby-led.

ok good, sounds like we're doing ok so far then. Mashed banana on rice cake gave me an idea this lunchtime and I smeared the sweet potato puree that was unwanted from last week's puree and freeze bonanza on a rice cake. Sucked most of it off so looks like I will be able to use some of the stuff I pre-made.
Think it will be trial and error as I steamed carrot at lunch today but not for long enough as she didn't seem able to gum it down to eat it, just kept nagging lumps off, gagging, then spitting them out, whereas roasted carrot yesterday was scoffed.

yup, it's trial and error with softness of things. although it's good for you to know that she will cope with stuff well by spitting it out, helps your confidence ime.

I still hold tricky things for ds if he's a bit tired, or it's too slippery (really slippy mango, or larger things) and I also spoon in yoghurt! He occasionally guides the spoon in, and if he fancies it, he takes the spoon and plays about with it, but I get a bit fed up with having yoghurt flicked in my eyes that way, and tbh, I think he's doing well enough with the self-feeding to take a little spooning too!

What do you BLW experts think about the current advice to give vitamin drops at 6m+ if babies are bfed?

"What do you BLW experts think about the current advice to give vitamin drops at 6m+ if babies are bfed? "

It's bollocks.

There is a really good explanation somewhere about the iron in breastmilk being more readily absorbed than the iron in cows milk/formula (and for that matter vitamin drops!) so the idea that babies need more iron because breastmilk is "low" in iron is crap. Breastmilk may be "low in iron" compared to cows milk, but the iron cows milk is not easily absorbed and most of it is wee'd out, where as the iron in breastmilk is very easily absorbed so they get what they need. Oddly enough neither of my DD's were aneamic, and it's not a massive problem in "developing cultures" either.

It's based on the same kind of flawed logic/study as the theory that dummies reduce SIDS! Utter arse.

that's interesting as was going to post about this under breast feeding. I gave up bf ds at 6 months so didn't think about hte whole iron Q but plan to continue with dd for much longer and wondered what would happen.

by the way - Philadelpia on rice cake with a hunk of butternut squash as a side dish went down very well for tea last night

Thanks Greenmonkies. Just what I thought. Cows milk is great - for cows. Breast milk is great for babies. I will also refuse to give my babies one pint of cows milk a day after they are one - that is surely just a ruse by the dairy council?

Good to hear the blw went well SBUE