chocloverblw8er, I also have 4 children and have spent a total of 5 years bfing.
When my ds1 was born, weaning was purees at 4 months. This appeared to be fine for him, he had a great appetite. Until he was 18 months when it all went downhill! My MIL gave me a very hard time about his "poor appetite" and was determined to make me feel that it was down to my poor parenting.
Ds2 was also weaned onto purees at 4 months. He also developed a healthy appetite but never went through the "eating nothing" phase that ds1 went through. And I really did very little different with ds2 than I had with ds1. Had ds2 been my first child I would no doubt have been congratulating myself on my superb parenting.
Ds3 was weaned at 6 months, not by BLW as he was premature so developmentally was only 4 months.
Ds4 is now being weaned at 6 months and it will be a mixture of BLW and purees. But at no point will he or any of my others be praised for eating a full dinner! To me that's a bit akin to going into an American-style "all you can eat" buffet and cheering on the guy who piles the most onto his plate and then manages to clear that plate.
There is nothing healthy about stretching a person's stomach to the point where it takes more and more food to make them feel full, resulting in someone who needs more and more food to feel satisfied. I also think the idea of a dessert being a "reward" is not particularly healthy; in my own case I think it has led to me eating cream cakes etc because "I deserve them" whether or not they are good for me! In our house, we have dessert only on Sundays and it is not a requirement that everyone should have cleared their plates to get it, they do have to have at least tried everything on the plate but there is no association between the empty plate and the dessert.
Ds1 now eats very healthily. He is 12. I think with the benefit of hindsight, that at the time when he was a toddler and barely eating anything, that in fact he was eating enough to satisfy himself; he is naturally leaner than ds2 and always will be. Some children are just like that. I do think BLW might have benefited him in a lot of ways. After all, where in nature do you get purees? Purely in evolutionary terms, BLW must be right, surely? In the primitive habitats where people evolved there were very few means of pureeing anything other than foods like bananas or avocadoes. So it more than likely was the case that babies were breastfed until the day that they snatched a piece of food from their mothers hand and ate it themselves. And for a lot of babies this might not have been till they were almost one. And as for iron, it is now known that although breast milk is not rich in iron, that it is in a form which is easily absorbed by the body so breastfed babies are not as deficient in iron as was previously thought. Which would make sense as most iron in our diets does not come in a form which would be easily eaten by babies!