BLW is not possible during the credit crunch

[believer07]

Having had a go at BLW I am not going to continue as basically I can not afford to give my child organic food every day that it throws all over the floor and gets very little in its mouth, and is still screaming hungry at the end of the BLW session.

It seems to me like BLW is some new thing to keep western mothers occupied, because if you were living in Zimbabwe you would not be letting your six month old waste copious amounts of food.

The aim of eating is to eat the blardy food not paint the house with it.

I am back to putting in baby's mouth with a spoon, sod BKW and the rest of the rubbish them come out with.

Oh now I see you can eat penuts in preg because now to many kids have nut allergys because there mothers where told to avoid them rather than introduce them over a long time.

Are there others who find the old fashioned way easier and more economical

LOL at modern art. There's a credit crunch tip -- put down a canvas before you let your DC feed him or herself and then you can flog it off to a Saatchi afterwards for an extra source of income.

Personally I make sure my floor is clean and re-offer stuff that goes on the floor. And I just share what I'm eating anyway with DD.

She loves lettuce/salad (some of the first things she tried, as it happens, as she always grabs lettuce off my plate) and soup (I don't actually let her feed herself soup, but she does a starving baby bird impression until I give her some of mine). When I tried bananas when she was littler I mashed them and put the mash on fingers of toast (she manages bits of banana fine now at 8 months).

I didn't worry about allergic responses either, as we aren't an allergicy family.

If you hate pressure to conform to what government advice, then surely you should be a fan of BLW? After all government advice is to give purees and introduce foods one at a time to check for allergies (which is what you seem to be in favour of) .

believer07 that peanut news is the best news I've had all day. I've been craving peanut butter and been avoiding it!

Oh and a BLW poster appeared at my antenatal clinic this week, so I would say that the government is beginning to push it a bit.

believer, I tried cutting the banana into fingers for him the first time, but it makes them very slippy. I break the banana in half and hand it to him and he holds it with both hands and gnaws away. You could probably get away with a whole peeled organic banana, I just found that a whole regular banana broke in two after he waved it around a bit anyway. The outside of a peeled banana, iykwim, is much drier and easier for him to grip.

believer07 - haven't read the thread - but you really think that in Zimbabwe they puree the food and shovel it in with a spoon???

God no! They're given chicken bones to knaw on for teething when they're tiny - so they're certainly not afraid of giving them proper food.

I don't buy any extra food - the amount they eat in the early stages is negible (regardless of puree or BLW) just give them whatever you're eating!

actually I find it quite amusing that you think that

a) even in a good political enviroment people have blenders and the like to makes purees (many people don't have any eletrity supply

b) that if they did have electricity it's actually reliable enough to risk hoping that their blender works

c) that they actually have money to spend on spoons/bowls/blenders/puree feeding paraphanalia

bah i don't know. this BLW idea sounds v good in theory (and it has realyl helped me in that dd2 is a puree-hater and reading stuff here has made me much more comfortable about giving her finger foods- so thank you, really, to everyone and esp Aitch- I love your website) but i still don't really get the "give them whatever you're eating school".

adult and infant nutrition should be quite radically different- low calorie, low fat, high fibre for the former, high calorie, high fat and salt and sugar free for the latter.

high calorie, high fat and salt and sugar free for the latter.

ie, milk?
milk should be the main source of nutrition for babies until they are a year old.

weaning, from 6months onwards is all about getting your baby used to different tastes and textures. some love it, some are slow to take to it. regardless, it is NOT meant to be their main source of nutrition,. so it matters not a jot that they don't eat much,.
you should be giving milk first, and then giving food. either pureed, mashed or finger foods, so that they aren't filling up on it at the expense of milk.

if my BLW child had pulverised one banana and thrown most of on the floor I wouldn't hand him another one, I'd think, hmmm, he obviously isn't interested in that. if he was still hungry I would shove him back ont he boob!

and eat whatever you're having? of course there are times when you're pregnant and craving super noodles (who? me???) and can't give it to the,. that's what toast and marmite is for. or fruit etc.

if you're having a meal that has parts that can be eaten by baby, then give him some of that. no need to cook specially

funny thread.

i remember a friend asking what i'd had for tea one day, i absent mindedly said 'nothing, dd didn't leave anything.' she thought i was bonkers.

it was around then that dd started getting her own portion of food.

OP - I found your posting mildly offensive. I BLW, and happily, and although I think pureeing is pretty pointless, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it. I can imagine the backlash if my HV (thankfully she doesn't interfere) told me to do pureeing and I posted ranting about being pushed into pureeing and it being a waste of time/money or whatever.

As per the waste, DS has always eaten what we eat. We have tailored our meals to suit him, so for a while we ate all our vegetables chip shaped! We use very low salt stock cubes in our cooking, and where required I add salt afterwards (and in that case he eats off his daddy's plate who doesn't like extra salt, or we put some separate for him.) DH eats the left overs, and we share things like apples and satsumas that he doesn't eat all of. We use a chopped up shower curtain to catch the bits, and most bits get offered again (mat goes in the wash). Yes there is some waste, but I'm not sure its any more than a puree fed baby who doesn't always want to eat everything that's prepared for it!

Oh, and we do soup out of a doidy cup, with some soaked in bread. He loves veggie soup.

If you tried BLW and had issues with it, please try posting about them in a less confrontational manner.

Oh, and re the credit crunch, my entire weaning 'kit' cost me around 4 quid plus bibs and beakers. (which I presume everyone needs). £1 each for plastic bowls, plates and cutlery from ikea, plus one pack of soft weaning spoons from asda for yoghurt and suchlike (he's always controlled them himself)

Admittedly we spent more on sippy cups / beakers but that was because I tried everything going to try to get DS to take EBM, but that's another story - he drinks water out of anything going.

OP - I found your posting mildly offensive. I BLW, and happily, and although I think pureeing is pretty pointless, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it. I can imagine the backlash if my HV (thankfully she doesn't interfere) told me to do pureeing and I posted ranting about being pushed into pureeing and it being a waste of time/money or whatever.

As per the waste, DS has always eaten what we eat. We have tailored our meals to suit him, so for a while we ate all our vegetables chip shaped! We use very low salt stock cubes in our cooking, and where required I add salt afterwards (and in that case he eats off his daddy's plate who doesn't like extra salt, or we put some separate for him.) DH eats the left overs, and we share things like apples and satsumas that he doesn't eat all of. We use a chopped up shower curtain to catch the bits, and most bits get offered again (mat goes in the wash). Yes there is some waste, but I'm not sure its any more than a puree fed baby who doesn't always want to eat everything that's prepared for it!

Oh, and we do soup out of a doidy cup, with some soaked in bread. He loves veggie soup.

If you tried BLW and had issues with it, please try posting about them in a less confrontational manner.

Oh, and re the credit crunch, my entire weaning 'kit' cost me around 4 quid plus bibs and beakers. (which I presume everyone needs). £1 each for plastic bowls, plates and cutlery from ikea, plus one pack of soft weaning spoons from asda for yoghurt and suchlike (he's always controlled them himself)

Admittedly we spent more on sippy cups / beakers but that was because I tried everything going to try to get DS to take EBM, but that's another story - he drinks water out of anything going.

Regarding different diets, we've changed all of our diets to try to meet in the middle.

We use full fat milk etc when cooking for all of us as DS needs it, but I also slather full fat Philly on his rice cakes etc when he has that sort of thing for lunch (when I want some brie etc)

We've all cut down sugar and salt, so to some extent the extra fat we get is less important. But yes, I agree about the milk thing. At nearly 11mo, I would guess that about 1/2 of DS's 'food' is BM, which has plenty of fat in if his weight gain is any indication

beforesunrise -- DD has high calorie, high fat, not sugar free but certainly with no added or refined sugar breastmilk as the major part of her diet, which is as it should be until she's a year or so. I don't. There's no real conflict between the two diets (and I never add salt to anything when cooking anyway).

of course milk. but ther eis a small glitch there if you need to go back to work and your baby won't have formula, then you really need to make sure that by the time they're 8 months old they're taking a good varied diet to last them through the whole day till they can get on the boob again. that's what scares me the most about going down blw 100%.

i guess my diet is then spectacularly crap, and i am in a minority here.

I have some credit-crunch ideas for what to do with the wasted food!!

Compost - and then grow your own veg!
Get a dog - no need for dog food!
Or a goat, or a pig - and then if you're not a vegetarian like me you've always got something to eat if the recession gets really bad and you can't buy food!

beforesunrise, I did laugh at your comment about radically different diets for adults and babies - I think I'm going to be the size of a house with all this cheese sauce, butter and full fat milk! All the chip-shaped veg are really healthy though, and we share fruit. She hasn't cottoned on yet that when she's eating a rice cake I'm usually eating a choccy bikky, hehe! Wonder how long that'll last...

the parents of exc bf children i've known who've gone to nursery have often reported that the kids who weren't so fussed aout eating prior to going without mum for a stretch do get the idea quickly when left to their own devices. i don't suppose they're stupid, babies.

ermm beforesunrise - I know plenty of puree fed babies who barely ate anything unitl they were much older than 8 months - their parents had the same problem..........

Won't or can't? When DS started nursery he wouldn't take formula and just reverse-cycled like crazy, then after two or three weeks he started drinking formula quite happily. I wasted altogether too much time worrying about it (especially as I now know that even if he'd continued to refuse the formula and cluster feed/reverse cycle when I was around he'd have been just fine).

Now, can I just butt in here as a non-BLW-follower, bit-of-Anabel Karmel-admirer, finger-food-encouraging mother-of-a-one-year-old?

There is nothing more heart breaking - in my experience - as slaving over a fantastic meal only to have it splatted on the floor. If my lo doesn't want to eat something she won't eat it. If I purée/mash something and she doesn't want to eat it she refuses it. She definitely is in control of her food intake. If I offer her finger food, or a bit off my plate (as I do as well) and she doesn't want it she chucks it on the floor. There's waste either way, BLW or purée. It shouldn't be a question of BLW being uneconomic any more than puréeing being uneconomic. Some babies - most babies - won't eat everything they're offered, no matter how its prepared.

Btw, I think I didn't spend much on weaning equipment - spoons, bibs and cups. We use plastic bowls we already had in the cupboard and a hand blender retrieved from the back of the cupboard. Nothing special. BLW shouldn't be any cheaper/more expensive than any other way of feeding.

Re this whole BLW/puree weaning debate, I think people forget that even if you do purees, that whole phase passes very soon and your child will be feeding him/herself pretty soon anyway and there'll be mess, and they'll have to learn how to feed themselves and you'll have to think about changing your diet to suit the whole family anyway. I'm glad I'm doing it now. No probs with lumps, hooray!

In all seriousness, with BLW I haven't had that much waste because I don't give dd that much to start with.

And as for eating the sme things, you can just have a small portion of whatever is high in calories and a big portion of salad/veg,or at least I know that's what I should do...

I should add, of course, that I don't purée any more, now my lo is one.

pispirispis is right, just give them small amounts and if it's obvious they don't want it or it gets chucked on the floor then you haven't wasted much. If DD is not having the same as us, then I make hers and give her half and keep the rest for the next day. That way, if she did eat the first half and then wanted more, she could still have it (this has never happened yet)

beforesunrise - I worked the odd full day for a while, when DS was still just snacking. He would take a few ounces of EBM from a bottle occasionally, but after the first day he figured out that he needed to eat more solids, since then (unless he's ill) he happily eats more solids on the ocassions that I'm not around for milk.

We've also noticed that when he's having a growth spurt, he ups the solids intake instead of his milk.

Don'tEatYellowSnow - I don't think you need to spend more, but most of my friends going the puree route have their special cube trays, and their little weaning pots, and all their other branded stuff. When I'd planned to do purees I had really intended to do as I have with BLW (no salt in food etc) and just mush our dinner. Certainly all the other first time mums I've met have been very concerned about their AK recipe books and how their babies wouldn't eat anything without fruit in it. And while they've moved on to mashed/lumps, many of DS's contemporaries are still primarily spoon fed at 11months or so

encouraging noises re going back to work. i hope my dd will be fine- at the mo i cannot help but panic.

anyway, i am not against BLW! in fact reading about it here has really helped me relax and i now mix purees and finger foods and that's ok. incidentally today dd wolfed down a hipp jar, after refusing both finger food and my own puree, so maybe i have my answer right there, despite the fact it probably puts me into some kind of MN ghetto

i just happen to disagree with the "give them whatever you're having" mantra, and in fact many of you have admitted to changing your diet in order to converge with lo's requirements- which makes perfect sense, but implies some level of disruption to everyday life. which does not weaken the blw approach at all in my book.

any changes I've made to my diet have only been positive ones - ie less crap and more decent food - which surely can't be a bad thing??