When to 'Up' meals?

[MrsMagooo]

Hello ladies,

I should know what I'm doing as I have a DD who's 2.6 but my brain has turned to mush lol!!

I started weaning my DS just under 2 weeks ago at just over 21 weeks, I realise this is under the 'guideline' age of 6 months but IMO he honestly did seem ready & he is loving his food.

At the moment he has breakfast (pear or apple mixed in with baby breakfast) & then lunch (so far have tried him on carrot, sweet potato, brocolli carrot & potato, apple & pear. (I make all the purees myself)

Anyway I digress - my question is when would it be ok to 'up' to 3 meals a day??

DS is enjoying his food, he eats very well & still has bottles (he also still wakes in the night to be fed hence we wondering when I can increase to 3 meals) but as I have started weaning before the guidelines I'm unsure as to when it would be ok to increase his meals.

Sorry for the waffle - any advice welcome

Yay I didn't kill it! Off to bed now though so nothing else to add except that Pispirispis, my dd is exactly the same,very happy go lucky normally, but try to wash some crusty snot off and you've a battle on your hands (9 months old fgs). I just think that on the whole arguing about these things is counter productive. All we want is for our DC to have healthly attitude to food and to grow and develop. This is such a short time in their lives and seems so important but for me, the last 3 months has flown by!

But now I probably will! Because I worry so much about what I feed my DC, and the reality is they'll be like me and smoke fags and drink WKD blue on the quiet when they're 15!, Which I don't know obviously and didn't then, exchange WDK for HOOCH and you're there! [old emoticon]

throughout the whole thread it has been acknowledged that the baby choice thing is a bit of a red herring as the parent chooses the food - did you read it tassisss or did you just panic at seeing your pal neenz talk civilly to people doing BLW and wish to spark up an argument?

i'm a bit embarrassed for you that this is an either/or thing, and us/them. it is just food, and if someone asks for help feeding their child and i think BLW might be of help to them, i'm entitled to answer am i not? aren't people doing purees only supposed to do them for a matter of a few weeks anyway, so what's the big deal? children will all have to learn to feed themselves some day, why not as soon as they can manage?

btw, in my RL, doing BLW is the norm. it makes sense to an increasing number of people, you know. for the moment these may not be in the majority across the country but like all things, weaning is subject to change. and given that pretty much all parenting material talks about purees etc, why resent people who do BLW havign a corner of the internet to chat on?

not know!!! NOW

Aitch, fair enough, but lots of people have been getting really peed off about the how blw is talked about on MN, so it is not just a few people who are being oversensitive, although I accept that most BLWers have probably never even considered what spoonfeeders think of their posts.

Aitch, I did read the thread and I made 3 points - one to the opening poster, one to neenz (which as she noted was supposed to be funny) and one about that highchair product. The thing about baby choice was a comment addressed to wasprice who seemed to be saying it was up to baby which I was questioning, though I can see maybe some babies make their preferences very clear!

Of course it's not an either/or...did I say it was? - my puree fed 7.5 month old does toast/slices of fruit etc. In the same way that my 2 year old eats with both a spoon/fork and her fingers.

Of course you can answer where you like and I know your help is HUGELY appreciated by many.

I don't understand your "aren't people doing purees only supposed to do them for a matter of a few weeks anyway, so what's the big deal?" I'm sure it seemed like a big deal to the opening poster and to many (especially first time round).

I'm genuinely interested that BLW is the norm in your part of the real world (especially as I have an inkling you live not a million miles from here...) I don't know anyone in RL who does it from the start though (obviously) many of our puree loving babies get very into finger food a little later.

And finally, where did I say I resent you discussing it? I totally don't! I'm just asking you to imagine how it feels to be a puree feeder on MN!

That will be all! I believe we had these conversations a couple of years ago when I was last weaning. I'll be over it in a few weeks...

but really, you can talk to EVERYONE else about it EVERYWHER else... why be so pissed off about having to co-exist here? there's a thread for puree lovers, it wouldn't occur to me to look on it, but everywhere else is fair game for general advice imo.

ps you do realise that thrree years aego there wasw a thread for blwers and the rest of the board was for purees? plus ca change...

sorry aitch, where did i say I minded co-existing? i think you're being more than a little defensive.

xposted with tassis, but my post eould read much the same. and the op was directedkindly to the puree thread and had it bumped by mrsjamin, no one advised her to do blw before all this over reaction.

goodness this thread moves fast.
I think it is true that some people on MN can be rude about purees, but I have to say I haven't seen it very often and most suggestions of BLW have been an attempt at being helpful. Like, "you are having a problem, did you know there's this other way, you might be interested"
neenz that wasn't the case on this thread and you jumped straight in there shooting from the hip and having a bit of a go....(and I quote The BLW militia on MN is really getting on my tits.
I don't think I've seen any more rudeness from BLWers about purees than I have comments like that FF is "awful shite I'd never feed my baby". This is perhaps more hurtful as I really WANTED to bf and it all went tits up at 2 months.

As far as the sleep goes I really don't believe it has anything to do with solids. I think it's largely anecdotal and it's impossible to tell if they'd just have started doing it at that time anyway. DS had terrible colic but then slept thru (10pm to 6am) at 14 weeks and soon after that 7pm to 7am... so loooong before solids.

x posted again

(ah, sorry, realise you may have been speaking to neenz)

Off to bed. Unlikely to be back.

Sorry if we've scared the OP off.

OK, been lurking and reading but too scared to post. But here I am now...

I have a baby for whom BLW would/does not work.
He was small at birth - 6lb.
We have offered plenty of finger foods, but he largely gags, throws, or bangs them on the table. He did eat a teensy piece of broccoli last night but it took half an hour, and then he hadn't eaten the stalk!
At 6 months he was on the 0th centile and dropping off the chart, and so needed to actually get calories (and other nutrition!) in him.
Also, I'm veggie, and won't don't cook meat. I don't want DS to be faddy veggie, so I can give DS a jar with meat in (although now on Kate and others' advice it's Plum Baby stuff only - although nursery does food from scratch, and so does my Mum, and Mum makes meaty puree batches for me to give him so the jars are rare) but I can't bear the thought of pieces of meat all over his hands, hair, table, floor etc. And I can't bear cooking it for him.
Finally, and this is a bit silly, but he goes to nursery (from today!) 2 days a week, and I couldn't bear the thought of being the weird one who insists her baby gets finger food and having everyone in the v. small village pointing and whispering as I walked past! (That bit was tongue in cheek.)

As you can see, we do give him finger foods. Bits of bread (mainly crusts!), an asparagus spear, broccoli spears. Chicken was a total failure. DH refused to let me give him a chip because it was 'too common'. Er, it's potato!

It works for us, but I do get upset at comments from some sanctimonious BLWers. (Not on here!) I now try to see the funny side.
eg. one claims her NCT mums are all 'amazed' at her BLW, and are 'still feeding purees'. Well, they can't get out much if they haven't heard about BLW, and may not switch.
One claims that her 6 month old BLW baby ate chicken in black bean sauce. Now, that sounds like a jarred sauce (full of salt?). Or...a takeaway? She ain't Chinese and I'm pretty sure she doesn't make it from scratch!
Ditto treacle tart and custard - my DS does not get that much sugar!

Finally, and this is a question too, another BLW claims her son eats mashed potato and rice and all sorts (like oters on here) with his hands. I want my son to use cutlery. When do you introduce cutlery with BLW?

Oters? Otters?! I meant others!

ooh and as far as how much they eat and how fast with blw...my experience was that he started to actually eat quite soon after starting blw. although we did spoon feed for a while (maybe 6 weeks, but a bit haphazardly) first and he'd played with some finger foods a couple of times. He managed quite a lot of puree until he took against it suddenly (hence the change to blw) but his milk feeds never went down and then once we started blwing he didn't really seem to eat much for about 3 weeks but the milk feeds didn't go up either.
He's now (at 9,5 months) really starting to eat and is beginning to leave half of one of his feeds.
We also still use spoons actually. When it's something runny I hand him loaded spoons (he gets really irate if I try to spoon it in). So really it's all a mix and i think it's such a shame it gets so polarised and people get their hackles up so easily.

Essie I'm not sure about cutlery as my DS is only 9 months but I would imagine around 12-15 months? Might be way off there. You say you want your child to learn to use cutlery rather than eat with their hands? How is spoon feeding him teaching him to use cutlery? He has to learn to feed HIMSELF. How is a BLW child any less liekly to learn how to use cutlery? Sorry if I'm being thick there but you've lost me.

As far as BLW not working for you, I totally see where you're coming from and I can see why you spoon feed, it's what suits you. Isn't it nice we live in a free country where you are free to spoon feed and I am free not to, or to do a bit of both or whatever.

re chicken in black bean sauce..maybe she was being smug but maybe she'd cooked it herself? We had moroccan chicken the other day (chicken, tomato, black olives, chickpeas and a couple of mild spices) with rice and DS had a good go at the lot and seemed to enjoy it, although the rice he only managed the stickier bits of) Had I still been pureeing I would just have pureed it for him. what's the difference really?
While we were still pureeing as much as humanly possible DS had exactly what we had but mashed. What's the huge difference from BLW? You just let them at it un mashed a bit sooner.

I always gave ds a fork and spoon to play with right from 6 months. they will use it when they are ready.

i'll never really understand why people think it's a greater leap from using your hands to feed yourself and then introducing a piece of cutlery to the process than having another person entirely spoon something into your mouth. but dd was using spoon and fork quite well by 16 months, and she played with both from 6. when do puree fed babies get cutlery, by and large? why would it be different, as i say babies aren't actually supposed to be on purees for ages anyway, the progression is onto finger food as soon as they can manage.

also, wrt babies for whom BLW doesn't 'work'... imo and ime it's the parents who don't like it more than the baby. a child losing weight is better off with more milk than carrots, either in baton or puree form. plenty of kids don't want to self-feed straight from 6 months (plenty of kids don't want to eat the stalk of the broccoli), but the Whole Point of blw is about having the confidence to wait until the child does it for themself.

that is not for everyone, clearly, but it's a bit rich to put a time limit on something that advocates having no time limit and then blaming it for failing.

i hate all this 'dons tin hat' bullshit, by the way. it's very aggressive, while pretending not to be.

Erm.....gosh only just checked back on this post - didn't realise I started such a slanging match

DD was puree fed & then from about 7/8 months she had a mix of finger foods & puree. She's not a big eater & never has been, plus she would live on pasta alone if I let her!

DS is a much hungrier baby & is enjoying his food but he does stop when full - just turns his head away & trys to push the spoon away. Whe he's a little older I will introduce finger foods but will also continue to puree feed as this works for me.

I never questioned his milk intake as he still has 4-6 bottles in 24 hours so he certainly isn't missing out on milk & I always offer him some milk before offering food, that was never my question.

Thank you to those who have offered their advice it has been appreciated!

I am now off to the kitchen to puree

I think in the absence of research for both sides all a mum can do is try and do what she feels is best for her LO (as long as that means neither pureeing or chip shaped mars bars!). I think the norm is still purees, even on MN - maybe it's just the BLW people are more gobby as a group and that's why there seems more of them on MN! Also the "why don't you try BLW" stock reply is hardly an unusual phenomenan on mumsnet, if you look at any of the CC threads there is envarible one person who says have you tried co-sleeping (or the other way round). If a mother finds a way that works so well for them of course she wants to spread the news, every mother knows how exhausting and frustrating motherhood can be and anything they perceive can lighten the load they want to share.

DS could eat a whole banana at one sitting as soon as we started BLW, and he has never slept through the night!

I am glad that MN isn't the 'real world', because in the real world, everyone weans early, noone breastfeeds, certainly not past six months, nobody uses real nappies and everybody purees.
If MN was like real life I'd have nobody to talk to!

Essie, I'm sorry you have so much worry with your DS weight, my boy dropped to the 9th and stayed there til he was 6/7 months, but as yours was small at birth, perhaps he's not meant to be a big chubber?

The black bean sauce was at nursery I believe, which would have been mashed up for all the babies I guess.

wenceslas - agree. The single most important bit of it all is to wait until the baby is ready - I can see this in my dcs really clearly. My ds wasnt ready and it was all a bit traumatic but my dd has taken to it like a pig to swill or me to a wispa and would be eating happily no matter what method I was using.

I think we should direct our efforts to getting people to wait both on MN and in RL. Am so sick of people in RL telling me that they weaned at 4 months (but dont tell the health visitor) grr...

I didn't try to force the food with DD yesterday (she has been quite picky just recently and I was worrying about how much she was eating). I just BFed her five times and let her have as much food as she wanted (she was turning her head away after about five spoons of savoury but did go for yogurt and Oatibix in a big way [hmm). I always worry if she doesn't eat that she won't sleep but she slept through 7pm till 8am (she woke at 5.30 but had a bit of a whinge for 10mins and got herself back to sleep). Her twin eats so much I know I shouldn't compare them (he slept 7pm till 8am too)

So she is obviously eating enough.

Having said that, I still believe that food is linked to sleep and if a baby is waking 2-3 times in the night to feed then something is wrong with its calorie intake during the day (or it has learned the wrong sleep associations). If I didn't eat enough in the day I would find it hard to sleep so what's the difference? And when I say food I mean solid food or milk ie if the baby takes in enough calories during the day it won't be waking to feed in the night (but may wake for other reasons). IYSWIM!

My Dad gets up in the night for a glass of milk, and he eats loads!