BLW: what do you do when visiting other people to not inflict the mess on them?

[IlanaK]

We just started with my 6 month old. We are not doing much at the moment. He joins us for dinner if he is awake (so maybe every other day) and just has a bit of veg sticks or fruit. But even this is very messy. At the moment, if we were to visit someone, I would just not bother with food and give him more bm instead.

However, in one month's time, I will be staying overnight at someone's house with him. I am guessing that by then he will be eating more food and I won't be able to just skip a meal with him. We will be eating an "adult" 3 course meal, probably no highchair. What do I do?

And what about just in general visiting friends and family?

Buy some disposable dust sheets from B&Q, and just give the less stainy elements of the meal. The Ikea Antilop high chair is perfect for taking with you to visit people as it comes right apart.

If there was no high chair, then I would normally just sit with DS on my lap and let him eat off my plate. Somehow it all worked out, and I got quite blase in restaurants about asking for the bill and a dustpan and brush

Can you take a highchair with you?

Sit baby in his pushchair/carseat for the duration of the meal, possibly take an old sheet to put over it if you really don't want any mess, let him get on with it, then clean him up afterwards, change of clothes if necessary. Then bundle the whole sheet up, pop it in a carrier bag and take it home.

When visiting friends and family, either feed him on your knee, feed him "clean" things lke ricecakes, slices of pear etc, or buy a takealong highchair. People will be more tolerant than you think anyway, as long as you aren't letting him self feed yoghurt on their new suede couch I'm sure they won't mind.

I won;t have a pushchair with me and I don't own a carseat (no car). I will be travelling y train so can't take a highchair. I do have one of those handbag highchairs but i don't think there w ill be enough seats for him to have one to put it on. Not keen on the thought of him on my lap with slices of pear

Well, if it's going to be a problem then couldn't you just bf him and get him off to sleep while you guys eat? you could always save him some for when he wakes up.

I wish it were so simple! He is a difficult sleeper at the best of times, even in a sling. He will likly be awake until I am laying in bed next to him.

Where would he sit if he was having purees though? Tbh this doesn't really sound like a blw question, more like a question of how to cope with the mess of a very small baby/child eating in a place where there is no seat for them.

It's a universal problem - even the babies that start off with purees end up using their fingers and spoons in a dangerously messy way and it doesn't get much cleaner till they reach two or three, if then! The fact that people giving purees have a couple or more 'easy' months at the beginning before their babies start finger foods doesn't mean that messy eating is just a blw thing.

Anyway... you'll probably find that eating in other people's houses (unless they're people you know really well, or who have easy to clean floors) often requires a dedicated adult on 'food catching' duty even if they're not actually needed for spoonfeeding. If I were you I would go with the lap because I don't think you've got an awful lot of choice, unless sitting on the floor in the middle of a sheet is feasible, and cover your lap and the floor near your chair with muslins and so on that you can just bundle up afterwards. Take food that doesn't stain - no tomato, carrot or banana, for instance. Maybe try stuff like large cooked pasta, cucumber, rice cakes and so on - all stuff that's fairly easy to clear up. Good luck!

re:the carseat I thought one of the safety rules of BLW was they shouldn't be fed in a carseat as they need to be sitting up properly.

I spose libra, tbh not that I'm encouraging anyone to take unnecessary risks, but if you're right there in front of your child watching them eat and ready to intervene, it's highly unlikely anything untoward might happen. Certainly never did with my ds.