What should I start my 5 and a half month old on food wise?

[queenceleste]

I can't find any of my baby books and am not sure what the latest orthodoxy is!
Is it baby rice and breast milk? What is the most gentle way to start?

i don't really get the whole 'pure' thing re spoons tbh. it's the philosophy for me. which is that you let them get on with it as much as is humanly possible.

Aitch - she was 6 months, she just wasn't interested in picking up food and putting it in her mouth. She picked up plenty of dog hairs/carpet fluff but not food. It came soon afterwards.

I think also if I'm honest it was easier to batch freeze stuff as she would eat much earlier than us in the evening so it meant I wasn't spending lots of time cooking.

As I said, she moved very quickly passed this to mashed/lumpy food and now I don't think you could tell she wasn't BLW as I cook stuff that she can pick up and manage.

yes, that's the thing there. if you'd been doing BLW then you'd just have waited the couple of weeks or whatever until she was picking it up. so that's not really 'blw not working' etc, so much as you not wanting to wait. fair enough, of course, and like you say you felt it was more convenient to batch cook purees in any case. i was just curious, because in a way unless there are pretty serious developmental delays in place it should 'work' for everyone.

It wasn't a case of not wanting to wait, it was a case of being confident she was getting what she needed in terms of nutrition.

I know you're a strong advocate of BLW but as you've said it isn't for everyone.

um. milk is what is needed in terms of nutrition, surely?

oh god yes, of course it's not for everyone, of COURSE. but within such a short while of turning 6 months, the nutrition thing isn't relevant tbh. that, again, is the whole point of BLW.

just to be clear, i'm not trying to force blw down anyone's throat (quite apart form the fact that it's miles too late for you ), i'm just trying to clear up these misconceptions, you know... that blw didn't work etc. blw would have worked, in all likelihood, but by becoming concerned about nutritional needs at such a young stage you are therefore not doing blw. i feel like i'm not explaining this well and am coming across as a bit rabid. i suppose all i'm saying is that blw is probably fine for every baby (barring developmental delay) but that it's not fine for every parent. iykwim? which is also FINE.

i don't think that i've EVER used so many icons in one post...

Well said.

lol

Thanks Aitch and all posters here for v useful advice.

DD is actually 5 months (calendar ones) and dh desperate to hit the solids. But I'm partly wary of starting because of the mess! I know that sounds utterly pathetic but the h ouse is in total chaos because we've changed the bedrooms around and I feel at sea at the moment and to be doing weaning at the same time just makes me feel a bit like hiding under the bed (if I could even get under there...)

BLW really appeals to me and makes sense but when I mentioned it to dh he just saw it as me delaying weaning and was totally prejudiced and thought it sounded like hokey hippy nonsense and " I bet you got THAT off mumsnet" is what he actually said!!!

Are there any websites that would present it in a way that would make a sceptic consider it?!

Thanks, dh resented me bf ds past a year, he thought it was eccentric of me!

but it's got nothing to do with blw, the weaning age is guideline by govt. and nowhere does it advise weaning because dh has ants in pants...

get the hv to tell him to calm his jets, and delay. cos if the house is a guddle now...

Aitch, I love 'guddle' is that scots? It sounds a bit like 'gunnell' which I think is Lincolnshire for an alleyway or short cut....

I so need to get a life......

Don't start if you're all upside down - you're only a month away anyway, your DH will just have to calm himself down

We are doing a mixture of mashed/blended stuff and finger foods. DS was 7 months old yesterday and now happily feeds himself yoghurt with a spoon, chomps toast and veg for himself and loves trying all sorts of things off a spoon. He makes a grab for the spoon and wants to do it himself, which we let him do unless we need him to remain pristine for some reason. If he looks curious about what I'm eating then I give him a bit as long as it's not inappropriate - ie.nuts/honey etc.
We have loved weaning so far, he sits up to the table with us and really enjoys himself, 'tis fab.
The gagging thing is a worry, although I worry a lot less since DS grabbed a whole chunk of roast potato off my plate 2 weeks ago and just chomped through it with no worries at all. We do the same a Aitch when he does gag, either make big chewing faces or we do an exaggerated cough if he has something that needs to come up.

we did blw, started with pieces of steamed and rosted veg in 'chip' shapes, and toast and rice cakes with cream cheese on.
great fun, quite messy, broccolli the messiest by far!
i do remember having a few panicky gagging moments, but it only happened maybe twice.
milks the most important thing till their one, whether breat or formula and many babies don't get the hang of eating till 9m, eve if they do it mostly goes straight through for quite a while, whichis more noticeable with blw than with puree!
come on the blw forum, you'll get loads of help there from people at the same stage and others who're doing it for a second time!
there's a book by gill rapley which might make it seem less 'hippy' to your dh, but i have to admit i haven't looked at it yet