BLW more questions

[lobsters]

I've now read the BLW book, and really like the idea of it, so I hope to go down that route as much as possible. DD is just over 23 weeks, and I'm planning to start in the next week or so, jsut with the odd bits from my plate, not so she eats, just so she gets used to handling food. Yesterday she grabbed a slice of ciabatta and merrily sucked away at it for a while, I think it might have helped with teething. Anyway after that rambling, I've just got a few questions.

• Do I move to 3 meals almost straight away? Or build up from one?

• What do you give for breakfast, other than toast, I'm not sure quite what to give? I'm considering baby porridge as the one thing to get used to some spoon feeding.

• Can anyone give me any meal ideas? I know the idea is that she eats what I eat, but I've now reaslied just how awful my diet is and I don't want DD to eat as badly as I do.

Ta

Opps, and the one I forgot, I've asked a few friends with babies aboue BLW, and very few of them really did it, they said it was too much work. From reading the book it seemed a lot less work than fannying about with purees etc, why is it seen to be such hard work? This is a genuine question. I remember before having DD I though bfing seemed really simple and couldn't work out whta could go wrong, but soon realised afterwards. I want to be better prepared for the downsides of BLW so I can deal with them better.

it's not a lot of work, unless you yourself eat crappy food so can't just hand stuff over as such. some people also find it 'hard work' because there isn't a guide as far as a meal planner or portion detail or recipe list etc. a lot of people like the ease of following a annabel karmel type plan.

as for meals- just hand things over when you have something to give. so at breakfast give a piece of toast or some fruit. at lunch a bit of your sandwich or pasta then at dinner some veg or meat or whatever. you'll see how she gets on and be guided by her as to how much to give and how often. if she isn't interested at first you might only give something at lunch time. if she loves it straight away you may hand over more often.

no need to think about getting her used to spoon feeding. breakfast can be toast, fruit, omelette, scrambled egg. you'll see which textures she can pick up best. as she learns she'll be able to pick up small cereals too.

for meal ideas have a look at babyledweaning.com but you do really need to look at your diet. your dd will learn about food from you so it's no good you eating crisps while she is given veg.

I started off with making sure DS was in the highchair or his baby seat while we were eating. If he seemed to be asking for some of our food, I'd give him a bit (or a rice cake if what we were having wasn't suitable, though we have changed our diet a lot which is great!) and it went from him not being that bothered to wanting to eat/explore food (he didn't swallow much for a while) every time we were eating, now again he's interested sometimes and not others, I try to make sure I offer him solid food at least 3 times a day though.

I haven't really dropped milk feeds as such as I'm still breastfeeding on demand. But if you are feeding to a routine you could start dropping feeds once your LO is eating a decent amount 2-3 times a day. The only thing I'd say regarding milk feeds is that (I think this is in the book) LOs don't always realise when they start solids that the solid food will fill them up, like milk does, so they may act hungry and ask for milk directly after eating. I try to just give DS water for about half an hour after he's eaten to let his food go down, before I will feed him milk so that he starts to realise he can fill up on food as well. He is still a milk monster though

The only bit which is hard work is clearing up afterwards. We now have big plastic tablecloths which go on the floor underneath high chair and then straight into the wash afterwards, so that's much easier. Still need to hose down DD though! The food itself isn't too difficult - just pass them a bit of what you're having and see what happens. If we're eating something unsuitable i give DD a rice cake and some sticks of cucumber and cheese, or some fruit.

We went straight onto 3 meals a day (unless she was asleep when we were eating).

Breaksfast used to be just fruit, but now she sometimes has toast or cereal or porridge on a loaded spoon that she feeds herself with.

Lunch tends to be a sandwich or rice cake or something like cheese on toast with yoghurt or fruit. Sometimes with some salad and stuff.

Tea, whatever we're having. She prefers seperate sticks of meat, veg and tatties, to something mixed together like sheperds pie. She enjoys pasta, but if its not cooked very soft she'll just suck off the sauce and can't manage the pasta!

just try her with different things and see what happens! And use it as an opportunity to look at your own diet. Even if you weren't doing BLW i'm sure you'd want DD to end up eating the same as you eventually so you'd need to address it at some point anyway.

Good luck and hope you both have fun