DD started nursery yesterday at 10m and is BLW but nursery in a flap about it. Advice please.

[imoscarsmum]

Since 6m DD has eaten food placed in front of her. She has v small appetite but is lovely and healthy and has 2 bottles a day also.
We normally put her in her chair and place food on the table in front of her. She rarely has a bowl or plate as she picks it up and throws it.
Nursery feed the babies by putting a bowl with a tiny amount in in in front of them with a spoon to encourage them to feed themselves, then spoon feed the rest in from another bowl. The food is chopped very small.

I asked could DD be fed by putting food in front of her on table. They said no due to health & safety. They also said that this would stop her from trying to eat with a spoon.
I must stress that the nursery in all other aspects is fab and I am very happy with DD going there.
Yesterday she ate very little and they got worried so fed her a jar of food as she 'must have been hungry'.
I was not happy, as she eats like a bird but always sleeps, has good nappies etc etc, so i don't worry about her food intake.

We have compromised that they will not cut her food up and will place the bowl in front of her so she helps herself but they will hold onto it if she wants to throw it. They also agreed not to help her - now I feel like bad mum and think maybe if she's really struggling, should I ask them to help her?

My other questions are:

• any other ideas on how to tackle this, especially persuading them that if she eats very little, it's OK and only give her other food or a bottle if she's really really crying hungry?
• and when do BLW babies move onto spoon feedling, and so do need their food cutting up? (Atm, eg, a piece of chicken would be placed in front of her in one long piece, but if she tries to self feed with a spoon, surely it'll need cutting?)

Thanks for any advice.

i told dd's nursery when she started at 8 months ish that she eats toddler food. if the meal for that day was too sloppy they made her a sandwich. she was only there 2 afternoons mind you.

i can't even remember when dd moved onto using spoons. i think one day we just put a few spoons in a heap of mash and she figured out what to do. there was never any sort of ok today we will introduce spoons iyswim. she's 3 now and eats perfectly well with a knife and fork, no delay or whatever.

if they just do not get it i'd ask to see the manager armed with a few gill rapley print outs or even her book.

l let nursery get on with it their way and did it my way at home...tbh I felt the nursery staff had enough to do without me adding to their demands

I would have thought that most BLW babies skip the self-spoon-feeding stage and use a fork first as it's easier to stab something than scoop it up. I quite often use a fork to persuade DS to eat a little bit more (I know that's counter-intuitive to BLW in a way) by when he has got bored, I take a little toddler fork with rounded prongs and spear some food on it, then hand it to him, he then eats it off the fork. He is 9.5 months and will bash the fork around as if he is trying to spear things with it. When I notice he is doing this more, I will probably cut some of his food up for him and always offer him a fork. I think that him cutting things with a knife is probably much further away.

But having said that, he has a good enough pincer grip now that he could eat chopped up food. He never has a bowl though - as you said, he would throw it so what is the point??

Don't ask them to help her. She will be fine Just say it's ok for her to have milk if she doesn't eat all of her food and seems hungry later.

Have you got the Gill Rapley book? You could maybe show them the relevant pages from there.