Can I ask about lumps??????

[backintraining]

DS is 7 and a bit months, weaning is going so so, some days he has 3 meals a day, some days it appears he's on hunger strike. He has a mixture of what we make and HIPP jars. I'm trying to introduce more textured stuff, he's not doing too bad, and is cutting his first tooth as we speak. However, some days once he realises there is a lump there he shuts his mouth and refuses any more food, on the odd occasion he has been eating ok, but then has had a bit of a choke. When this happens (eg refusal/choke) I'm a bit quick to leap to the nearest pureed meal I have and feed him that, I don't want to put him off food. Should I do this or should I just keep trying with lumps?

Could you chop the lumps up a bit more, backintraining? Sort of a half-way house between the baby purees and what he's having problems with?

And might it be worth looking at the baby-led weaning thing? I don't know much about it myself - my dses were all born way back in the bad old days before blw was invented, so we just muddled through somehow - but isn't it about giving the baby suitable finger foods and letting him choose what he eats? Might that help?

I have heard that some babies are fine with smooth purees (they eat that off the spoon like you would eat smooth soup, e.g. tomato soup) and finger foods (they eat like we would eat a sandwich) but lumpy foods from a spoon confuse them too much and they reject them instinctively - imagine eating a spoonful of cereal, it's completely different to eating the smooth tomato soup, if you tried to eat cereal like you ate soup you'd probably choke on it.

So the idea is they reject lumpy purees because their idea of a spoon is to swallow it straight down and when they try to do this with lumps they have an unpleasant choking type experience, if you offer finger foods (which can be anything - even spaghetti bolognese!!) you may have better results

HTH!

BertieBotts that actually makes perfect sense!! Thanks so much for the replies. I wasn't sure whether DS was a bit too young for finger foods, but I suppose if I was BLW he'd have been doing it for weeks now. He's just started reaching for the pot when I am feeding him, which I am letting him do to have a bit of an explore (I keep chanting 'the mess is all for a good cause'). I'm all for finger foods so I'll offer some of those, it can't hurt to let him have a feel and chuck it on the floor can it?
It's weird because today he ate some baby pasta shapes with tomato sauce and had no problems whatsoever, but I suppose it is a lot smoother than actual lumpy food if that makes sense. I've also been making his purees a tad thicker when I've been cooking the food.