BLW support - welcome weaners old and new and mind the lentils on the floor

[JumeirahJane]

Fellow weaners,

Hope you find this, our second thread. Haven't we been chatty! The title was borrowed from the kind words with which I was welcomed onto the thread by KiwiPanda. Hope you like...

On the topic of highchairs, I also have the ubiquitous Antilop from I**A, against my better judgement, damn them. It is awfully practical, even I will admit. Just shove a folded towel under her bum before feeds, saves on cushion washing

Felt brave today and administered both avocado AND blueberry muffins in the same meal. It was worth the mess to see her grinning little face at the end.

Hi all.
ses, good to see you here too!

cara, I'll have to try fishcakes as you describe them. I'm just really bad at shallow frying.

fleebee, sounds like what my dd3 is eating: not much of anything! I'm trying not to be bothered too much. she's eating mainly bits of the tops of toast. I've also mashed some squash which she won't let me spoon-feed to her, she grabs it from me then misses her mouth and the dog gets it. I'm then doing extra BFs. and she didn't nap very well today because she wanted to feed slightly earlier for each BF. I'm seeing the pattern that you, Drcosy, ses and others BF/BLW/Sleep etc.

I think they will 'get it' though, won't they?

it's almost midnight, better go to bed in case someone wakes early to feed. night night.

Hi everyone. We've now started! She's 25 weeks so we've just been sticking to veg, some fruits and rice cakes for the last week but I'm pretty sure she's ready as she's been sitting up by herself for a little while now & knew exactly what to do with food!

We started with some steamed carrots which kept her amused for ages - she was really determined to get them in - even using her other hand to keep them near her mouth! We found the evidence of them in her nappy the next day too so she must have managed to get some down!

She's also had a good go with pear (skin left on -is that ok?), rice cakes, banana, melon, green beans and banana.

She loved the melon & banana and was almost inconsolable when I had to take a banana away from her!

Only problem is she's titchy (just 12lb) so:

• her arms don't reach to the full length of her high chair tray! I'm going to have to create some sort of barrier

-all the coverall bibs are enormous on her - I've found vest and muslin best option -I'm going to get some very strange looks giving a baby the size of a 2 month old food! Ho hum!

Sorry for rambling - I'm just happy that after all our milk traumas, solids seem to be so far so good

Oh MrsJuan that's brilliant! I've never tried DD on melon, must get one to try. I leave skin on pears too - think it helps DD to grip.

Thats fab, mrsjuan! . Sounds like its going well. I leave the skin on my dd and she's been fine. She usually spits it out!

cara those fishcakes sound yum. I had some salmon ones as a starter on Sunday & dd loved them. Do you think they'll freeze? I could make some today.

I've got a turkey & chickpea curry in the slow cooker today. I've made loads to freeze because I was struggling with time in the evenings. Like Greensnail we have emergency food in freezer like fish shaped fish finger type-things from birds eye. They have slightly less salt than fish fingers & look easy to hold.

fleebee I'm sorry you dont feel its going well. I agree with cara, does it help to think of meal times as play & milk as nutrition/food? Give purees if you want, if not just tell your mum that the hv has advised against it or something. Have you looked at aitches blog? I'll try and find link (sorry, bf a sleeping dd and typing left handed- v tricky!).

hulla I'm glad your leave he skin on your daughter - I think she'd miss it if you took it off .

I'm amazed how DD seems to know what to do with things - like with the green beans she'll manage to split them open then gum at the middle and with the pear she'll either gum the flesh away from the skin and sort of peel it off or take a big lump and then spit out the skin.

We went to the zoo the other day & I spent a long time watching the baby orangutans doing very similar things . It made me realise what a natural way of eating and learning BLW is. (that's not to say I can't see myself spooning a few mouthfuls of porridge in from time to time

My typo amuses and repulses me in equal measure!

mrsjuan babyjuan sounds like she's doing really well.

IsItMeBaby managed to get a huge piece of pear skin stuck in his mouth the other day, and it took ages before he worked it around to the front so that I could hook it out for him. No harm done! Suspect I might stick with slightly bigger pears in future and quarter them rather than giving whole again for a while...

Hi I'm on baby number 3 and had never heard of Baby Led Weaning with the first 2. DC3 coming up to 6 months now and I'm interested in the idea I've ordered the book from Amazon and have been reading around the internet but am still a bit confused and with the 3 aforementioned children about I have limited time for research!

I have to say it does sound similar to what i did in the past anyway. Certainly with DD2 she didn't like to be spoonfed so ate mostly bits and pieces from the high chair tray from quite an early age. Is it just an extension of that? I'm worrying I've missed a crucial bit. Also can you feed them anything from 6 months on (with common sense re salt, sugar etc.) I've lent my old 'puree' book to my brother-in-law but from memory it was full of different foods you could introduce at different ages. Is that still the same?

Sorry to be lazy just looking for a bit of confirmation of what I have read so far

Thanks

Hi all,

mrsjuan so pleased to hear that babyjuan is doing so well. Must be a relief after all your milk traumas!

HairyToe welcome! Yes, sounds like you have the right idea. The idea is to be giving them the same food as the rest of the family, and letting them feed themselves, rather than sticking to traditional "finger foods". In practice, most people alter the food a bit in the early days, but DD was eating the same as us quite shortly after 6 months.
As long as you don't have any concerns about allergies, its fine to give just about anything from 6 months. Don't give honey until a year old and avoid any obvious choking hazards (whole nuts etc). They can have a maximum of 1g of salt until 1 yr old. Good luck!

We had pasta with pesto, peas and ham for tea this evening. One of DD's favourite lunchtime dishes normally so DH doesn't eat it much. I asked him if he liked it and he said it was ok but it tastes a bit like a remedy for something Maybe we'll keep it to lunchtimes.

Thanks greensnail. I think the thing that has confused me in conversations with peoiple about BLW is that I'm sure I pretty much did that anyway and thought everyone did too!? Yes I went down the whole puree route very initially, but pretty soon moved on to hoiking a few bits of my meal onto the high chair and leaving them to it. Sounds like my inherent laziness meant I was ahead of the times (ahem ).

And all the websites sound obsessed with the mess. Feeding babies and small children has always been messy in my experience and I've often had 'naked tea-times' in the summer months for this very reason (Dh and i excluded).

Your pasta meal sounds nice to me. Mind you my DDs would eat pasta in various guises for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I let them.

Yes, you're right, I think BLW has always been done, just without the fancy name.

Evening all, just popping in to say hello [waves]

DD is currently obsessed with pomegranate, grapefruit and sprouts. What a very strange daughter I have. I was rather embarassed at breakfast today when she scorned my toast with butter & jam in favour of some healthy fruit, I'm sure she gave me a "really mother, shouldn't you eat more healthily?" look. She has also taken to giving a round of applause to her favourite foods

My latest discovery (Hulla and Greensnail note how I claim discoveries so as to avoid admitting that she's pretty thoroughly weaned and I am now an imposted..) is that she likes her pudding at the same time or interspersed with savoury. This evening she was loving mango and shepherds pie.

She is the Heston Blumenthal of babies

imposteR, imposteR.

Oh Kiwi, Hulla and greensnail - don't go! (Or I'll have to as well as DS is now over 9 months so technically classed as a "professional" too).

Went out for lunch on Saturday with MIL and DS performed very well - scoffing lentils (yes, he's had them now!) and slurping linguine with a white wine and butter sauce. He smelt like a little French alcoholic all day.

DS hasn't yet mastered the pincer grip (although tries quite hard with crumbs on the floor ). He also doesn't have any teeth - is anyone else BLW with such an old gummy wonder?

Please don't go ladies - we need your expertise! Plus, DS is already 8 months next week and it feels like we have hardly started on this weaning business.

ooh I love the round of applause for favourite foods Have been trying to teach DD to clap for ages but she just looks at me like I'm a loon. DD also like pudding combined with savoury.

Will have to think of some discoveries so I can hang around.

Oh I'm staying, this is much cheerier than some of my other threads. Lol!

Guess what! Dd signed milk tonight! 4 bloody months we've been doing sign language and nothing. Tonight she finally signed milk before laughing at my boob (ah well). I was so thrilled I stopped caring it was 9pm and kept getting her to do it.

Loving the round of applause kiwi! My dd claps igglepiggle .

And lol lol lol at HestonPanda & sospans french alcoholic!

Oh wow to BabyPanda's round of applause and HullaBaby's signing. That is so cool! Now that would impress the parents .

Talking of impressing the parents - we went to PILs for dinner last night. MIL has been skeptical of BLW since I first mentioned it so thought I might be able to get her on side by showing how well DD was doing.

We took her some carrots, beans, pear and rice cakes and she tucked in like a trouper. I swear she ate about half a pear!

Needless to say MIL was distinctly underwhelmed. I could sense she was itching to take it all away from her - especially the pear with skin on .

She conceded that DD was enjoying herself but that was about it.

Oh well - at least DD didn't do any major gags or anything like that. I might just keep quiet about what she's eating until she's a real pro and then unveil her eating prowess to the world mwah ha ha ha

Morning all! Sospan Dd only has one tooth, which she got at about 9 1/2 months I think, and no sign of any more yet (and there was me thinking they came in pairs..) I think she does brilliantly without but there are some things I think really need teeth. For example she loves satsumas/clementines but can't really cope with the skin (not the peel, LOL, the clear stuff that each segment is wrapped in IYSWIM) - she just spits that out once she's eaten all the juice and soft fruit. I reckon you really do need teeth to tear that.

Snail We had the clapping "good lord you are a lunatic mother" look for quite some time and then , when we weren't doing it, she suddenly started. Now she does it all the time. Yesterday I was waiting at the bus stop and she either waved or clapped every car that went past...

Aghh! After a successful lunch of pureed veg on rice cakes ( DD very impressed) and broccoli (not so impressed but decided to see if it made a good hair conditioner ) we had the kind of 'disaster' that only seems to happen to me...

She did the most enormous poo (take it that was last night's pear coming through) and while I was inspecting the nappy for evidence of swallowing cleaning her up even more came out rendering the changing mat unusable

It was a nightmare trying to keep her hands and feet away from it all so I put her on a towel on the floor. Once we had managed to wipe up most of the yuck I went to get a flannel to wash her with and by the time I got back (ooh -all of 10 seconds later) she had managed to do a fountain of wee which had sprinkled all around her and soaked through the towel!

I have bundled her up in a sleepsuit and left her nursery to fester for 5 minutes while I compose myself to do clean up number 3!

Oh joy

MrsJuan eek eek eek! Deep breaths, deep breaths. I still remember with horror a particularly bad projectile poo incident we had with DD at about 3 months. The carpet was never the same again.

Loving Baby Panda's clapping and Baby Hula's signing. Oddly the one thing Baby Cosy Tiger gets really excited about is her beaker of water, which brings out little yelps of delight every time

Ooh, don't fancy your DD's special skill mrsjuan . I'll stick with hoping for the clapping and signing.

Just wanted to pop in to say that DH took IsItMeBaby to be weighed today and he has crept slightly closer up towards the 25th percentile. I was a bit worried as he was always the runt of our antenatal class and two of the other boys have not been gaining much, but not so IsItMeBaby - he has overtaken two of the other (puree-fed/3 meals a day) boys. Not that it's a competition. Obviously .

oooh, i just wanted to be first to pass all the BLWer's a biscuit

oh yay biscuits! Yum thanks greensnail

Is it a jammy dodger with eyes?