Anyone else taking an anti purist approach? " Making it up as you go alongers" in here!

[frekkles]

My baby boy is seven months tommorrow, and we've been exploring the world of food together for 6 weeks.

He's currently sitting nest to me ravaging a watermelon, occassionally stopping to grab the spoon of porridge and prune puree. Yesterday he enjoy figuring out how to eat baby courgette dipped in puree ed butter beans, avacado and brocolli.

I've been making it up as I go along. I've read the BLW book, and thought it made brilliant sense. I read Annabel Karmel, and thought there were some great ideas. I make him bread without salt in it, buy him apricots from Waitrose, but also buy him those giant carrot type wotsit things and any kind of baby cereal from baby rice to organic quinoa flakes. I have a freezer full of steamed and roasted vegetable fingers and ice cube trays full of fruit purees to add to porridge.

Anyone else can't be bothered being purist and is poaching the best bits of everything? Seems to be working for us. Baby boy has just polished of a bowl of prune porridge, a chunk of watermelon the size of his head, a toast finger , a plum and a finger of mango

Anyone else think there's plenty merit in using

.... the best bits of every approach?

Best ideas here please!

I haven't started weaning yet (DS2 nearly 22 weeks) but LOVE the thought of this thread. It is great to see that different approaches can work cohesively as one. There is also no sense of "well my way of weaning is better than yours..." element.

I will watch this one enthusiastically.

PS) I did both puree and finger food with DD and it worked a treat. But only because she wanted both.

I would wholeheartedly agree. I started with a very purist BLW approach (as I have done with alot of my parenting ideas )and wouldn't even consider the use of a spoon but DS goes to nursery twice a week and however much I explained the concept they just didn't get it. As a result DS eats what ever we eat not mushed or pureed made without salt obviously. Sometimes he feeds himself, other times I use a spoon and often he uses a spoon with varying degrees of accuracy!
I think the most important thing is to make it as stress free as possible and like you say to take the best bits of all the approaches and find out what suits you and your baby.

Me too me too. Great thread - I am mainly BLW-ing but, cover your eyes Gill Rapley, am also spoon feeding, when he lets me (other times he grabs the spoon, sometimes my hand as well, and shoves it in the vicinity of his face). He loves being fed yoghurt off a spoon, for example, but I also dollop some on his tray so he can 'eat it himself' (or smear it over his hair).
Nearly 7-month old BabySeb eats a wide range of foods, had salmon with parsnip mash and avocado fingers and cherry tomatoes for lunch, and is about to have pasta with spinach sauce for tea.
My main deviation (apart from spoon feeding) with pure BLW is that we very rarely sit down for our evening meal together as DH works late. This is a shame but we make up fo it when we can and I always make sure I eat something, usually a bite or two of what I make him. Anyway my very rambling point is that I don't think there is any perfect way to wean - its all about finding your own path.

Yeah, definately finding what suits you and your baby!

I find the convenience of making stuff up and freezing it suits me as I'm not good at finding the time to cook things for breakfasts and lunches at the time. But I love being able to take a few icecubes of some kind of porridge and prune or some other fruit puree out of the freezer when I get up and serving it with fresh fruit and toast. Or taking some presteamed courgettes and a couple of cubes of sweetpotato hummous out and putting it in a tupperwear box with a rice cake and a pear or something for a lunch on the go. I like freezing little pots of soup or scotch broth when I make a pot and take them out to give him when we're eating curry, an either spread it on rice cake, spoonfeeding in to him or let him smear it all over the place depending on his and my mood.

I think BLW definately suits my baby, independent wee sausage that he is. He relishes shoving the food in his gob and is getting very good at it. But also is happy to be spoon fed, I generally just load a spoon with whatever and hold it near him and ask him if he fancies it. Then he'll either grab it, ignore it, or open his mouth.

I must admit I'm abit allergy paranoid as the wee boy has a suspected cow's milk protein allergy and his dad has asthma, so I can't quite let go and let him eat everything we eat or just dive in. So I'm introducing one food a day, and waiting with dairy and meat and other things for a while. So I'm kinda BLWing with caution and purees maybe. I also like this book www.amazon.co.uk/Optimum-Nutrition-Babies-Young-Children/dp/0749926228/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qi d=1259781165&sr=8-1-spell and use ideas from this.

Sometimes he eats loads, sometimes very little, and I'm happy to relax about it. tis more fun than I thought it would be!