BLW - what to do if evening meal is after bedtime?

[Twiceover]

Hi, Just about to start weaning my 6 month-old twins and have decided to go with baby-led weaning. Think it sounds great for the girls but I did wonder what other people did about the evening meal?

DH gets home from work around 6.30pm and the girls go to bed at 7pm so there isn't time for us to eat together in the evening. I'm not keen to have them go to bed any later as enjoy having the time on my own with DH (and am knackered by 7pm!!).

All the BLW info I have read says it's convenient as baby can eat the same food as you but I think I would have to either cook separate food for the girls and eat with DH later or reheat leftovers from our dinner the night before. How does everyone else do it or do you just bring your evening meal forward and eat it together? Thanks.

at that age I always cooked separately for the children
or reheated last nights leftovers
I always gave the baby a cooked meal at dinner time and just sandwich tea at about 5pm
hope that helps, good luck!

I'm still newish to BLW, but I sit and have a cup of tea while DS plays with his food at around 5/5:30. If I'm organised, I cook something earlier in the day (like a stew) for all of us, or if I'm not it's leftovers from last night or something cooked specially.

To begin with DD ate at 5ish (still does sometimes) and we ate later.

We ate breakfast and lunch (which was usually left overs from out dinner the night before) together. For dinner it tended to be simpler and easy quick stuff (pasta, lentil coquette, omelette). I sat down and had a cup of tea and a bit of fruit.

Now she is older we eat dinner together around 5.30/6pm. The person who comes home later from work eats by themselves.

I used to give DS either something quick or keep some leftovers from the night before as well. Sorry to repeat

Favourite quick teas for him are cheese on toast (add marmite for extra iron, but watch salt), baby pizza (toast bread on one side, then spread tomato puree on the uncooked side, add whatever toppings you have spare and grate cheese over before putting back under grill) beans with toast or my favourite - get a bag of frozen mixed veg from the supermarket, it cooks in about 3 minutes, they can pick out what they want, it's usually baby-sized pieces and you can even get organic ones now. Usually fresher than "fresh" veg as well.

Although one of the attractions of BLW is that they eat the 'same as you' I do find that I cook separately (I am also BLW twin girls, now 8.5mo, have been eating since 6m) for the babies most of the time. I don't find it very difficult because I either give them leftovers from our dinner the night before for their tea (5pm) or we all eat lefovers for lunch at 12 and then I given them something different for tea. We usually eat breakfast together, but I often eat something different (I love eggs for breakfast, the girls not much!) I make sure I've always got in the fridge/cupboards: hummus, pittas, cream cheese, veggies, fruit - stuff that can make a finger food meal and I always keep lefovers of any description - you'll be surprised what can make a baby meal (the veggies from a roast dinner pureed into pasta sauce for example).

I have to say that I've started to do some spoon feeding in the last month - the difference between that and spoon feeding from the beginning is that I never puree or mash anything, but might feed them yoghurt, porridge, tiny pasta in sauce, rice etc. I usually give them some to eat from their tray too and at least one meal a day is only finger food, but I find that they eat more and we are all happier that way.

We eat earlier so that we can all eat together. Starting this with dd, who's now 4 because it felt important to us that we'd all share a meal together (breakfast is too rushed and we both work some days so lunch together doesn't always happen).

It means dh rushes in from work and sits down straight away for tea, whci sometimes feels a bit rushed but it works for us.