God, the sooner we get a forum the better...

Anyway, here's how you join in on this site. I know, it's far from perfect but still.

If you have a question, could you first of all do a wee search in the box on the right and see if there's already a post on the subject. Then post your comment there. The reason for that is so that people reading, say for example Allergies, will then be able to find your question and answers and hopefully learn from your experience.

If not, though, then put your question as a comment on here and we'll see it in the box at the top. It's even better if you change the subject line at the top but don't worry if you forget as we'll see it anyway. The women who use this site are terribly helpful and only too keen to pass on their accumulated wisdom, I've noticed, so don't let shyness put you off posting if you have something to ask.

If you want to send a photo, a recipe, or email me directly, press on my name above and you'll get my contact details. I'm only too happy to hear from everyone and if you're having difficulties with something will do my best to respond promptly. If you send a photo or a recipe, though, lord knows, I'll take about a week to put it up as I am Under The Cosh work-wise at the moment.

So welcome lovely newbies and even lovelier lurkers, and thanks ever so much for all your contributions thus far all you oldies, without whom we would not have built up such an excellent bank of BLW information.

The comments are taking a while to load so I thought we needed a new thread to post on. This effectively works as our message board, so post away and we'll answer what we can. Although if your question relates to something already on the blog, say for example highchairs, then if you wouldn't mind I'd be grateful if you could do a search and then post on that pre-existing highchairs thread then everyone will be able to read it in situ, as it were. And I chose highchairs as a random example, by the way. I'm sure there must be a better example... Oh! Allergies. Allergies is a much better example as that Actually Makes Sense for everything to be together.

Anyway, thanks for joining in, I appreciate all the input.

I reckon we're getting near the 200 comment mark on that last one. For any new people to the site, I'd thoroughly recommend having a wander through the comments on these last few Random Thoughts posts. Basically we don't have a forum so these are the next best thing, - people post questions and we see the question come up in the Recent Comments bit and answer them. Hopefully.

Post Script.
I've been thinking about this and perhaps the best thing to do with a question is do a search first so that you can see if there's already a topic and then post your comment there. It will still turn up in the Recent Comments box so will be visible (and I'll bump it if it drops out) but it means that, for example, all the allergy questions will be in the BLW and Allergies section, constipation questions on the poo post, banana questions on the bananas post etc. Unless Bunny is posting of course... all her posts are bananas.

...the other one was taking a bit long to load, don'tcha think? So from here on in, if you can, post your new random thoughts as comments on the bottom of this thingie, which will take the strain off the sweetcorn post. Now that makes perfect sense, doesn't it?


Oh, and remember that you can change the title of your posts, so that it doesn't just go Re:We need another... etc and then people will know what your question/comment is about.

...thanks to bossy Mrs Rachel who was desperate enough to communicate her delight in these spooky little mini-ears to put a comment on the blessedly irrelevant Smoked Salmon post.

Now, obviously this isn't a message board, but I'm really delighted to see that conversations are breaking out nevertheless (where there are women...) so what I thought I'd do is make a folder where you can post Original Thoughts (or Thoughts Plagiarised from other Websites, I'm not fussed).

Because the fact is that there are women on this site already who know A LOT MORE about this whole baby led weaning lark than I do, having done it for a while, so I for one don't want to miss out on anything they have to say. And I'd love to pick your brains for more recipes, so if you want me to post them up for you in the manner of Hub2dee's and Mawbroon's recent offerings then send me an email. You'll find my address if you click on my name, I'd rather not print it here as I get more than enough offers of performance-enhancing pills as it is...

So post comments below or send an email and I'll check them first thing for random musings and instructions, Challenge Anneka-style. I'll be the one in the luminous jumpsuit (superfluous British television reference there, American chums).  Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

As it happens, I've always rather enjoyed her programmes, long before I was ever a parent. They just seemed sensible, plus I really liked her nail varnish.

Anyway, she's doing a lot of interviews at the moment and I thought this one in The Times was pretty good, not least because it contains this advice for parents anxious about their children's eating.

"Put yourself in their shoes and next time you’re having a meal, get a friend to peer into your face, repeatedly mop it with a fragranced wipe and see how you like it."

So true, and so very true of BLW as well. 'Course I said it first <polishes halo> but still...

It's here, and it's officially The Worst-Kept Secret In Town...

We put it up a couple of days ago and some of you have been testing it out for us. There are still things needing to be ironed-out, lord knows, but I thought I'd tell you about it anyway.

Thing is, as you've probably noticed we keep going over our band-width every month, which results in the site being innaccessible for anything up to a week. I've begged and pleaded so we weren't shut off this time, but we are under Strict Instruction to sort it out by the end of September. Consider us told, Mr Internet Man.

If we move the chat to a forum, temporarily based on some other webspace I have, then we will save on bandwidth here. I'd really appreciate it if you could still post comments on here, though. Particularly the Polls and FAQ bit, because I really think that's building up towards being a fantastic resource of all our many and various experiences.

But for anything that might go onto Random Thoughts, or to celebrate breakthroughs or have right old moan about mothers-in-law and their unceasing ability to spoon-feed behind our backs, come to the forum. Please. [needy icon]

Such an interesting area, this. There was an article on the subject in The Times yesterday (written by Peta Bee, who as we all know made a great job of explaining BLW, but let's give her the opportunity to redeem herself.) In a way it's money for old rope journalism, don't make a fuss, don't ban anything, enjoy your mealtimes... seems very obvious to me, but at least it confirms the minimal stress approach of BLW.


Anyway, Lin's question is below, it's a goodie.

...because I realised recently that at 20 months old Babybear has started to use her fork and spoon as much as If Not More Than her hands... [preening emoticon]

Now to be honest I've never been that fussed about her using cutlery - plenty of people I know are very adept at eating delicately and neatly with a cunning flick of a chapati. At the other extreme, I remember being very stressed the first time I tried to use chopsticks in public and it rather ruining my enjoyment of the meal.

Plus, and I know I'm providing further proof of my astounding laziness here, I just couldn't be bothered. From the age of, what, nine or ten months, if not before, Babybear has enjoyed playing with spoons and yoghurt and it has only been when I've been feeling Very Brave Indeed that I've let her go for it. (She always had them along with her toys in the bath, mind, and if they were bright yellow rather than red I knew that I'd forgotten to put the cold water in again.)

I guess for about the last six months we've had proper cutlery floating around for her, as much as a toy as anything else. We didn't tend to put them out with her food so that she could tuck in with her hands first of all, but we found that they provided a useful diversion when she started to wriggle in her seat and her father and I hadn't finished our meal. The ones I got were metal pronged, we did have a plastic fork from somewhere but what she really likes doing is spearing things good and proper and the plastic wasn't sharp enough.

Porridge is great for early spooning purposes, once you move beyond the pancake stage, and ice cream proved a tremendous motivator in a restaurant I remember. ('What's this? I love it. But I can't pick it up?!)

And slowly but surely she's got the hang of it. We don't tend to make much of a fuss about the amount she eats, but when the spoonfuls of food started to make their way successfully from bowl to spoon to mouth we clapped and cheered and she really relished the attention. Now she's neat and tidy and really doing well, unless she's particularly hungry in which case she reverts to type and jams the whole lot in with the flattened palm of her hand.

Because I do. I know that BLW is a mucky process when we start off, all the splash mats and porridge oats everywhere and all that stuff but over the last few months I've become increasingly convinced that Babybear is quite the neatest child in any cafe or restaurant that we find ourselves in.

We were out the other day and at the table next to us was a girl of the same age, and she created absolute havoc, flinging food in all directions. It wasn't just the lobbing, though, she also seemed so much less accurate with placing food in her mouth. But then, according to her father who apologised as he came to pick pizza cheese off our table, 'she's only been on finger food for a wee while'. I nodded and said, oh it's fine etc but Babybear's dad, whose parental politeness antennae are less finely-tuned than my own blurted 'Really? why?'

No reason, as it turned out, and truth be told it wasn't that bad, but it was interesting to watch her wreak the sort of havoc that Babybear used to when she was small. It was also interesting to note that the staff were less indulgent of an older child making a mess than they were of Babybear.

Anyway, without boasting (and yes I do realise that this blog isn't much more than an extended boast) I want to tell you that by about 15 months Babybear was very neat indeed with her food. Now, anything with tomato sauce still gets liberally smeared across her face but the point is that it no longer hits her clothes like an orange bomb. Spooning she's not bad at but a bit drippy with yoghurt and she enjoys stabbing pasta etc with her fork. We had to ditch plastic cutlery a long time ago as it's just not sharp enough.

Anyway, I'm interested to know what you think. Presumably everyone goes through a really mucky, yucky stage but are we fortunate in that we get it over with before their throwing arm gets really strong?

To tomatoes. Now my friend Jen, queen of all things allergic, will be able to attest to the fact that I suggested this might be the case some months ago. Babybear has aways been utterly fascinated and beguiled by tomatoes right up until the moment she puts them in her mouth, at which point she winces as if scalded, shudders and puts them down again. Game girl that she is, however, she tends to repeat this about ten times during the course of the meal.

So I remember saying to Jen that I wondered if she might have an intolerance to them and was actually feeling a reaction on her tongue rather than just a simple dislike of the taste. I never pushed them on her, just ate them all up myself, as far as I was concerned she liked cooked tomatoes and that was enough for me.

Weirdly, though, at 17 months old I think a proper intolerance is coming to the fore. If tomato touches her lips or face she now gets marks that look for all the world like nettle stings, all white and raised and surrounded by quite livid red patches. They don't come up quite immediately and they do hang around for an hour or so afterwards. Normally she doesn't have the same reaction to cooked tomatoes but I have noticed a certain redness once or twice recently and she does appear to be going off tomato-based sauces. Which is a right pain, I can assure you, as I like nothing more...

Anyway, what now? Do I ignore it? It doesn't seem to bother her but it bothers me. Will she become allergic to other things? Will she become allergic to tomatoes, even? Is there anything I can do at this stage? Please help, I am utterly ignorant of this sort of thing.

I'm cutting and pasting this from a comment as it's really interesting. Anyone got any thoughts?

The Guardian

There's just so much there... four choices for every meal? 18-years-old and never roasted a chicken? His wife will be the one cooking for AK's future grandchildren? [faints]

They're in Early Photos riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight down at the bottom if for some reason you need to see them full-size. And there are some others from Christmas that I've jammed in as well.

I have forgotten my sign-in name, which is a complete pain. I can't access the site until I remember it, because I lost my email address and password when my computer fritzed.

Would someone have a look at the Links section and tell me the name I used when I posted the blog link, please?

I was talking to someone on Mumsnet the other week (she knows who she is) and she was pretty stressed out about her wee baby and I was sympathising. Anyway, she then said something along the lines of  '...but I thought that your daughter was perfect?' Not in a bad way, not at all... but it got me thinking.

Make no mistake my daughter is not perfect, and we all have our off days together, but I suppose I'm trying to write this about BLW rather than how annoying she is when I'm trying to change her nappy. (Which is unbelievably annoying, for the record... practically a two-man job. The wall by her changing mat sometimes looks like the scene of a dirty protest in Barlinnie).
 
Anyway, I'm going to have to think about it, I'd hate to be all 'la la la this motherhood thing is a breeze' because, well, sometimes it's not.

I am in all honesty not finding BLW particularly difficult, but then I think that's partly down to my overwhelming sloth rather than Babybear's natural gifts. I fell for the 'until they're one it's just for fun' mantra, hook, line and sinker so I just never worried about amounts. Plus, and I must put this in as a Top Tip one of these days, my friend once told me never to count food amounts over a day, always over three days to a week, and that has been fantastic advice.

However, I do find myself getting a little freaked out by the idea that she now has to take a certain amount of vitamins etc and that her milk isn't doing the job. And every time she cuts a tooth she does just stop eating altogether. At the moment she seems to be landing about five teeth at the one time and there hadn't been much food consumed in the last few days so I was obliged to wheel out the big guns and do a roast chicken, broccoli and roast potatoes. We had a result, which suggests that, like her mother, Babybear can rise above pain when the effort is paid back by golden-skinned, burnished poultry.

Anyway, I'm rambling. What are our BLW anxieties, I suppose I'm trying to say. Let's start a list. And then someone tell me how I can change Babybear's nappy without her kicking her ankles into it and flicking the contents across the room, and I'll be delighted.

Never one to do things by the book, Babybear appears to be cutting every single tooth in her lower jaw all at the same time. It's rubbishissimo, I've got to tell you. The poor child wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.

Anyway, just another of the downsides of her teething behaviour is that if I screw up mealtimes and am still trying to get dinner on the table at the time when she should be in bed, her tooth pain really starts getting to her. She's hungry, but it's too sore...

So tonight as she painfully tried to eat her cauliflower cheese with courgette and tomato (one of my mum's 70s standby meals) I realised that I had frozen some of the Carbonara-type stuff that we'd had a few weeks ago. Twenty seconds in the microwave took the edge off the cold and I was able to peel off some of the strips of pappardelle (you know, the thick ribbony ones) and hand them over. She went from refusing to eat to demolishing the entire contents of the tupperware tub.

The moral of this story? Be a better, more organised parent and sort out tea earlier, but if you've blown it then some semi-freddo pasta might just do the trick.

Babybear has, as you may know, been using a spoon with some success for a while now. Not for everything, goodness knows, just for yoghurts and soups on days when I'm Feeling Strong.

Anyway, when I've loaded up the spoon she has until recently grabbed the spoon off me and proceeded to eat it/wipe it in her hair/flick it onto the walls. Not so the past week, however... at least not at first...

No, what Babybear has now decided she likes is for Mummy to load the spoon and hold it out, so that she can lean forward and eat off it. Like I'm a blimmin' wine waiter with the first sip of a freshly-uncorked bottle... 'Eez thees to your liking, Mademoiselle?'

If she likes it, then the paw goes out for the spoon, but if not her mouth will forever remain shut to the offending item (most recently a particularly delicious parsnip, lemon and ginger soup). And more than that, at just-turned one year old I appear to have been tricked into spoon feeding her for the first time in our lives.

No seriously... what happens now?

Poor Babybear is cutting about three teeth at the moment so she's just not that ravenous for food... Celery she remains obsessed by, which renders me more convinced than ever of its reputed numbing  properties.  And pasta fusilli with pesto and peas, she would happily eat that every day. Likewise oatcakes, cheese, broccoli, ham (loves it now, but only Nigella's in Coke, for god's sake), moon biscuits, raisins... och most things I suppose.

I don't know what I thought would happen when she turned one, I mean I knew that no-one would wave a magic wand and she would drop milk feeds but she still seems to be drinking a good four bottles every day and I'm disinclined to do any 'cutting back' as that just seems wrong somehow and against the spirit of Baby led Weaning? And I think they are still supposed to be drinking milk anyway... must find out how much.

And what milk? We're still giving her formula, mostly for my own convenience I must admit as we're not brilliant at remembering to buy milk in this house and also those Tommee Tippee powder holders are SO handy when we're out, but I suppose I'll have to start her on cow's milk soon...

I don't know why I'm moaning, really, she ate half of my Ginger Chicken and a truckload of edamame at our celebratory 'Well, That's the Christmas Holidays over for Another Year and Aren't the Sales Shite' dinner at Wagamama in town today, it's just that I'm wondering  where we go from here... I've liked not giving a stuff about what she ate so long as she is happy. Now what do I think? Do I have to start giving her vitamin drops? Do I have to start worrying that she is getting a balanced diet? Do I have to Start Caring?!

Oh My God - I'm going to have to start being a Proper Mum, aren't I?

A poster called Chilledy has just asked how long it takes to feed the babies in the BLW stylee, which rather got me thinking. I'm pretty sure that I remember my mother complaining in the early days that it was dragging on, and that if I would just shovel some food into Babybear's mouth then it wouldn't take so damned long. Yeah, thanks Mum.

I reckon that it usually took about half an hour before she signalled that a meal was finished in the traditional manner, ie by casually dropping any remainders off the highchair tray, tipping up her cup and splashing her hands in the water and making a soup out of whatever crapola is left there. I now look out for the first signal and remove her immediately. If she was enjoying herself and if I wasn't in a hurry then I'd leave her in for longer if she wanted to fanny around. Remember, it's for fun more than satisfying any major nutritional craving.

One big change that has taken place with increasing age, however, is that Babybear has discovered how to extricate herself Houdini-style from her and every other highchair we've encountered. Even a five-point harness is no match for her super-collapsible little body. It's very annoying, not to mention terrifying, to turn your back for fifteen seconds and  find her surfing on the tray.

If she spends as much as ten minutes eating by herself nowadays we are in luck, but if we're all having our meal together then she sticks it out for maybe twenty or so minutes. Her appetite also ranges wildly... she loves a big breakfast and a snacky lunch and when it comes to dinner either wolfs down an incredible amount or nothing at all. It's utterly dependent on her teething, the poor wee soul.

I've been meaning to say this for ages but have been rather too busy to update. I just wanted you to and the rest of the interworldwideweb to know that my daughter's nappies are now more solid, like human poo, rather than a motley collection of semi-digested and completely identifiable bits and bobs of undead zombie foodstuffs. 'The Peas That Would Not Die, The Raisins That Came Back To Life (As Grapes) ' etcetera etcetera.
It's been a good few weeks now since I've spotted a borlotti bean corpse, since she wasbout eleven months old, I reckon. Just thought I'd let you in on our latest proud parenting news... <Aitch preens uselessly>

Shee-yit. What now?

I do it quite often, actually. Since becoming a parent myself I've found that my tolerance for cooing over other people's babies has risen considerably. (And it's a good way of keeping Babybear occupied - she finds babies fascinating and appears entirely unaware that she is one herself.)

Anyway, one thought just struck me but I'm unsure how to express it without causing offence. Here goes.

None of them exactly look like they're starving, do they?

I mean, it's the biggest worry about doing this BLW thing, isn't it? That they aren't going to get enough, that somehow we are depriving them if we don't spoon the food into their mouths. And yet one look at the photos on this blog confirm that simply isn't the case. It has made me giggle a bit, actually.


For the record, anyone who wants to put a photo up is welcome to send them to my email (press my name and you'll find it) and I'll stick them on for you with pleasure. More strange creatures for Babybear to stare at...



(Weird, I've also just noticed that some of our photos of the early months have dropped off... wonder if the folder has become too big? Will investigate further.)

I've been meaning to tell you this for ages, but Babybear has started saying 'yum-yum-yum' while eating. That's how she says it so that's how I'm spelling it. Occasionally she does veer towards 'nyum-nyum' if I'm honest.

I'm not a big one for the whole 'my baby does cute things' school of blogging, but in this case I'm prepared to make an exception as it is simply THE SWEETEST thing on the planet.

So here goes... get it out of your system. What Cute Things is your baby doing? (Weaning-related, if possible, or we'll be here forever.)

Boomer has recently had a bit of a snuffle and bizarrely this has seemed to see an increase in her appetite. This seems to be contrary to everyone else’s experiences when their LO is under the weather.

 

Now it may be that I don’t think she was ever really that unwell, or it may have just coincided with a natural increase in her self weaning process. I think that latter is probably more likely. So for all you out there concerned about when their appetite will really kick in , Boomer is now 10 ½ mths and it has only just happened.

 

Boomer is still breastfed so I have no real way of checking her milk intake, but she still has about 4-5 feeds a day. I have however left her a couple of days from morning to night with someone else and she has just had food and water, no milk.

I'd say it's about half as much as she was doing a month ago. That tummy bug really seemed to knock her for six, first of all, and after a burst of eating to make up what she'd lost, her appetite seems to have settled back down.
I'm assuming that it's to do with the fact that she seems to be cutting some new teeth, although I do wish they would hurry up as she's pretty miserable about it. Which makes me and her father rather miserable as well, because it is knocking her sleep out. The teeth, I mean, not the food - she's drinking plenty of milk.
Anyway, I'm not overly worried as she is still eating well, just not as well as she has previously done, the poor poppet.

So I'd have thought that after a week of nappies o'erspilling with yellow goo (and goo makes it sound so much cuter than it was in real life), Babybear's appetite would slowly build itself back up to normal.

Wrong. This morning, for her first breakfast since showing any signs of recovery Babybear consumed three small baked potatoes (the poor child often finds herself eating leftovers from the night before), some sultanas, two porridge pancakes, a banana, a piece of broccoli and (as I frantically rooted about in the fridge for something, anything that was left) some chicken.  Yikes.  She didn't want a lot for lunch, needless to say.

The poor wee thing, gastroenteritis. It's been very grim, to be honest... although Babybear's been relatively chipper in between mammoth bouts of diaorrhea and vomiting, which is a good sign. I have been far from chipper, however - I've been the one miserably scrubbing and cleaning doing copious laundry and disinfecting, all to no avail. It started a week ago yesterday and according to the doctors might continue for a while longer as even if she's over the virus her gut is now completely traumatised and will take a few days extra to start absorbing things properly again.

The funny thing is that she seems more reluctant to take her formula milk than she is the very bland food we've been offering her, which isn't the way I thought things would go. Perhaps breastmilk would have been more appealing under the circumstances? (Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ad infinitum). I have sometimes been giving her half measures of powder to liquid to lessen the strength of the milk but keep her liquids up, as clearly that's the most important thing.

You'll all be surprised to hear that I haven't gone short of unwanted parenting advice, though, so that's been fun to deal with on top of everything else. If one more sodding person gravely tells me that 'you have to make sure she doesn't get dehydrated' while offering me no practical insight into how the hell I get more liquid into an unco-operative child without resorting to a canula and an IV bag (my paramedic brother's helpful suggestion) I will fling thirty newly yellow-stained babygros into their faces and dance off into the moonlight.

Babybear has dined on chicken risotto, plain pasta, roast chicken, peas, green beans, bread and butter and pears for the most part this week as I have been trying to keep things as bland as possible (better for the baby, yes, but also infinitely preferable when there's a good chance you'll be washing it out of your ponytail at two o'clock in the morning). I have been very surprised at how much she has eaten. Nothing like her usual intake, naturally, but about half as much, which I wouldn't have anticipated.

So do you want to hear my top tip, courtesy of my mum? Immediately I told the old dear about the vomming etc she said to get an old towel or two over the cot sheet, so that when (inevitably) they puke in the middle of the night you don't have to fanny around with changing the bedding. It works... you just take off the towel, checking for damp patches on the next layer down, and then quickly hose the contents off in the bath. Once the baby is sorted she can go back into bed immediately (after a wee drink of water and brief toothbrushing session) and so can you, knowing that at least you won't have to face the horror of dried-in sick first thing the next morning. That's when she doesn't refuse point blank to go back into her cot, of course, because she'd rather jump about on your head for the next two hours...

Because it occurs to me that we are not, and nor have we been for some time. I'm wondering if it's been since she got some teeth?

Keeping the carrots chip-sized definitely important when you are starting off, that's for sure, as it seems to be as important that the food can easily drop out of their mouths as get in there so a long, thin piece is essential. But as Babybear has got older and more active, I think her need for texture has increased to the point where she would now be most frustrated with a puny finger of food.

She likes full-sized tortillas, quartered sandwiches, big hunks of meat, individual Yorkshire puddings and whole new potatoes, bananas, apples and pears. She derives a great deal of pleasure from closely inspecting everything that is about to go into her mouth (well, on a polite day - to be fair she fairly often inhales things without giving them a second glance) and a standard-issue chip of veggie would not satisfy. She turns things around in her hands, bashes them on the table, rubs them in the puddles of water that inevitably cover her highchair before either eating them, dropping them off the side or popping them into her Tommee Tippee bib for later. It's a rich and rewarding sensory experience for a 10-month-old baby, and a monumental pain in the arse for the person who has to clean it up.

So in the beginning it was all 'Wow, what's this green stuff? Broccoli? Really? Wonder what it tastes like?' etcetera etcetera. But now she's tasted a few things Babybear is beginning to let me know her likes and dislikes.

She's a bit off the broccoli, to be honest, but can't get enough apples. (It's very cute, we've put the fruit bowl on a low table and she goes and grabs an apple or a banana when she fancies one. Not that she can get them started without some help, I mean she is fairly gifted, obviously, but she's not that good...)

She has decided that she is over green beans but she still loves peas, frozen or cooked. Cauliflower she can take or leave. But then so can I. She seems to like all of her carbs, so she's delighted to eat pasta, bread and porridge, and happily chomps down on lentils, beans and meat. Steak is okay, pork is better but chicken, by god... she adores roast chicken, basically eating the meat off two legs of chicken the other night. I didn't hand her the whole leg, by the way, I am aware that she's not Henry VIII.

However carrot, my friends, is off the menu. Won't even touch it, bless her headstrong little socks.

Sorry about that.

It's not perfect, actually, as it only searches through the pieces that Morv and I have written, but it does at least get you started. And it brings up photos, which as we all know are the only bits of this site that people are really interested in...

So is everyone doing this, then? Morning and night?

HOW?

We probably manage to brush Babybear's teeth once a day, in her bath, but to be honest she very rarely lets me put the brush into her mouth so it's very much up to her how co-operative she wishes to be. Often she spends more time chewing the end of the brush than she does cleaning her teeth. We aren't using baby toothpaste because my friend told me that we shouldn't (although I've quite forgotten the reason, of course... possibly something to do with fluoride?) so I just rub the tiniest amount into the brush before handing it over. For some reason the mintiness takes her completely by surprise every time, but I try not to laugh too hard as I feel this could create the wrong mood.

This is far from a top tip, because I have actually come in search of top tips... but I do notice that if I am brushing my teeth at the same time things tend to go better. In  fact, the very best way to get her to do it is to allow her to steal my (very soft) toothbrush, but as I see her trusting little face turned up I do sometimes worry that I will be passing on germs that her immune system will collapse under. Still,  whatever works...

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/startingsolids/babyledweaning/

It's fine, y'know, basically just a crib from the crazy Dutch website piece that Gill Rapley co-wrote and of course it's good to have more information out there... but they do stuff it up at one point when they get their resident Health Visitor to comment on BLW. Why oh why do they let these people interfere..?

Here's the paragraph, entitled:

"Are there any disadvantages to Baby Led Weaning?

"Not all foods can easily be made into baby-friendly finger shapes so your baby's diet may be rather limited, unless you are very inventive. Helen Pegg, BabyCentre's health visitor advises parents to include at least some mashed foods when they starting the weaning process. This allows you to give your baby a more varied diet."

Mashed foods - what? Mashed potato? Cos that's quite easily turned into a chip-shape, I find... oh, you want more varied than broccoli and asparagus and mangetout do you? Well, let me have a think about that. I am pretty inventive, you know...

Well, one thing that it might be useful to know is that the babies only need the chip-shaped thing for about a fortnight after which in my humble experience their motor control develops at an alarming rate and they stick their little hands round anything they can possibly get hold of.

That's big flakes of fish, that's steak, that's pasta shapes, that's bread with home-made chicken soup spooned over it, that's apricot, pear and peach bum-cheeks, pieces of chicken, green beans, baby corn, that's meatballs, moon biscuits, rice cakes, cucumber, apples, as well as the nutritionally essential car keys and television remote controls. Oh for goodness sakes, I know a lot of those things actually come in a chip-shape (green beans and baby corn, I'm thinking) but I am truly at a loss as to which foodstuffs this woman was talking about. Trust a bloody Health Visitor to come in at the end and bollocks things up...

Okay, I'm really not kidding, I want a list of foods that cannot be cut or moulded in such a way that a child of, say 7 months, wouldn't be able to eat. For the first month let's assume that you are mostly doing carrots, broccoli, banana, potato, cucumber, cheese, pasta, that sort of thing. Not that I was, but then as I said I am very inventive...

Here's mine.

1. Couscous.  Unless I slightly overcook it so that it goes a wee bit clumpy in which case it's fine. Babybear loves it with roast veggies, by the way... must write that up one day.

2. Rice Pudding. Only because we haven't had it yet, really, cos it's been summer. Obviously it's a staple of most jar-fed babies diets regardless of the season (I got a jar of Cow & Gate Organic rice pud free from Ikea which has a best before of July 2007... Jesus wept...) so poor Babybear has lived a life without cream and sugar and rice so far. I might make some now that the weather is turning, I bet she'd wolf it down now but at 7 months it might have been tricky.

3. Lentils. Well, you could get inventive on their ass and make them into some kind of burger I suppose but I am prepared to give Helen Pegg HV lentils. Until 8 months-ish, in Babybear's case, when she was able to grab them just fine.



Any more for any more? I'm not taking the piss, I really want to make up a list and send it to Babycentre so that future BLWers can see the foods which this method so cruelly excludes from our babies not-very-varied-diet, at least for a while.

Post-Script
Okay, so I have posted our puny list of 8 things that babies can't have on the Babycentre website, along with a polite explanation of the demerits of their Health Visitor's astronomical gaffe. Much to my embarrassment, however, it turns out that Babycentre don't let you put paragraph marks onto their pages (they do before you press 'submit', the eejits) so now my reasoned argument against mashing food for BLWers look like the spittle-flecked rantings of a lone crazy woman...

When I read the guidelines and tips for 'normal' weaning I see a lot of experts recommending dips for introducing babies to finger food, but I'd have to say that Babybear doesn't care for the dipping experience. I think she thinks it's a bit stupid... a retrograde step for one so obviously advanced...

So don't sweat it.

It really irritates me that so many Health Visitors I hear about seem to be making a virtue out of the fact that if you feed your babies puree 'you can have him on three meals a day within a fortnight'. Honest, my friend's HV told her that only last week.

I just don't understand what the rush is... is it not true that babies should be getting the bulk of their nutrients from their milk for the first 12 months? Did I pick that up wrong?

Well, I suppose that if I was spoon feeding my child every day while my own meal got cold then I'd be highly motivated to get onto the 'self-feeding' stage, but don't people who are doing baby led weaning get a free pass in that regard? Or is it just me who truly does not give a flying bollock how quickly Babybear takes to solids?

Now, I'm not saying that if she was refusing all food that I would be quite so relaxed, and I do understand that I am fortunate that she is prepared to give most things at least a try before letting them dangle precariously over the side of her highchair in the manner of a gangland boss dealing with a copper's nark. But if you read the BLW FAQ you will see that a lot, really, a lot of the Yahoo Group babies didn't take to self-feeding until they got to 12 months. Which is, not by coincidence I think, the same time as their milk needs to be supplemented...

So if you are new to BLW and freaking out because your friends' puree-fed babies seem to be wolfing down chickenandapricotandsweetpotato mush as fast as their mums can spoon it in, don't worry, your baby will get there when they are ready. To be perfectly honest Babybear rarely has three square meals a day and she's nearly ten months old, but that is I admit largely down to my lack of organisation. I reckon I've got another couple of months before I need to crack it so I'm not at all worried.