This is kind of an addendum to Sometimes They Really Eat Nothing, but I just wanted to ask about how other babies have behaved during growth spurts? Babybear must have been going through one over the last few days, as it appears that her appetite for milk has doubled. Honestly, the amount of Boots loyalty card points I am building up with this child...

It's amazing. She's nine months, as you may know, and she's always been a really good wee eater. Now she is much, much less interested in food than in milk. Perfectly happy to nibble on some broccoli rather than wolfing down a forest of trees (well, three), and eating a few bits of potato here and there, and bits and bobs of bread. Nothing in comparison to her usual range and amount of food.

Meanwhile, we have started doing a dream feed (first time ever - when she was younger she saw a dream feed as an invitation to play for the next three hours) at about 10.30pm. Even with that she might wake as early as 5am, the little rotter. I'm not really fussed, just fascinated to know if anyone else's baby has been the same, as I don't suppose I would have noticed it so much with her 6 month spurt as that was when we started weaning her.

Any thoughts?

Their administrators have deleted most of my posts (I was posting as MissPollyHadADolly) because this daft wee blog so threatens their enormous enterprise...

Apparently you're not allowed to mention other web addresses in case mothers use their brains and decide to visit more than one website... ze information about ze Baby Led Veaning is not for sharing, ja?

They've warned me if I mention this site again they'll revoke my membership and posting 'privileges'. It's obviously a very supportive environment.

Oddly, they've failed to spot one of the posts, but it can only be a matter of time before it is removed too. What a bunch of arseholes. Anyway, be warned I-Villagers,  it's a local site for local people. No  'incomers'  allowed.

S'true. Or at least it is for Babybear. She might wake up in the morning and turn her nose up at her bottle, drinking a scant ounce or so and then hardly have any breakfast either. It's quite freaky when it happens. But from what I've seen she never goes a full day without eating and drinking well, so I'm not worried about it. So does this happen to everyone, then?

I just wanted to check... is it just Babybear who, upon eating something, anything, for the first time pulls a face like I've just handed her an arsenic sandwich and actually shivers with revulsion? I'm tempted to give her something really revolting to see if she can crank it up a gear to express genuine horror. That would be very wrong, though, wouldn't it?

And here's what I've found... they all do Baby Led Weaning. In fact it was my own mother, who as you should already have gathered is right about everything, who said 'Oh for God's sake Aitch, stop reinventing the wheel, after the second child they're all baby led weaned.' Or words to that effect. She's really very supportive of me, you know. (I, by the way, am the eldest of four, weaned by the midwives onto baby rice at two weeks. It's a wonder I'm not typing this from my dialysis bed.)

So I have been asking parents of more than a couple of children that I have come across if they can tell me how weaning went for them. Without exception they tell me that they faithfully mixed purees for No. 1, slid a bit for No. 2 but No. 3 got loads more finger food. Partly because they were too busy for the one-on-one that spoon feeding requires and partly because by the third child they had established a routine whereby they were cooking actual real proper food every night that was suitable for children (no salt etc) and that while the mother is distracted by some dreadful menial domestic chore the baby is inevitably provided with some technically ‘unsuitable’ ie non pureed food by their siblings and just gets started.

And the mother, because she trusts her instincts and because she hasn’t yet broken the first two kids, lets them get on with it. Now, I'm hardly tripping over people with three children or more in the street, they are increasingly hard to find... which makes me wonder if the fact that most of us have fewer children nowadays at a later age has separated us from the ‘natural’ way of doing things? Well, until now, of course...

I keep on seeing people on other websites saying that their Health Visitors are advising mothers that their babies 'should' be on three meals a day by a certain age. (I'm not even going to print the age because the whole concept is bogus, so those of you who have stumbled on this page in a desperate search for hard facts which prove you are inadequate parents who are starving your children will be forced to look elsewhere.)

Now, I should stress that I am not accusing my own Health Visitor here because she has studiously avoided me since I quizzed her relentlessly when she came to give me her weaning talk... 'baby rice for the first week, apple puree for the second, carrot puree the third and then you're on your own'... and told her I was going to do Baby Led Weaning, which of course she'd never heard of. Having nervously suggested that the baby might choke to death she left the building and has never been seen again.

(Funnily enough, Morv goes to the same surgery as I do and the whole reason she weaned Boomer a little bit earlier was because of the panicky Health Visitors claiming to have seen her take a dip on the centile charts. I wouldn't know about Babybird because since all the problems I had with breastfeeding in the beginning - which one day I will work up sufficient bile to tell you all about - I have kept her away from the weighing scales and been much the happier for it.)

Anyway, I just can't understand how these other Health Visitors can be so definitive about what babies 'should' be eating. Think about it, with every other area of child development they give you months of leeway either side and solemnly tell you NOT to compare your child with other babies, but with weaning it's so prescriptive. Can you imagine if they indicated that you weren't doing a good job as a mother if your baby wasn't walking by a year? It drives me crackers because it stresses mothers out and that stress absolutely transmits to the child, leading to food anxieties all round...

So it seems to me that if your child is happy, healthy and enjoying playing with food, then you are doing just fine. Don't cut back on milk feeds, as I have heard some (idiot) Health Visitors advise, high-calorie milk is their main source of nutrients for the first year, and just leave the food for fun. As for three meals a day, bollocks. Only in the wealthy West do we finish our breakfasts while we wonder what we're having for lunch. Babybear sometimes has one, two or three solid feeds (sometimes with snacks if she wants them) because, and pardon me if I appear to be going over old ground here... we are doing Baby Led Weaning, not Health Visitor Led Weaning.