Hi guys
Sorry if this has already been asked, but how many times a day do you feel your bubbas? So far the Weeble has only been having one "meal" a day, if you can call waving bits of carrots vigourously in the air and rubbing banana into his hair a meal. We've only been doing this weaning lark for a week, and I don't know when I should be stepping up to three meals a day etc.

Weebs is 28 weeks old, by the way, and a strapping 75 percentiler - he's inherited his mum's chubby cheeks, poor mite.

Argh, I meant "feed your bubbas", not feel your bubbas! Didn't mean to imply that we're all sat around, er, groping ourselves...

Hi Bunny
The Baba has been BLW for 3 weeks, she is 27 weeks old and also a 75ther!! I asked the same question a while back - got no reply!! Miserable old farts!! No I think it was in the middle of a bit of a rant so it prob got missed. I just offered the Baba something at lunchtime for the first week, then breakfast also the second and this week have been offering at teatime too. Do cooked veg at lunchtime and quick things like oatcakes and cream cheese for tea. Like you say she spends most of time sucking things to death, dropping them or rubbing them round her face!

ahem. this miserable old fart has posted a number or times that Babybear eats breakfast (9-ish) then has lunch on the run (rice cakes, sultanas, organix crapola) and has dinner around 4 or 5 (depending on how her day has been). so really only two main meals most days but plenty of oatcakes and fruit and snacks if she's out and about. and bread. the poor child eats a lot of bread and pasta if we're out for lunch.

Thank you Aitch and Momma. I did try and look to see if you'd already answered the question, Aitch, but I got lost... oh for a search function!

Momma, your schedule sounds the way I thought things should go, I will probably introduce a second meal next week. I bought some baby pasta yesterday and my husband got all excited and started wittering on about making Spaghetti Vongole for him... he's loving the BLW but I don't think he's ready for mussels just yet!

Ta Aitch me lovee! Knew that would get you typing! BLW going good. The Baba tried pasta today and seemed to quite like it despite slimey texture. Also had fromage frais for first time on rice cake. I enjoyed woofing down the rest of this full fat delight! I take it everyone eats whats left??? Or is it just me being greedy?

btw THe Momma I read your post about number of meals and had written a reply but I couldn't get it to post - and never got back to it - Sorry. Boomer has roughly three meals a day but one is usually in name only as she really isn't intrested. She has a breakfast at about 9 , lunch about 1 and dinner 6 ish, but if lunch has been late she may not have any dinner. Feeding is sometimes more like one long extended snack as I do offer her sultananas and fruit througout the day.

Snap, Morv. sometimes i feel like we just hand her things all day... i wonder if that's healthy, you know, keeping her insulin levels steady, or if it's better to get them used to certain meals at certain times? who knows?

welllll, you could argue it from various stand points. I read something somewhere (how very useful) that toddlers need little often so to make sure they gets lots of healthy snacks has they are burning energy constantly - I figure that it must be the same for babies as they are in constant motion. But as we know mealtimes are also important from the social point of view. So I do think that its ok to give them stuff throughout the day but with times when we sit down and eat. It always used to find it funny when Boomer was smaller (i.e. before weaing) that people were surprised that she needed fed every three hours (on a good day - every 1 to 2 in a growth spurt). I as an adult probably eat every three hours or so - so why it should be different for a baby? Most people have a breakfast/lunch/dinner and a few snacks in which when actually timed shows that they are eating all day!

Hi! I am new to this blog and very excited about the BLW possibilities. My daughter is 25 weeks now. I'd just like to find out when Babybear was born, so I can calculate at what age you fed her (?) carrots/bread/cheese etc.
Its probably on the site somewhere, but I couldnt find it straightaway. Thanks!

we started BLW in the middle of june, so by the time i started the blog she'd had quite a few finger foods which it took be a couple of weeks to write up. i just gave her veggies and fruit for probably the first fortnight and then, because we don't really have any allergy worries, started to give her bits of crust etc to chew on. i think she probably had cheese quite early on as well. good luck, mirasmum, it's very good fun. (but don't stress if she doesn't take to it immediately, some babies like to take their own sweet time...)

Hi Aitch, Thanks for the warm welcome! I gave Mira a couple of piece of peeled organic apple yesterday and she had a ball. I put them on a plastic plate, and she switched between sucking on the apple and the plate itself! At one stage I realised she had sucked a small piece off the apple, and had a slight panic oh-my-god-is-she-going-to-gag attack, but she managed to swirl it around her mouth for a bit and eventually swallow it. Should I look for it in her diaper this morning? :-) I'd still like to know what month Baby Bear was born in- is it January?
I'm going to try steamed carrot tonight...

this is ludicrous I know, but i don't want to be too specific about her date of birth on such a public place as the internet, even to the extent of saying the month. she was 6 months old when we started...
have you thought about steaming the apple? i'd give it some thought, because i actually think that it's quite a choking hazard while raw. maybe not in the first week but because (as your baby has demonstrated) you never know when they're going to manage to bite off a lump, i wouldn't risk it. steamed is grand, though. basically if you start from the bottom of the finger foods and work up you'll get the gist of what Babybear was eating and when. (and yes, i'd look out for that apple... you'll get the shock of your life when you realise it's actually gone down. and feel ridiculously proud to boot!)

Hi all!
I'm sooooo glad I've found you. I just couldn't do the mush food thing. Jars are not for me either.
Babymac's first taste of solid was part of my morning apple. I'm happy to say he sucked til it was mush but it was raw and he didn't choke on it. He also had garlic toast this morning (first carefully licked off all the butter then the garlic from the other side, finally he smushed the remains on his socks). Like your recipe ideas and going to try some in the next few weeks.
Although it seem to be a lot of frying going on, can I grill some of the things in your recipes instead?
I know it's a lot of different comment's in one but I'm still reeling from the idea of disobeying my much hated health visitor. :-)

it's pretty much a case of trial and error as i get the feeling that particularly Moomin's recipes are invented on the spot. i daresay you'd be able to oven bake things like the bhajis and chickpea burgers, and i often do the breaded chicken in the oven.
thing is, though, there is nothing inherently wrong with frying food for the baby, as far as i'm aware they do need some fats. i'm forever doing things in butter here for that reason... (and it does taste heaps better, of course).

Hello fabulous BLW guru goddesses. I am loving your work! My 5.5 month old daughter seems to be a budding candidate for BLW - she loves to grab, gum and chew everything in sight, and is already sitting up nicely. So after reading your blog at the weekend, plus Gill Rapley's excellent article, I let her have a few carrot sticks and a chunk of banana to play with (she was happy as a pig in poo!) on the basis that she wouldn't be swallowing any just yet. Well, today's nappy proved me wrong! There were quite a lot of banana fibres in there as well as a goodly few flecks of carrot. Is this good or bad? I feel a bit guilty as she's not quite 6 months old yet - should I hold off until then or keep letting her play with fruit and veg so that she can make her own mind up if she wants to swallow it or not?

Mummyred and Babyred xxx

welcome mummyred (and babyred),
i'm sure it's fine, really. if you follow the BLW concept then they should be ready if they can do it. your baby can do it, ergo...
maybe keep her off potential allergens until the 6 month mark, though?

HI Mummy and Babyred, Boomer also started playing with bits of fruit and veg before the 6 mth mark. I agree with Aitch that this is probably ok as long as its only really once a day and more for the squishy entertainment value.
Enjoy - you are about to be doing much more clothes washing!

Thanks Aitch and Morv - I've continued giving BabyRed the odd bit of veg to squish around but since her brilliant start she has continuously missed her mouth with the rest of it so it was a bit of a false dawn anyway.

We're trying steamed sweet potato tomorrow... to decorate my kitchen walls!

THis is so normal at the beginning - one day the are really intrested in shoving stuff in their mouth and the next day absolutly no intrest. Some days you can't get stuff out the fridge quick enough and others you end up with lots of stuff on the floor and nothing in the baby. The main thing if you can relax and follow your baby's lead its great fun - also you will find your tidiness standard lowers - which can only be a good thing!

Totally agree with Morv, both about the eating and the tidiness. don't waste good food, however, some days i seem to stick a lot of leftovers in the fridge which can be resurrected the next day.

Help! E is only 18 weeks and I dont know what to do! This week we've suddenly started grabing at mums food and getting in a real state- tears, grunts, pushing, swiping etc etc when I eat my food and she doenst get any! I know its not really right if I intend to BLW but I tried just putting my spoon to her mouth at breakfast and she opens wide and if a drip of milk gets in she is exstatic! What to do?? It seems far to early to offer her foods and her hand to mouth action is obviously not up to full eating yet but its going to be hard not to eat in front of her for the next 6 weeks and possible distructive to BLW as its suuposed to be a social experience! Help! Any suggestions?

If she is just wanting to join in, how about giving her a spoon to play with while you are eating? Or letting her take a bit of her usual milk off a spoon? Just enough to make her feel like she is joining in.

hhhmmm... thing is, if it were me and i could see that my child's hand to mouth co-ordination weren't up to snuff then i'd take that as a sign that they also weren't ready for solids, iykwim? there is some debate about the Dept of Health guideline set at 6 months, but i think it's a good blanket guideline to protect everyone.

however, i have known babies who have swiped and eaten food at 5 months, so you'd have to assume that if they could do it, they can do it. do you know what i mean? in the same way that they can't walk until their leg muscles are strong enough to support them?

i'd go along with giving him some chilled chew toys to play with at dinner time, giving him a spoon to chew on and maybe even a bowl to bang on, which will help keep things friendly and fun.

the time will come soon enough when he'll swipe something successfully and gets it into his mouth. if it happens to be before 6 months, though, just remember to try to be cautious about gluten so don't go leaving any sarnies lying around. good luck. and maybe make sure that he's had a good milk feed before dinner so at least you'll know that it's nosiness rather than hunger that's spurring him on.

Bruno is 20 weeks now and a few weeks ago started to swipe for food and be interested in everything we eat - to such an extent that he will launch himself at my bananas and gets excited just seeing them!

I let him play with food when I eat (mainly cucumber which is helping his teething or french beans) but he rarely actually wants to eat it - he chews & sucks then discards very rapidly! Unless its banana of course!

Thank You! For all your suggestions.
My main prob is that I really want to go with BLW and thought I'd convinced my husband and my mum but as soon as I mentioned the performance we are going though when I eat and how quickly E is now getting hungrey (we are back up to feeding every 2-3 hours with 6-7 oz bottles) everyone saying "Baby Rice" to me.
I'll let you know how we get on.

Oh and I've tried to register but awaiting my confirmation email I'm hopefully going to be Trixiesmallpiece

I think it has been said before but if you find that E is feeding more often and taking more food, it may be a growth spurt. You may find that it settles down again. I think a lot of us experienced that upsurge in hunger to which the stock advice was "baby rice". However, just by providing the milk that is asked for, the growth spurt comes and goes and then you continue merrily along n milk alone until 26 weeks and then out come the sweet potato batons.

If you look at growth spurts from the point of view of a breastfed baby, they make more sense - you may feed with a bottle, but baby is designed to work on breastfeeds, if you get me.

When a baby is preparing for a growth spurt they have to "tank up" so they have enough supplies for the extra work. After they have got through the spurt mum has to feed a bigger baby, so the increased feed tells her body that she needs to produce more milk so that she is ready for the bigger baby that is on it's way.

Some other first foods that we have done in the past 2 months that don't have a separate blog post for 6 months that I can see:

Aubergine - soft squidgy chunks that could easily be sucked off the skin
Cauliflower - a nice white tree that seems to be more accepted (when out to lunch at least) than broccoli that is clearly just there to sweep the rest of the food off the tray
Beetroot - roasted or pickled - it was part of a salad we had and he sucked it dry
Roast beef
Cabbage - a bit stringy for those with a strong gag reflex but Bruno liked sucking the cooked leaves
Garlic - roasted, open up to cool and let them suck out the insides, yummy!
Kiwi - quartered lengthways, cut out the white stem bit and wait for those black seeds to appear in the nappy
Mange Tout - similar to green beans
Onion - roasted so soft & sweet
Orange - careful if allergicky but good to suck the juice from
Pak Choi - similar to cabbage I guess but Bruno sucked on it until it fell apart
Papaya - nice soft squishy fruit
Parsnip - roasted, there's no other way to eat them.
Pineapple - this was a huge success but watch out below!!
Sausages - someone suggested skinning them to me but Bruno was able to nibble on the end OK without the need for skinning
Fish - salmon, haddock, sea bass, smoked mackerel in whole or fishcake form
Fruit Smoothies - anything goes here as long as its smooth, get out the cup and make sure the splashmat is HUGE!

Is that enough for you Aitch?

good-oh, ta. are there really no listings for those? tut tut.

Not that I could see on 6 months...

Are raspberries an allergy issue?

If not, they are fabulous. They basically fall completely apart, so don't have the choking hazard that lots of other small fruits have.

We go to pick our raspberries off our bush and the bubs eats them all by the time we get to the backdoor.

what a marvellous blog, very entertaining and beautifully written. perhaps competition for annabel karmel??? as i think you should take it to a publisher.
thank you