ds1 and ds2 were both formula fed and weaned at about 3 months on purees. ds1 was weaned on jars, and the horrible powder stuff that you mix with water or milk, he was quite possibly the fussiest eater you will ever meet, funnily enough, since josh has been eating ds1 has now started eating more! ds2 was weaned on a combination of jars and homemade purees, he too is fussy, but not as fussy as ds1 was. my hope this time was by offering josh the food we eat right from the start that it would go some way to avoiding him being as fussy as the other 2. also, as i breastfed this time it seemed more logical to keep the 2 things separate and still carry on breastfeeding on demand as well as offering proper food, rather than substituting milk for solids at certain times of the day like i did with the other 2.

Well, we had started mushing before I heard of BLW. I was told about it by a midwifery lecturer at a breastfeeding clinic. I was worried about Minky not getting enough calcium from just breastmilk (Really? Worried about calcium? You do surprise me!). She had been to a conference and seen a presentation about BLW. She told me the babies were just offered food and allowed to have what they wanted. She said they didn't necessarily eat much until they were 9 months, so I shouldn't worry about not giving Minks dairy - breastmilk would be fine.

Anyway, I then started to look into it a bit more. I had always said, when we began weaning, that I wanted Minky to feed herself tea as soon as possible! I figured that finger food was traditionally introduced at 7 months, so she should get going on sandwiches and fruit for tea without my assistance. This was laziness on my part.

I think this blog was the first lot of information I found about BLW. It seemed very exciting. Partly, I wanted to be different. Partly, I wanted the ease of everyone eating the same thing. I'd been mashing for two months. I was pretty fed up of it. Partly, she was going right off the spoon. Three weeks after first hearing about BLW I was offering her lamb burgers. A month later she was totally refusing the spoon.

I think she would have refused the spoon anyway. I'm glad I'd already worked out how to offer her food before that happened. And I'd already come to terms with the mess.

Speaking to my mother about this, I was a prototype BLW-baby. I never, ever let anyone spoon feed me. My mum duly mashed everything up and then I stuffed my little fists in the bowl and shoved it in my mouth. Apparently I had an argument with my grandmother who was determined to feed me sherry trifle with a spoon. I won. (I bet the trifle had actual sherry in it as well.) So, no surprise that Minky is also determined to do it herself.

So, I guess I was attracted to the ease and the wierdiness of it and it's turned out to be the way that Minky wants to eat.

I heard about it from a friend whose first babe is two years older than IzzyMouse, and second just four months older, and I saw both of them doing just fine. And it just sounded so completely, well, natural. And being an unreconstructed hippy, natural = good. It fits with the other stuff we've chosen to do down to the ground (cloth nappies, babywearing, BFing, veggie la di da di da).

I like the evolutionary rationale - if they can pick it up they can eat it. Cave mummy didn't have a magimix at her disposal. I might be a hippy but i still have to have logical justification.

And then there's the sheer lazy toadiness it enables... sorry, all the extra time it give me to play with DD. But honestly, if you did do the pureeing route, particular a la the carrot and pear puree queen, you'd do nothing else but mash food. And quite frankly I have better things to do. Like go to the park, and make mud pies, and sing 'bouncing up and down on a big red tractor' eighty five times in a row.

And then, when it came to it Madam Independent wouldn't let me put a spoon in her mouth anyway (only tried it with yoghurt and porridge, honest...) so it's a good job

I was lurking on a parenting website while pregnant and someone posted a link to the crazy Dutch site as an aside to a bfing argument. No one responded to it, but it sowed the seed in my mind. Then once I had Piglet I went looking again and, like you say, it just seemed to make so much sense. It fits in with two general ideas I have about the kind of parent I want to be:
1) to pay attention to what she tells me she needs, rather than what anyone else's regime tells me she "should" need at a particular time or date;
2) not to create unnecessary stress and/or work that would eat up time and energy I could be using more productively and enjoyably.
- as well as one thing more specific to her, that she's another very independent type who hates anyone else to do anything for her if she can possibly do it herself. Spoonfeeding was never going to be fun.

So it all made sense together... but even so I don't know if I'd have had the confidence to try it without the examples on this site.

thanks for the replies, ladies.
isn't it funny that we all think our children are particularly independant and therefore took to BLW... i wonder if that's true, or might it be the case that giving them some autonomy over their food actually fosters independance?

ouch, i just mis-spelled independence... twice. hate that word, it's one of my few spelling blind spots.

Definitely the independence came first in our case, but I'm sure it becomes self-fulfilling.

I've been thinking about this though - is there a natural BLW type of child and a natural spoonfeeder type... Looking at other babies being spoonfed, they do seem to divide broadly into those who are content to be fed however, and those who clearly don't have much time for the spoon and whose parents sometimes have to fight to get every spoonful into them. I guess the second group contains a lot of BLWers manques! But does the first group contain a certain cohort of babies who would hate having to eat with their hands, as well as the ones who would happily mix and match?

I think IzzyMouse has always been independent too. And I tell myself that's been helped by the babywearing, security-enhancing stuff that we've done but she also has independent genes - my parents love to tell tales of me insisting I could pick up a concrete slab at age 3, wanting to read early so I could do it myself etc etc. So maybe it's a bit of nature, a bit of nature and a bit of self-fulfilling practice, just in different measures depending on the child? My LO was also mobile earlyish, which seems to fit with her 'doer' rather than 'observer' personality. My mates' babes who are more contemplative do seem much happier to be spoon-fed, and are rebelling less at age 9ish months, than the active ones, who are now wanting to control the spoon or are rejecting it outright. Fascinating, isn't it?

That should have been a bit of nature, a bit of nurture...

I won't go over old ground - I've already wanged on about how Angelcake and I got started!
It was definitely her refusal to be spoonfed that started me off looking for another way, but I'm in the same boat as Lindygirl and Moomin - we've done babywearing, co-sleeping, etc and BLW fitted in with how I wanted to bring up my little hippy family!
As for the source of her independence - it could well be that demand feeding (in our case BF, but FF would probably have the same effect) and responding to your child's cues fosters a sense of security and independence.
I do wonder about the babies who can't stand touching messy things...but Angelcake is not that fond of really squishy stuff either, and manages well with feeding herself non-mash anyway. So perhaps if those passive spoonfed babas were encouraged to experiment from the beginning they'd be less hands-off??
Who knows.

I don't even remember when I first encountered the idea, but I thought it made a lot of sense. When they are at an age when they stick everything in their mouth anyway, give them something they can actually eat.

Of course there were the usual worries (will they get enough? won't they choke?) but they were answered soon enough.

I checked to see if this method is not just something thought up by a bunch of weirdos, but the scientific backing seemed good enough so I went ahead.

And of course they love eating this way.

I seemed to spend hours on the net looking into how to do weaning properly. I even had an idylic notion of me happily stewing and mashing fruit etc. But deep down I knew I'm just not that sort of woman.

Then I stumbled across BLW. I was really interested after reading Gill Rapley's report but it was reading this site that made me realise what a normal thing it is and it's done by normal women who have a life. And no pressure about quantities - how I love the phrase "until they're one it's just for fun".

I must admit (rather sheepishly) that it also has something to do with how cute a baby looks feeding itself!

I read an article in a magazine and like everyone else it just seemed the natural thing to do - i can't imagine people in time gone by whipping out the moulinex and we're still here to tell the tale. And it just seemed to make sense and fits in with the other natural things we're trying to do (nappies etc)

And it's so much fun & this website gave so much support that i thought why not?! And when I look at Bubs in comparison to my other friends, I know i've made the right choice......the problem is trying not to become to evangelical about it all!!!

Im still fairly new to all this my wee man has only been going a couple of weeks but I got introduced to the idea by a friend who convinced me with her endles nagging (lol) that blw was the way to wean your child, having already weaned one via the puree route i wasnt sure but after doing a bit of looking around on the net and enduring yet more nagging from my friend I decided to give it a shot. So far so good, he has taken to it really well.

Like quite a few other people I had been doing a lot of research regarding weaning on the internet, I'd even bought 2 AK books, was trying very hard to get enthusiastic about purees, preparing space in the freezer, buying tupperware and then I stumbled on this blog. I read it and found that it was the first time I had actually got excited about the weaning process having previously been worrying about quantities and types of food etc etc etc. It was pure chance I found this website but I am so glad I did.

The AK books are gathering dust - I do occasionally have a look at recipes with a view to not pureeing them - in fact I found the Pickle ripping pages out of one the other day. The tupperware is mostly used for playing with (although I have to admit I love little bits of tupperware and can generally find a use for it). The freezer is full of lovely real food. Best of all the Pickle loves it and is willing to try most things at least once and does have some surprising favourites (puy lentils being top at the moment).

Nice to read everyone's replies! I heard about BLW when my DS was born (very enlightened hv) and although he was a mush-fed baby, I had it in the back of my mind. I was really keen to avoid puree with Babyred, as I didn't want her to have jars (DS never did and I wouldn't eat them myself) and had to return to work when she was 7 months old so didn't want to spend my time at the weekend pureeing and freezing. I let her play around with food to start with, then discovered (once she started nursery) that she won't eat savoury mush anyway. I think it was self-fulfilling, because she had been given the freedom to choose stuff for herself/ eat it/ play with it/ drop it on the floor/ smear it into her hair etc.

Now at 10 months old she has finally reached the stage where she hardly drops anything on the floor and eats like a horse - I am so glad we went down the BLW route. Just got to get over my salt paranoia and she will be a fully fledged proper eating baby!

I found out about BLW when Cerys was about 4 months and I was doing some preliminary research ready for weaning at 6 months. There were lots of posts about BLW on Babycentre and one poster directed me to this site. It all made so much sense and I liked that there was research to back it up. I was a very fussy child, hating the texture of many fruit and veg, and hope that we can avoid this with Cerys by introducing texture at an early age.

We started the week Cerys turned six months, with steamed carrots and she's never looked back. It's really helped her develop her fine motor skills and today she ate peas and sweetcorn for the first time. I was soooo proud!! My favourite thing about BLW is that she can sit with us through a three course meal and be totally occupied the whole time and participate in the conversation at the table.

I had never heard of BLW til I idly browsed the weaning section on mumsnet a month or so ago. My heart absolutely sank when I looked into it. I thought 'OMG not another 'alternative'. I am a sucker for alternatives you see. I'd already had my fair share of dilemmas - BF or FF (long story!), routine or no, cup or bottle, EC or nappies... I refused to look into BLW too much and convinced myself that my new A. Karmel books were the way to go.

But the pull is just too bloody strong. It makes perfect sense. It describes what we were planning to do in amongst ppurees anyway. It does away with icecube trays (how are you supposed to make room in your freezer for a whole sweet potato or carrot in ice-cube format? Doesnt it mean monotonous meals until they're used up?!). My baby will LOVE it - he's that kind of chap. Out of all the things I've ever dilemma'd about, this one took on life of its own until now it seems stupid to go out and buy a mouli/ potato ricer/ hand blender...I adore cooking and dont have any of these things at the moment so I knida knew thatI would have a problem with the idea of purees once I'd looked further into BLW.
My son is 6 mo next week and we cant wait to start. The current dilemma is 'Banana or Pear' :-)

and the answer to your dilemma is 'carrot'... welcome to the site, good luck next week.

Around the time I was due to have E there was an article in the national NCT magazine which I read and thought what a great idea. I then found this site and have been a regular reader since! Now E is 21 weeks and starting to grab at food and put it in her mouth (not sure if anys been digested yet) there is another article in my local NCT news book! So it would seem that at least in this area BLW is being explored however I mentioned it to my HV yesterday who said she'd never heard of it! But did then go on to say that we are responsible parents and if we want to go with BLw thats fine and may be we could teach them about it as we go!! The HV has redeemed herself, its taken 19 weeks but its a start! (HV on first visit took a dislike to us having a dog with a 2 week old baby- another long story!)
Trixiesmallpiece (still dont seem to be able to register)