Babies need teeth to be able to chew.

Mine is just getting her first at nearly 16months! She's a champion chewer!

rofl!

the one that springs to mind is 'but they might choke on a lychee stone if you don't do purees' [wink]

or 'she's a big girl she'll never last to 6 months only on breastmilk..how cruel!'

and 'you'll need to sweeten things up at first. sprinkle sugar on things like bananas, that helps them go down well'

oh and 'oh you haven't brought any food for her? well i'm not sure they have a children's menu..'

and my favourite, and very recent one.. 'baby pasta is great, helps them get used to pasta.' lolololololol

not sure if they're myths as such, but still quite amusing!

Not really a weaning myth, more of a BLW myth.

My favourite when I'm handing food to the Pickle.....

'but aren't you worried she'll choke??'

and at the mere hint of a cough or splutter....

'she's choking, she's choking!!'

I have to keep stopping my Dad from turning Tink upside down and slapping her on the back! She's been doing BLW for three months and I semi live with my parents, you'd think they'd be used to it by now!

How about:

If you don't feed them with a spoon they will never learn to use one

or

You lose that closeness you get when you feed them yourself

?

I've started to leave a spoon for Tink on her tray (plates go on the floor, so food is tipped onto her tray to save too much mess) and she is starting to take interest in it, the wrong end has even ended up in her mouth a couple of times! As for the closeness, we eat together and she can turn anything into a game, hiding food on her lap or distracting (she thinks) me while she drops food and me catching it all. She's constantly laughing and I really enjoy meal times with her.

I have to say though, I don't get that much mess from her, she eats loads and is very efficient. Weetabix was messy for a while, but she has learnt to get around that.

lol, I have to have a good chuckle at these! Now, i did worry about the spoon thing... DS is now 21 months and a spoon hater - still totally refused to let it anywhere near him. BUT, today he took a spoon and hate a pot of fruit puree [shudder] quite well. Rest assured dear mother and HV he can actually eat with a spoon afterall :-)

My favourite weaning one is "he was a big baby so we had to wean early"

God, me too - my daughter is massive, always at least 1 or 2lb bigger birthweight than these "huge" "hungry" babies, and she stayed merrily on the 99th (plus) centile on milk....

That there is a 'window' where you've got to get your baby eating everything otherwise you've left it too late and they'll be on breastmilk only for the rest of their lives.

Heard from the health visitors that if you haven't started weaning by 6 months then you've missed this window - and also that you've got to introduce every taste before 12 months otherwise your baby will never like anything new.

thanks, ladies, very good myths there. although dizzy you seem to hang around with some right nutters i'd have to say.
and i got given the bit about the 'weaning window' as well. and i said exactly what you did 'so she'll be on milk for the Rest Of Her Life if i stuff this up, then?' was met by a somewhat blank look. honestly, sometimes i don't think they listen to themselves...

How about "she'll never to learn to handle cutlery if you don't spoon feed her first".

Oh yeah? Then how come my 10 month old is better with her spoon than your 15 month old!

Oh, and another HV classic, from the last time I took IzzyMouse anywhere near one, at four months.

"Purees expand the stomach. She won't have enough capacity for the food she needs later on if you don't fill her up now."

Cue stunned silence followed by some tumbleweed blowing across the surgery floor.

"Purees expand the stomach"?!! I have never heard anything so absurd... What was she thinking? I can't begin to imagine where she has got this codswallop from.

I think I managed to avoid all healthcare professionals when it came to weaning, hence no stupidity. I think I must have managed to avoid other parents to. Am I living in an unsociable bubble? Perhaps I only have virtual friends. Someone, somewhere must have said something daft...

OH MY GOD. no-one will be able to beat that one, Mij. i actually think that's the stupidest thing anyone's ever said, ever.

Feeling guilty - Why oh why did I not find this site before I started weaning.

I started weaning at about 5.5 months because I thought (stupidly) that it was going to be the answer to our sleeping problems. But as i am sure you can imagine, it did not solve anything and now at 7.5 months our sleeping is getting worse.

I have been doing the BLW for 3 days now and the weebean doesn't seem to be getting much in her mouth (she does get some) which I guess means that is isn't entirely ready for solids???

So now I feel fricken awful that I shovelled baby rice into her poor beautiful face at 5.5 months.

Urgh!

not at all, melfi, she's fine. what you have to do, though, is rid yourself of all thoughts of 'how much' she's getting to eat. just forget about it, as they say, 'until they're one food's just for fun'. some babies start eating quickly and others take months, the deal is that if you're doing BLW you don't interfere. Babybear, for example, wasn't eating anywhere near the HV's golden 3 meals a day until she was about 11 months old (although that was partly down to my lack of organisation on my part).

the 'golden rule' is 'unlimited milk', so if you're worried about your supply then i can understand that you might be fretting a bit. but don't worry, as i said before if you take it easy and feed like fury for the next few days that should sort it out.

if this is weebean's first finger foods then she's on the same learning curve that a baby of 6 months is, you'll just have to give her a wee bit of space to get better at self-feeding. you'll be amazed at what can happen in a week, though.

stop feeling guilty, though, sweetheart, there's no point to it. i'm sure she loved that baby rice and i'm quite sure that you didn't shovel anything. to be honest, the type of person who jams food into her child's unwilling mouth wouldn't really be searching the internet for alternatives at 7.5months, would she? she'd just be getting on with it, wouldn't she? so, no guilt. it's not allowed. just take a breather and remember that you can start worrying about all this when she gets to a year, until then the milk's the main thing. good luck, have a lovely weekend, speak to you soon.

Aw Thanks so much for your kind and very encouraging words. I am a natural born worrier and am really trying to pack it in so I can enjoy my first baby a bit more. Thank you for your advice, i will try and chill out and just let her get on with it.

We just ate lunch and it went quite well. Pitta pockets with cheese A la "the recipe page" they seemed to be a hit with Weebean. It was funny towards the end she was biting down and pulling it out her mouth like she was puposefuly trying to get a big bit off??? Probably just to make me worry some more.

Completely off topic, I am sure I read you are a Glaswegian. I ain't far from Glasgow myself. Will you be heading down to the baby show this weekend??

Thanks again for all your help. OOh and I just love your site, you and morv should be very proud of it!

poor morv is doing about 75 things at the mo, so she hasn't been around much. thanks on both our behalf (behalves?) though.
i didn't know there was a baby show, i went last year, it was fairly hellish... a lady called annabel karmel was there, theough, she seemed to talk a lot of sense. [wink]

my favourite weaning myth is that Annabell Karmel is in any way qualified to give nutritional advice to the nation.

Melfi, I know how you feel. I started weaning on purees a bit early too after increasing pressure from the world and his wife. Pumpkin wasn't sleeping through but feeding her didn't help a bit, in fact it made her worse. (In fact, she didn't sleep through until 10 months). She has taken ages to get the hang of eating. Sometimes she won't eat at all and sometimes she eats lots. The secret is to just not worry about it and no guilt.

I know that Aitch said it all but I just wanted to reiterate and to say you are not the only one who feels like this.

Tracy

"you have to get her on 3 meals per day and a couple of spoons of babyrice isn't enough"

Actually a couple of spoons of babyrice was far too much bearing in mind that my little princess was less than half the weight of the average baby her age imagine how small her stomach must have been.

"17weeks is the magic number" from a health visitor.
But whatever happened to when shes ready? i mean i was holding a tiny little baby who couldn't sit up by herself and could just about manage 3ozs of milk in one go, whyever would she suddenly be ready for pureed veg just because she hit an age milestone?