OK, I'll start. N has hit her growth spurts up until now pretty flaming obviously, but the 6-7 month one should also coincide with weaning if you go for BLW. I have no idea if N's current exhausting behaviour is due to growth spurt, teething, changes in digestion or what, but wanted to know if other people felt that they had hit a growth spurt early into BLW, and whether this manifested itself as desire for more food in general, or just wanting to nurse/drink milk more. Aitch, I remember you saying that Babybear's sleep went to pot for a while when you started weaning - do you think this may have been related to a growth spurt? (and tell me how it got better!!!)

Oh bugger - sorry, sorry sorry - should have searched "spurts". Put it down to sleep deprivation (pathetic attempt to get sympathy)

you have my sympathy... now bugger off an re-post under Growth Spurts and i'll answer.... [wink]

I now have proof dd has been 'growth spurting'! In 3 weeks shes gained a whole lb (bearing in mind up til now 5-6oz in 3 weeks is the norm!)The HVs at the clinic didn't know what to think as they were going on about, we don't expect much weight gain as you've just started weaning, maybe even lose some, especially as you're doing this new fangled BLW thing! then put her on scales and their eyes nearly popped out! Very satisfying. Shes also grown 2 cm! Her sleep is just starting to settle down again, I'm blaming on growth spurt, slept through from 6 weeks (I know I was spoiled) then bamm waking 3 times for feeds at 23 weeks. Bit of a shock to the system! Now worked back down to 1 night feed which is manageable, living in hope this might get dropped again soon though.
At beginning of BLW she wasn't that interested in food, maybe because she couldn't get it in quick enough so just wanted to nurse more.
sorry if this rambled

Hi, I'm new to the site and a bit confused as to where to post this question- so apologies if it appears in a strange place. I'm looking for advice about my 7 1/2month old son who we're doing BLW with. He was exclusively breast fed till 6 months and just keeps going. Most folk on the site talk about how much food their babies get through. Has anyone had difficulties like us- he'll hardly eat anything?

He's slowly managing TINY pieces of toast & bread stick. He can pick up nearly everything- he picks grass off the lawn and eats it, he eats paper but he won't entertain food!

I'd quite like to know if there's anyone else who's child took a long time to "take off" with BLW. My confidence vs. health visitors is waning as he gets older & doesn't eat!

this is the right place, by the way, we don't have a forum so this is the next best thing...

babybear did take to eating quickly but i wouldn't necessarily say she was packing it away for a good few months. I've heard people on the Yahoo group (link below on the right) and Mumsnet saying that their children took until up to a year before they really took off with eating. Have a look on the left under Polls. there's a yahoo faq on there that says that loads of kids didn't really start eating until the year mark. Actually, I'll start a poll for you, shall i? hang on, it'll appear on the left shortly.

Hi, this is therfirst time I have posted on this forum but I have been looking at it for a while. I had hear about BLW and thought it sounded like a ery good idea, however through uncertainty I started the weaning process with the usual purees. However Liberty totally hated it and didn't enjoy being spoon fed at all so i started with BLW after a couple of weeks.

Liberty absoloutly loves eating her finger foods and has tried so many different things already! I stoped breast feeding at 5 months so she isbottle fed now and is taking a bit less than previously so I felt confident that she was replacing some of her milk with real food.

However I just weighed her after 2 weeks of BLW and she ahs lost 200g and has gone back to the 50th centile after being on te 75th for a couple of months. Can anyone give me advice on this?

Thanks in advance!

Hello there tezluelle, sorry i didn't see this earlier. to be honest i'm not very au fait with centiles because as i've mentioned before i didn't get my daughter weighed, but i did observe that she stretched and consolidated, stretched and consolidated, so i reckon she'd have been up and down the centiles. but 200g means nothing to me, i'm afraid, i just don't know what it means.

remember that the main source of nutrition is milk at this stage (so i personally wouldn't be rushing to cut back on it if you can help it). for me, if the baby was healthy, alert, moving around etc etc then i wouldn't worry, especially if she's started crawling recently and is expending more energy. on the other hand, if instinct tells you something is awry i wouldn't ignore it, if you know what i mean. do you think anything is wrong, really?

HI there, thanks for your reply.
No I honestly don't think anything is wrong at all and I have just realised taht she probably hasn't lost any weight at all and has just stabalised over the last month. You see I have been weighing her at home and it only occured to me thismorning that my scale is not as accurate as i thought because today dd was exactly the same weight, not less than before ( I normally only weigh her every 2 or 3 weeks but when I thought had lost weight, afer I posted I decided to weigh her again this morning because it just didn't seem right )

Anyway one thing is she isn't gaining at the same rate as before ( she was born on the 25th centile and has crept up to the 75th ) but having thought about it more i really do think she is just stabalisingand coming back down to the 50th centile which is where I would expected to be if you take mine and dps build and weight into account.

Anyway, I think I was worrying for nothing, she is totally healthy and has always taken far less milk than the average.( although I didnt realise this until I swapped to bottle and still can't unerstand how a baby can gain so much but drink so little and puke so much too) She is also a bit irritable at the moment so I think the teething is probably effecting her appetite.

However, I do have one more question. Do you think that her lack of appetite for milk at the moment could have anything to do with the fact that she is using all her jaw power on sucking and chomping food ( she does eat for a long time!) and can't be bothered to take her bottles as often? OMG thatjust sound totally irrational and stupid but I am sure I read somewhere that newborns can get too much of their sucking satisfaction from dummies and feed less than they should, so I think this is what is going thorugh my mind!

Last of all, what a great site, it really is so helpful. I have a great quick and easy recipe for bran loaf that dd loves. Do ou have a recipe section, i am inding it quite difficult to find my way around!

i don't know about having a tired jaw, although i'd be inclined to doubt it, but i do know that i kept food and milk very separate when we started off because i really didn't want her to get confused. in fact her sleep went a bit wacky when she was about 9 or 10 months old and we realised it was because she was getting her 'dinner' too close to her bedtime bottle so we pulled her solids forward to 4pm with her night bottle at 6.30pm. do you leave a nice gap between bottles and food? i think that's one of the reasons it took us so long to give her more than two meals a day, we couldn't fit it in until she voluntarily dropped a bottle.
and if you send me your recipe i'll post it up for you, this is a blog really so we're a bit limited by the technology... press on my name above and you'll get my address. good luck.

The thing is with Liberty, is that she has never had an instant appetite for milk in the morning so I have always missed taht opportunity to get a good few ounces down her! When ds was a baby he gulped down that first bottle of the day but dd manages just a couple of ounces! However, she will chomp on a piece of toast for ages! Unfortuntately ulike ds, dd has never had a very predictable routine and I have always found myself offerring her milk every coule of hours and hoping she'll want some becasue she rarely crys for it!

She has been having some solids at breakfast and tea time and occasionlaly at lunch time too. I supose sometimes her bottles do run close to her solids but i have to just go with the flow because she will not take anything she doesn't want, when she doesn't want it. (I am sure she is praciticing for her toddle tantrums when you offer her a bottlea nd she doesn't wnat it! LOL)

So, the short answer to your question is sometimes she has her solids close to her milk and other time she doesn't!

Anyway, thank you again for your advice, when I get a minute I will continue to read all you past posts and send you that recipe.

My older son (not baby led weaned) started on the 25th, went up to the 75th and settled on the 50th. So I don't think a bit of meandering around the centiles is a problem at all. I have had more of a problem with my second, as since about 5 months, he has been slowly drifting down the centiles (from just below 25th to just above 0.4). I worried that this might be because he has been very slow at learning to eat, but the paediatrician didn't seem to think this was a problem. He was more concerned that the lack of eating and the low weight gain might stem from an underlying illness. Hence we are currently having tests for coeliacs and some other stuff.

Personally I think it is just his genes, as my mam said that I didn't gain weight easily (and some other family members were the same too), and she says Euan looks just like I did weight/sizewise.

Anyhow, his eating has picked up a little recently and at his last weighing, he was starting to move up more towards the 2nd centile.

The thing with centiles is that they are for formula fed babies and breast fed babies have a seperate chart but it costs more! BF babies don't really follow the FF chart and it can cause a lot of problems when a BF baby isn't doing too well - trust me, I've been there!

I can't imagine 50th centile let alone 75th! Tink is on 2nd centile IF you adjust her age by eight weeks, if you go by her birth age she isn't on the chart (but I made a fantasy line when I was bored on Saturday to see how that looks and she's getting close to the chart!)

Josh is 13 months now, was exclusively bfed til we started blw just before 6 months. he still doesnt eat loads, altho he does eat something sometimes. im still bfing and plan to carry on as long as he wants to so its not a problem for us.

7 1/2 months is still very young. i was always told that food should be for fun in the first year and not to worry, as he will be getting everything he needs from your milk.

I'm going to risk Aitch's wrath by posting here, cos I can't see the poll yet... IzzyMouse is 11 months (and breastfed) and still barely gets through the equivalent of 3 teaspoons, let alone the alleged '3-6 tablespoons' of food some experts say she should. And she's fine, thriving, busy, full of beans, on the same centile she started etc etc. Which is all fine cos I can demand feed and I know she'll take the milk she needs - not sure how I'll be feeling when I'm back at work, but anyway. The first noticeable increase in quantity came at about 8 months, then again at 10, but she is very variable in how much, and what, she's interested in.

BTW, a friend has a great way of dealing with critical HVs. To avoid the fight, just smile, say 'thanks, I'll think about all of that' and then do just what you please.

gawd, give a girl a minute to post something will ya?

I'm new too and hope this ends up in the right place! I need your help!! I live in France and am married to a Frenchman so our five and a half month old daughter is half Brit half French. I really want to BLW but I'm not sure I've got the strength to fight - so far I've fought the battle of breastfeeding (over here I've had to fight the "it doesn't have everything she needs" lobby paid by certain formula manufacturers), and the washable nappy fight. The problem I have is that DD goes to a nanny 4 days a week who when I casually dropped the idea of BLW into the conversation looked at me as if I was suggesting a diet of vodka and kebabs! I mentioned it to the paediatrician (no HV here but paediatrician every month) who asked me why I wanted to choke my baby! I haven't even dared mention it to the mother-in-law yet who still has problems with be BFing - "so bad for the baby"!!!! Fortunately hubby is used to my "weird" ways so is quite 'whatever' about it. Excuse the LONG ramble - I am getting to my point - DD was born at term and weighed 5lb 10oz (I was 5lb 5oz at term) and she is slowly putting on weight, at 5 months she was 12lb 3oz for 24 inches so is in proportion just right at the bottom of the scale. She is in fantastic health, very alert (rolling over at 3 months), very happy, sleeps well on the whole and is generally doing well if you ignore the weight thing.

So my thing is - am I likely to have a problem with weight if she's not been piling it on so far? I intend BFing until a year if all goes well - I express so she can take my milk from a bottle when at the nanny's which works pretty well despite me feeling very cow-like! Also any tips for defending myself against nannies, mother-in-laws and paediatricians who all think I'm an English mad cow?!? Am in the process of translating Gill Rapley's report into French to show to them in the hope the magic word "UNICEF" might make them think I'm not out to kill my baby in some weird way of displaying delayed post-natal depression!
Thank you in advance to anyone who can help! (DD will be 6 months on 8th June - would like to start then, to get her used to it she sits in her high chair with us at mealtimes and watches us eat while playing with the toys I place on her highchair, she's already very keen to put her toys in her mouth and bottom 2 teeth are apparently on their way.)

Having Gill Rapley's info in French will definately be a start. I think in any country you will have a fight to do BLW as it is so "new". Your nanny is being paid by you so should do as you ask, if not then you have the option of taking your money else where (hopefully the threat is enough!)

Your paediatrition you have two choices - lip service "she just looooves her puree!" or you can give him everything you have and tell him it's what you are doing.

The in-laws are probably a different matter. Nanny insists on feeding Tink with a spoon even after we have said no - quite literally, we said no, turned back and Tink was polishing off a jelly and trifle and getting stressed because she is not used to feeding at someone elses speed. I think you just have to be firm, stick to your guns and don't put LO in a position where you can be undermined.

Unfortunately good nannies are few and far between here and it's no longer the parents who choose the nanny but the nanny who chooses the family- we had to fight off 13 other families for her!!! Up to now she's been very accommodating, I think she sees it as I'm a new mum and maybe I'm not aware the babies need to go through the purée stage - let's hope Gill will change her to my way of thinking. As for the doctor I think I'll give her the report and if she says it's no good I'll agree with her to keep her off my back then do it my way. Will test the waters with the mother-in-law as she's staying with us all next weekend.

What do you think re the weight gain? I actually had a good look at her tonight and she's pretty chubby, with some good old thigh folds so I think the issue is not weight but length - if she put on more weight without getting longer she'd be too fat. Must check weight to length ratios...

I don't know anything scientific about babies' weight gain, but it's really noticeable with Piglet that she'll go through a stage of putting on lots of fat, then suddenly shoot up in length/height and look almost slim for a while (except for the little thigh rolls!), then start laying on fat again, and so on. So if I'd been recording her weight and height on a regular basis presumably the two lines would look more like recurrently overlapping staircases (if you can visualise that?!?) than two nice smooth parallel curves...

I couldn't agree more about the weight gain, Eleanor. That's exactly what Babybear's weight would have looked like on a chart, I think. I didn't have her weighed after her first month cos we had to get it done every two days until then and it was hellish. but like eleanor i noticed chubbiness then a stretch then chubba etc.

With regards to your family in France, can't you just say that it's a British thing and let them all roll their eyes? thing is, if grandmere does a bit of spoon feeding it won't really be the end of the world so i'd not bother so much about that, but you do need the nanny on board. you'll have to pull the wacky brit thing again, i think.

also with regards to the nanny, if she's been doing it a while then you could try pointing out that when she started weaning kids at three months they'd have been on finger food at 6 anyway. All you are doing is taking avantage of their full developmental capability, really.

they do gag a bit when they start, i reckon a couple of weeks of BLW, though, and it tails off when they learn about biting and takng in the right amount for their mouths. mealtimes can also take a while in the beginning.

i hope that translating Gill's info will help, and might i suggest that you also show them the photos on here and the film clips on youtube (link below)? bonne chance!

Hi there.

I got Meningitis in France on holiday when dd was 2 weeks off 6 months, and I know what you mean about baby milk! Dd refused all bottles, and I wasn't allowed to express and so had a really big problem trying to up my milk when I got out of hospital 6 days later. Anyway my point is, there was ONE nurse who could speak English, and she was HEAVILY involved with La Leche League, and stood up for me when I wanted to feed dd myself. I was in isolation and so had to go to an office all robed up as though I was a leper. Maybe you could contact LLL and see if they have any info for you.

Good luck.

Jenn

Thanks all of you, I feel ready to give it a go now, even if it does mean lying to the doctor!

BTW, what on god's green earth can possibly be 'so bad for baby' about breastfeeding, sil vous plait?

Salut! I'm a Brit mom living in France and my little fella will be 6 months on 15 June - so we are clearly in the same place in a number of ways! Where are you, by the way? We are in Dijon.
I know exactly what you mean about the French approach - I lost the bf battle thanks in part to interfering puericultrices in the maternity clinic giving bottles without my permission - so I'm pretty keen to make the weaning stage a more natural success. We've already started playing the food game once a day and I've been amazed how he can bring food to his mouth, suck (and sing at the same time) and even swallow a few pieces. He spent 30 mins yesterday very happily eating tomato - kind of a record in terms of concentrating on something...
My recommendation to you would not to be to talk theories and books to French folk, as they will only counter with 6million little French kids thriving very well on spoon feeding and purrees - but to just quietly give it a whirl and get on with it and let your little one show them what she's able to do as she gets better and better. Beats fighting over it? No-one here seems to read any books - they just do what they are told, which is why it is such a fight if you want to do differently...
A good friend who started recently with a slightly older child and who is lapping up the purree has agreed she'll try the carrot sticks and see if he manages to chew swallow, so we can swap learnings. I'll let you know....

Thank you so much for your reply - I feel like I'm not alone!!! My only real problem is at the nanny's as I have to hope she'll go along with my "mad" way of feeding!!

Aren't the puericultrices awful?!? I called one for help when dd was going through a phase of crying on the breast after 5 mins as the milk wasn't flowing as quickly as from the bottle at the nanny's. I was asked why on earth I would consider bfing after 4 months and told it was obvious that dd was rejecting the breast and didn't want it anymore. Fortunately I dug my heels in and hung on and now she's back to happy feeding again :-)

BTW we're quite a way from you - near Grasse, shame.

Thank you so much for your reply - I feel like I'm not alone!!! My only real problem is at the nanny's as I have to hope she'll go along with my "mad" way of feeding!!

Aren't the puericultrices awful?!? I called one for help when dd was going through a phase of crying on the breast after 5 mins as the milk wasn't flowing as quickly as from the bottle at the nanny's. I was asked why on earth I would consider bfing after 4 months and told it was obvious that dd was rejecting the breast and didn't want it anymore. Fortunately I dug my heels in and hung on and now she's back to happy feeding again :-)

BTW we're quite a way from you - near Grasse, shame.

Sorry for some reason my reply posted twice - can anyone in the know erase one of the posts?

Grasse! Nice....Have you seen the film of Perfume?
Anyway - I digress - if you are still thinking you'll translate the Gill Rapley piece into French, I'd be really interested in getting hold of a copy. My pediatre didn't really take me seriously when I said I was going to try giving him food without pureeing - but he's the nicest guy and clearly reads lots of articles and stuff, so I think he would be interested to realise it is published and not just the ravings of a random English woman....

It's on my list of things to watch!
Just working on the translation now - should have it done by this weekend. Can I email it to you somewhere as I'm not sure many people on this site will be interested in it in French!

Hi there. I think I picked up from another post that you had done the translation....chapeau! I would love to have a copy. We had my sage-femme over to lunch today and she was completely bowled over by The Stanley-Man shovelling carrots and potato into his mouth in a most adept way (well done him for performing!) and she'd love to be more up to date and read the report. My email is: victoriaward@emailaccount.com
Thanks!

lansgrim, send it to me too and i'll post it up here.

Merveilleux! We are going international! I can't wait to find out how you translated BLW -la diversification mene par votre bebe??!

So when I say I translated it I mean I translated most of it, paraphrased some of it as the 6 month deadline was getting close and I needed my nanny to read it in time!! I skipped bits that didn't concern me - such as any bits relating to bottle-fed babies and I didn't translate some of the dos and don'ts as I didn't want to upset my nanny and paediatrician with things that might have undermined their basic baby knowledge such as "DON’T leave your baby on his own with food." I thought they might already be aware that this is not a good idea and I didn't want them to think I was patronising them or making out I knew more/better than them!
Aitch and Stanley's mum - I will email it to you then let you decide if it is worthy of being shared or not.

Pasting now, sorry...

I know!!! The formula manufacturers did a great Marketing job as they managed to convince French mothers that breast milk was lacking in certain nutrients so you were best off with formula!!! Shocking!

So here's the latest - 1 week before Munchkin's 6 month birthday we started her on broccoli and it was fab. After road-testing her for a week at home I handed the nanny Gill Rapley's report in French and some courgette sticks. That seemed to go well, then today we had the paediatrician who did a complete 180° and told me she didn't see BLW as creating risks of choking but was worried that Munchkin wouldn't figure out spoons later! She told me that Gill Rapley's Unicef report was most likely intended for African countries that didn't use cutlery!!! When I told her it was for the UK she said she would read the report, but did insist that these trends come and go and that she had 25 years of experience.
Anyway, ramble ramble, over the moon as both doctor and nanny on board, Munchkin having the time of her life - now done broccoli, courgette, carrot and green bean. Going to try apple & pear next, at 6 months old should I cook/semi-cook them first?
Thanks to all for your support :-)

how funny about your (somewhat racist) paediatrician... any Africans of my acquaintance have been pretty handy with a spoon, i'd have to say...
i'm sure she's seen loads of trends come and go, to be fair, so you can imagine they get pretty jaded. i remember mentioning BLW to my GP and she just said 'baby led this, baby led that... too much is bloody baby led these days'. i laughed my head off. she's a good doctor, that's the main thing.
i'd cook or grate the apple, myself, as i think it's a horrible choking hazard (the only thing Babybear ever choked on) but just go go gadget go with the pear. you can peel it, but i never bothered. (do you see a theme developing here with my parenting style?)

For some reason I've not seen your reply before Aitch - I know what you mean about the tunnel vision of my doctor! In the end I spoke to my mum about the apple business, as a mother of 5 kids and an NCT group starter she's pretty cool on how to bring up kids - thank God! She told me we were all on "normal" food by 6 months as back in the 70s we were weaned at 2 or 3 months and is very keen for me to do BLW - hooray! She said sliced apple is better than grated as if some goes down the wrong way it's far easier to dislodge than a grated bit which could stick to the throat.
So we tried quartering and coring an apple then slicing in 4 length-ways and it works a treat! A tip - for teething, put in fridge first as she's in heaven, rubbing it against her sore gums! There was one scary moment on the first occasion as one huge bit seemed to be heading to the back of the throat - I was all ready to jump to action if need be - she seemed to be dislodging it herself, but to be on the safe side I sat her up even more upright in her chair and out popped the offending lump :-)
As I can only give her apples or pears fruit-wise until she's 7 months due to allergy risks, she's on lots of apples due to the pear season being pretty much over, and I can report that she's loving it and we've had no further incidents.
Anyway, rambling over that is my advice on apples!

Hi we also new and my Missy Moo just gone 6 &1/2 months. We tried traditional weaning at 5 1/2 as apparently "showed signs" of moving to solids. Having tried a few times with home made mash (I don't own a blender) and her preferring the spoon than eating runny stuff we flagged it. I then read about Gill's reasearch on BLW in our newspaper (ChCh, New Zealand) - what a relief! totally confirmed the amazing intelligence of our wee people.

We started with finger food which she more than capable of holding and has sucked various vege chips and fruit, toast, corn crackers and crusty bread (I haven't tried meat yet). But despite what I can see is great progress I got an attack of Mummy anxiety and confused the process by listening to my friends whose babies are consuming copious amounts of the mushy stuff.

We tried baby muesli at "breakfast time" last 2 days and ended up attempting to feed it to her as Missy Moo has no interest in the stuff.

Where I am going with this... well basically after getting back to the basics and confirming DOs and DONTs I just wanted to say that for anyone trying BLW you have to chuck out the rule book on conventional weaning, including attempting 2-3 meals a day after milk feeds (Missy Moo goes to bed by about 6pm so preparing food for "dinner" an impossibility!) otherwise you end up a confused and disorganised wreck unable to enjoy the experience with your child.

So I thought you could post a "pitfalls" section because it really is a completely different way of introducing solids to your baby. Thanks to stories of experienced BLWs who reminded me what this is all about a healthy and fun relationship with food and nutrition!! :-)

P.S. Missy moo now formula fed although still basically demand fed - we don't have a schedule just when she tells me "Hungry now!" So of course conventional weaning was never going to work for us as prefer to respond to needs than be regimental.

true enough about chucking out the book, but i'm not exactly sure what you mean by a section on pitfalls. do you mean for people who are swapping to BLW from purees? glad it's all working out for you and Missy Moo.

Hi sorry for not being clear. Yes I did mean pitfalls from swapping from purees to BLW. We have a parenting support organisation in NZ that gives parents advice on infant nutrition which of course is based on feeding purees and mash. As I stumbled upon BLW I realised I had to reeducate myself and not attempt to give Missy Moo finger food on the conventional weaning "programme".

P.S. Today Missy Moo devoured chunks of nectarine and actually bit off and chewed some of her cheese stick. Thank you so much for this site we have been following your suggestion for foods in the first 1 and 2 months.

Not sure where best to post this but I've found the perfect BLW t-shirt http://www.odd-label.com/toddlers/t_d10.php (it also happens to be a friends company and I know it's fab quality!)

Who ever thought you could buy a t-shirt with brocolli on it!

Quokka

aaw. it would be wrong of me to like the chips better, wouldn't it? in art as in life...
link is here, i think.

I know that bits of my question have been answered elsewhere, but I'm not sure that this combination has so I'm sorry if it has.

DS has been blwing for about six weeks and is 9 months old. I have taken things slowly, but he seems to be getting the idea. However, he still has no teeth, and I'm a little concerned about giving him chewy things such as meat, and small bits such as sweetcorn, raisins etc. In addition, my husband has recently been diagnosed with a number of allergies, and therefore, I'm trying to stay away from certain foods until he is 1. I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing, but as I read earlier about tomatoes there are many different opinions.

I am really pleased that I have opted for blw. As a breastfeeding peer supporter I am 100% committed to breastfeeding and feel that blw is just a continuation of this. I am so pleased that I found this site. I used standard weaning for my older children, but was seen as some sort of 'unusual' mother for not weaning them until 5.5 months. How weird I must seem now leaving DS until he was 7.5 months!

Thank you for starting this brilliant resource. It is great to have such am excellent site to pass on to other mothers, and also some Health Professionals...

Hi again,I've just posted a question about dds weight gain but I think I might have posted it in the wrong place! Those of you who are reading this , couldyou please look up a few posts!

Hi, I found THIS link that I haven't seen posted here that was really interesting. It is a Webchat on I Want My Mum with Gill Rapley and answers some interesting questions and has some things that I hadn't thought of before - it really made me think. I especially like the comment on spoons and runny foods.

That's a good one Tink, enjoyed the read and was good for reminding me about self-managing, and really, really not to stress even the teensiest bit about what goes down and what doesn't. thanks.

i know, thanks for reminding me of that one, tink. i must add it to the links section. cheers.

Am I posting this in the right place? Yikes this is confusing. Just wanted to say Hi, I found this site today. Had the most horrendous time weaning Stunt Girl and she is still a very poor eater. Puke-ahontas is coming up to 4mths and although we won't be weaning for a long time I've been getting stressed about it since before she was even born. My friend has started BLW and I'm beginning to think this may save my sanity.

Just wanted to thank Aitch for what you wrote in your rant about formula and breast feeding. I BFed Stunt Girl for a year but this time around it hasn't worked out and I'm regularly putting us through the mill about it. It's so reassuring to read that someone else finds it embarrassing to get out a bottle in a cafe.

Anyways, I'm off to read all about allergies as Puke-ahontas has lactose intolerance and as her name suggests we have reflux to!!

Puddle

welcome, puddle, i'm so glad my 1000-word whinge about breastfeeding (or not, as it turned out) has been of some assistance...
if you're looking for recipes when the time come, i suggest you look out for Moomin's name as her daughter was lactose intolerant and she was very handy with a dod of gram flour. good luck when the time comes.

Munchkin will be 6 months on 8th June and we're going to try our first BLW meal this weekend, so far no signs of allergies but dh's family are riddled with them (none my side) from asthma to hay fever to food allergies. Any tips on what to start her on this weekend? Broccoli? Courgette? Carrot? Also just found out that the out-laws are here this weekend and I hadn't planned on telling them about BLWing it until it was well under way... Let's hope I manage to keep my sanity intact and that Munchkin takes to it well!!!

Hi,

Broccoli, courgette, carrot were all winners in the early weeks here... but just wanted to say don't stress if she doesn't seem too interested in the initial weeks! Mine's not the only BLW baby who took some time to go from fiddling with the odd bit of food, dropping it and losing interest - or indeed ignoring it totally - to the realisation "oh, it's for eating!" She'll get the hang of it in her own time. But I know in-laws and "don't stress" don't always go together ...

Thank you! We did broccoli on Saturday and Sunday and Carrot today (no nanny on Wednesday). She seemed quite interested and there was a surprising amount of bits in the nappy - even the father-in-law seemed quite impressed. What relief!!!

how hysterical, congratulations! did you point to the bits of broccoli in the nappy? i think quite a few of us on here have actually kept those first nappies for our partners or husbands to look at. and then thrown them out, obviously.

JUst a quick question - how long do most people let their little ones sit & experiment with their food for....as my little one is not interested in putting food anywhere near his mouth most of the time....and I never know how long to leave him to it for??

Until they get bored, I guess - it's a good distraction, if nothing else!

i left Babybear until she got bored or until i'd finished up my meal and wanted to get moving, whichever was the least. i think when we started off she liked to muck about with food when she was sitting on my lap, she actually wasn't that fond of her high chair for a while.

I leave Euan until he had stopped putting food into his mouth, and is picking up every bit up and hurling it as far as he can across the room... He lets me know quite clearly when he has finished! Also lunchtimes have to be fairly short as big brother has to be at nursery at 12.30 and we have to leave at 12.15.

Hi Puddle,
I remember the puking well - both of mine were at first diagnosed with reflux because of their incessant puking, but in both cases it turned out to be a milk protein intolerence. Luckily the protein they react to is in the whey portion of the milk, rather than the casein in the cheese. So they can still have cheese and fromage frais.

Hi Katy.

I do wonder in the run up to weaning whether it would be worth getting Puke-ahontas tested for allergies. She's on lactose free milk as is my friends daughter who also appears to have a gluten allergy. Had an awful time weaning Stunt Girl and have been getting worried about weaning again since before Puke-ahontas was even born.

Do you think a Lactose Free milk would still contain proteins she might be allergic to which is causing all the sick? So much for no2 being easier.

Puddle

The problem with most allergy tests (or so my doc told me) is that they aren'y all that accurate. They are more used when you know there is difinitely an allergy there, but dont know what to - you use the allergy tests to find the likely candidates. Also the tests would not necessarily pick up intolerances (as opposed to true allergies of the type that make you wheeze, throat swell up, eyes puffy etc).

I don't know about formulas Im afraid, as mine are both breastfed. I have read that some people with milk protein intolerance are ok with sterilised/UHT milk for example, because the heating of the milk changes the protein, so thins might be true for some people and formulas, as its a powder, it must have been heated. However this isnt true for all people, as my older son cant have sterilized/UHT milk. He can tolerate goats milk though, whereas some people with CMI can't, so it is really difficult to pin it down.

I do know that CMI often gets misdiagnosed as reflux and/or lactose intolerance, so it might be worthwhile asking to be referred to someone who knows more about it all. I was fairly lucky that once I has worked it out for older son, it was obvious what was affecting the little one, and easier to deal with.

Hope that was some help...

Katy

I've done the recommended search and nothing!!

We'll start weaning Puke-ahontas in August when she is 6mths. I had awful job weaning her sister Stunt Girl (just turned 2yrs) and she remains a really really poor eater. I'm really beginning to move towards the idea of BLW as I'm not sure I can cope with hours of sobbing that were the result of traditionally weaning Stunt Girl. However, I was wondering how older sibling coped with the BLW. Stunt Girl's nursery have complained about her sometimes using her fingers for food rather than her cutlery and I'm a little concerned that when she sees Puke-ahontas using her hands we'll be waving good bye to cutlery.

What have been other people's experiences.

Thanks

what recommended search? for moomin's recipes? if i type in moomin to the search box on the right it comes up with a few.
don't know anything about the big sisters business, i'm afraid, except for asking why a nursery would complain about a child not using cutlery... i didn't know that was any of their business, really, so long as you're happy.

LOL you said search for a topic before posting a question so I searched older siblings and got nothing!!

Will search for all the allergie stuff when both daughters are back to being 100% and I get 5 minutes peace!!

Think nursery probably concerned because Stunt Girl a bit of a leader and where she goes/what she does several others follow (mostly boys)! Actually think she struggles with cuttlery and as yet doesn't hold her fork in a good position.

aaah, i see. my wee brother had all the wee boys in his nursery sitting down to pee within a week of his being there. he much preferred doing it the girls' way, having grown up with three sisters.

Did anyone else see the BLW article in the Saturday Telegraph Magazine? It wasn't bad although there was a slightly unhelpful final comment by a 'Profesor of Human Nutrition' stating that 'all you require for weaning at whatever age you decide to do it is to puree food to avoid choking....' which sort of undid all the positive comments earlier!

Could someone please post it somewhere or a link? I'd like to read it but can't as living in France!

Does anyone know the name of the professor they quoted?

Katy

I've had a look in the online version of the Saturday magazine but can't find anything yet.

i've not seen it, but someone on MN (a woman called MadamePlatypus, as it happens) typed out the quote. apparently the rest of the piece was fair. here's what she said.

""Simon Langley-Evans, Professor of Nutrition at the University of Nottingham, is not convinced (by BLW), and believes that purees rather than finger foods are the best way to begin feeding babies. 'All you require for weaning at whatever age you decide to do it is to puree food to avoid choking and to make the transition to finger food once the baby has mastered the skill of putting food into the mouth and swallowing' he says. 'The handling of food in the mouth is not an innate process'.

So although he obviously doesn't know much about BLW, in a funny kind of way he is endorsing it - with BLW you start when your baby is able to put food in mouth (wouldn't be possible otherwise), and learning about and playing with solids is more important than getting nutrition solids ('its just for fun till they're one') as milk provides more nutrition for a baby than an ice cube of pureed carrot smeared on chops.

The funny thing is that all my baby books, including Karmel suggest giving your baby finger food to experiment with from about 6 months. I think that the difference is that with more people starting weaning at 6 months, more people are starting to wean when their babies are capable of eating finger food and questioning whether the puree stage is necessary if milk is still supposed to be the major source of nutrition."

as far as i can see, he's a nutritionist talking off-subject. if he was saying that BLW babies will be nutritionally disadvantaged i'd be concerned.

It's fairly basic - doesn't go into much detail, but is positive and makes it sound like a normal and obvious thing to do.

The article isn't on the web - you have to be a member of the NCT to get the mag, but there's a picture of the mag with a self-feeding baby on the cover here

I know I've read about amounts of calcium in various foods on here somewhere but can't find it for the life of me. I was just wondering if anyone wiser than me knows about this. Minimoo is tolerating cows milk after we thought there might be a dairy intolerance, and yoghurt for that matter. But I feel a little wary about him having a pint of milk a day when he could get that calcium and vitamin D through his normal diet. Does that make sense or do I just sound neurotic?

I found it! i'll stick it up in Allergies so everyone can find it, shall i? although it's more of a conversation than actual super-hard info.

Euan's test results for his poor weight gain just came back. Thankfully he doesn't have Coeliacs, but they did find "a mild iron deficiency with a very mild anaemia", and want to prescribe an iron supplement.

Does anyone know what form of iron supplement they would give a baby? Is it that disgusting sweet medicine that stains your teeth? Also, since it is very mild anaemia, it can't be what is responsible for his poor weight gain, so it is only really by accident that we found out, so I am not sure he really needs a supplement. At the time he had the blood taken, he was eating really poorly, so that might account for the low iron, but he is eating a lot better now, including meat and green veg, and cereals with added iron in them, so I don't really think it is necessary. Also most of my family have a low resting point for anaemia. Whenever we are tested - even when taking iron, we are always just on the borderline, or just above, so that might have something to do with his results too.

I get the feeling that the GP will tell me to give it to him anyway, as he wont want to go against the paediatricians letter, but I dont really want to have to wait another 2 weeks till i next see the paed again either. I know iron supplements can upset your stomach and give you constipation, so I really dont want to give it to him unless it is really necessary, especially as these side effects might put him off his food again, just when we were starting to make real progress.

I am off to the GP this afternoon, so I'll let you know how it goes...

Katy

good luck this afternoon. thank goodness you've got the all clear on the coeliacs. i really don't know a single thing about anaemia, unfortunately, so i can't help. it does sound like you're gut instinct is to use food rather than a supplement, so on that note, apparently dried apricots are high in iron.

Well doc said that once it is anaemia rather than just iron deficiency, that their stores must be quite low, so it is best to use a supplement to build the stores up. It quite difficult to do that with diet when they are still not eating all that much. So I suppose i will give it a go - assuming he will swallow the stuff...

that would make sense, wouldn't it? do you think putting it in some yoghurt might help? my friend gives her wee by omega three that way. tried it with dd and i'd have to say she sussed it immediately...

I have enough trouble trying to get Euan to eat anything off a spoon (like fromage frais - he can't have yoghurt cos of milk intolerence) without putting him off further by mixing it with medicine....

Anyway, it mustn't taste too bad, as I didn't have any more trouble getting him to take it than I do with calpol etc. But the stuff is the colour of rust and looks like it will stain anything it touches really badly, so we have big bibs to hand, and clean his teeth immediately afterwards.

Katy

try floradix :-)

Hi- I'm new to this site and it is FABULOUS! I'ts already helped me a lot with persuading people about BLW. I have a question though... my littl'un is 18 weeks and we're still exclusively breastfeeding but the information I can find about Gill Rapley's trial of BLW shows that she started offering food from 18 weeks and 26 weeks was the average they started properly working out what they were doing.
My question is... is there any reason why I can't do this? Lucas is a very big baby, he's sitting up already and grabs for everything (including my cereal bowl this morning- aargh) so would it be following BLW theory to put stuff in front of him and if he works out how to pick it up and suck on it himself then that means his body is ready for it? Obviously I would still BF on demand and would only be offering organic fruit and veg until he's comfortably past the 6 month mark. Any thoughts appreciated.
Sophie

I can't see any reason why not. Gill Rapley found that before six months they would try to eat but not sucessfully. As long as you are not feeding him and you realise that it could mean a lot of throwing away.

His body probably isn't ready, but it doesn't stop the experience or enjoyment he will get from you putting food in front of him.

from what i read of the guidelines my understanding is that under no circumstances should you even put stuff in their hands, they have to be able to pick it up for themselves.

18 weeks does seem a little early to me tho, i would sit him at the table in his highchair and give him a childs bowl and spoon or fork or something so hes joining in at mealtimes but not actually eating iykwim. we did this with josh at first.

as far as i'm concerned it would go along with the thinking of BLW, but there are those who would disagree in principle. basically, the WHO guidelines are there to protect the baby population, as the lining of the gut should be sealed for that vast majority by that age. so, some people wouldn't consider letting their babies have food earlier.
however, i think that if i had another child i would probably be a little more lax if i thought that they were really capable of eating earlier. i'd probably really try to wait as long as i could, though, but that's just me...
i do know of a couple of babies who started earlier, at around 5 months, because they started swiping food, and they've been quite happy. 18 weeks seems on the young side for me, so i'd probably leave it for a bit, personally, but in theory (and rememer, without having stuck endoscopes into tummies it's all speculation) you should be fine to offer food and see how he gets on.

I have been looking out for the answers to this query as I have had a similar dilema. I have felt totally overwhelmed with the whole weaning business as there seems to be so much conflicting information out there. My daughter is now 23 weeks and we started trying babyled weaning last week as I felt that it made so much more sense than the puree business, but have been toturing myself since that I have been doing her untold damage by giving her solids before 6 months. Having said that she has eaten little bits of banana, asparagus, pears, peaches and melon, all of which have reappeared in her nappy, so she must be eating some of it. I am going to wait until 6 months before giving her gluten etc, but think I will continue with the fruit and veg for the moment. Fingers crossed.

No torturing of self, Lairdy! There aren't many rules to BLW but that's definitely one of them...
I do agree about the gluten, by the way.

and I don't mean Tink's daddy and me!

Youu know when you are going through the romantic slushy parts of a relationship (very eaarly rofl) and you share food? Feeding eachh other etc.

Well Tink and I seem to be going through it!

At home she eats in a babywalker (we can't afford a chair yet and she's so tiny anyway it holds her better) and I usually sit on the floor next to her, occasionally we both sit on the floor. She's taken to feeding me! She'll offer me something that she's been eating (banana mush, YUM!) or pick something up and offer mee. She doesn't hand it me either, it goes straight for my mouth! I do the same back with her. If she has dropped something, got distracted or missed something I hold it out to her and if I have something I think she will like I hold my fork/spoon out with it on the end so the cutlerry doesn't go in her mouth.

It's like being in love! (not that Daddy is romantic...)

The other day though she put a grape in my mouth and held it behind my bottom front teeth and undeer my tonggue. It took awhile to geet her out of my mouth and I was gagging. Today Nanny opened a banana and Tink gave her "the look" until Nanny gave her half, then "the look" for the rest!

mmmm, that is a disgusting stage... i'm so glad babybear has forgotten how much she enjoyed posting manky bits of banana into my mouth. still, sounds like you're enjoying it, tink, lol.

How old is Tink? Small has started this as well - she is just over 10 months. She either holds a morsel up to my mouth, or, as a new development, reaches for my hand, turns it over and lays the choice piece in my palm and then waits expectantly for me to eat it. She is very cute - the food I have been offered however, is usually disgusting, especially as she is suffering from hayfever and everything she comes into contact with is liberally besmeared with snot.

It's sweet, especially seeing her expression when she's sharing, it's a real act of love. I just have to pretend to eat and sneak it back on plate because banana mush is not nice!

She's 11 months and funnily enough she has been doing it for a couple of weeks.

The other day we were out with my family for my dad's birthday. Tink had her uncle sitting on one side of her and daddy on the other. She kept holding a chip up for her uncle then trying to hide in daddy when her uncle went to take a bite!

It's so cute the things that she does.

Yep, IzzyMouse started doing that a bit before 11 months. She still does it, although it's now mixed up with signals that she doesn't want something which can lead to all sorts of misunderstandings. Now she spends much of mealtimes preoccupied with putting food in and out of containers regardless of their contents, I get strawberries dipped in gravy, semi-chewed potato, banana in all sorts of conditions, pulverised weetabix etc etc. It is lovely to start with but I have to confess that the novelty is wearing off a little now. At least it's less painful than when she tries to clean my teeth...

The BBC is running a BLW article today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6762795.stm

and bless 'em, they're even running it as a "latest" headline!

How charming of the food industry spokesman to say that there's no 'one size fits all' option - hello? Check out the title! ***baby led*** weaning - you fit the weaning to the child, not the other way round! But then - I wonder what the profit mark-up is on baby food?

cloviscat

A similar article appeared in the Observer yesterday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2104953,00.html

Yes and at the same time he talks of the wonders of jar food!

Looking at the amount Brits are spending on baby foods, I'd say that the industry is making a lot of money out of duping the poor parents who don't know any better!

I'm wondering why two different sources have suddenly written similar articles with the same interviews, anyone else think something is happening? BBC documentary would be nice!

Hello, another Newbie here! I'm doing my homework as Pudding has a month to go before the BLW stage, but it's taking ages to get through all the excellent contenet here during ever decreasing nap times!

Aitch and Morv, have you considered publishing? I'm sure your experiences and witty prose (creep) would make an excellent guide for those of us picking our way through the minefield of baby wrangling. Amazon has no BLW books, so must be a market. (Apologies if someone has asked this elsewhere, as I said, still working through the site). Someone is bound to jump in; may as well be someone with a true commitment to the process.

Hello, glad you're enjoying the site, I was watching on my mobile and sending links to my partner to print for a long time before I joined and in the end decided to just go with what comes cause there was no way I could get through the back pages!

A book would be great, just publishing some of the stuff on here for fun! I think though that the DVD (although I haven't seen it yet) is best because there are some things you can't put over in words - like gagging, until you have seen a baby gagging it is awful to watch.

Thanks for that. I did gag myself when I found the DVD was £25 online! Wasn't sure I wanted to pay that out of SMP if it was just to watch someone cut carrots into batons! However, if people on this blog reckon it's worth it I'll give it a whirl.

I don't think it's essential to get the DVD - I think most of us on this site haven't seen it? There are some Youtube clips of babies eating ... but tbh they all do it in their own slightly different ways anyway.

i havent seen the dvd, not felt the need to tbh. i know some online communities have copies and will send them out to membersthough. its also worth asking any health professionals in your area. the breastfeeding support group at my hospital have a copy that they will lend out.

Good thinking, thanks.

I have a tendency to need to over-research things and over analyse before I do them. Probably why I am quite an elderly first time mum! I'll ask around and try the Baby Cafe, after all, they lent me a v. expensive but highly agricultural breastpump!

I don't think that the DVD is essential, as I said I haven't watched it myself yet (I want to just so I have). But I don't know that a book could explain to you well enough what happens when a baby gags for example. So many parents that I have spoken to that tried it and stopped was because their LO choked. I have tried to explain the difference but it freaks people out and they just say "no, s/he definately choked, I couldn't watch that again!"

As I said on New Scientist, BLW is mostly common sense, as long as you are prepared and supported you should be ok.

I have seen the video and it's just fine.

It's produced by a company called Mark-It Television, who produced health education type videos for hospitals. That's why it's the price it is, not because someone is trying to make a fast buck! The price is perfectly in line with other videos and text books coming in short production runs for a specialist market.

If you get a chance to borrow the video, then give it a go, if only for interest's sake. It's really for Mums starting with BLW, or for health professionals supporting mums. It's a classic straightforward, practical public-education type video. Lots of real-life shots of babies displaying very typical BLW behaviour - including dumping everything on the floor! Don't remember any gagging though...

no gagging, clovis? really? i'd have thought that would be the whole poiint, to be honest.
anyway, welcome Bigpud, thanks for your compliments and good luck when you get started with BLW. It's messy, but it's a right old laugh.

I don't think it was a deliberate omission, but I doubt it was the sort of production set-up where you could sit around for hours waiting for a baby to gag...

(...short of slipping in a surreptious fishbone while the cameras were rolling, and somehow I don't think that would be ethical, do you? Mind you, the way accusations have been flying around in the press recently... ;-P)

BUT THEY'RE ALWAYS GAGGING AND CHOKING, CLOVIS!!! They can't help themselves, the poor little 6-month-old idiots.
Honestly, don't you read the papers? everyone knows that you can't just give a baby simple human food and expect them to just eat it... tut tut. i wonder about you somtimes.

I guess we must all be having some sort of mass hallucination then?

And our babies must be sneaking into the kitchen at night to puree up a midnight feast, otherwise how come they're all so blooming and healthy?

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work that one out...

Ok, I'm ready to rumble! Just bought a high chair which can be hosed down and has massive tray and 5 point safety harness! And twas a bargain as local Mamas n Papas has conveniently turned into a factory oulet for a limited period! (I did have to be physially restrained from buying a ridiculous but gorgeous rocking horse which Pudding couldn't actually use for another three years and eight months!)

Really looking forward to helping her to enjoy her food. I was force fed veg at a very cruel kindergarden at three and it took me twenty years to eat any veg other than tinned carrots and frozen peas!

Ow my scar hurts! You girls have got me rolling here!

I have to admit that one of the things that has woound me up so much is all thee babies need purees, babies can't eat human (lol) food comments from people who really don't know what they are talking about. I've put a few "ask the 'real' experts" comments around and pointed them to here and B-LW.

Hi everyone - not sure if this is the right place to post, but can't find where I posted something the other day and have only just found the 'enable button!

I am just starting on the BLW - Fidget was 6 mths last week. He is playing with the food I givehim, but not eating much, not worried about that as it's early days, but he has been spiting up a lot more than usual. I think this is mostly to do with teething and swallowing lots of dribble. My question is about the best time to offer food in relation to breast feeds - he is current b/f about every 3 hours.

Thanks

Hi there, I found the chance to have another read your fantastic blog a few days ago and saw that some were chatting about their bambinos slipping down in their high chairs. I too have had this annoying problem for 2 months but thankfully have just solved it (NB I do have a rubbishy cube chair with only a lap harness)

Today I remebered that I had one of those travel seats which you hook over the top of an adult chair and then tie round the baby. It works amazingly on my high chair and Liberty doesn't slip an inch down or side ways!

Just thought I would share my brainwave which has taken so bloody long tohave LOL

Replying to Quokka but I can't see a reply button in the right place so am adding it to the general thread...

What worked for us was, rather than trying to schedule solid food around milk feeds, to do pretty much the opposite - give solid food at three normal (if not always regular) mealtimes, and wait for the milk feeds to reschedule naturally around that. I think this has made it easier for her to drop a feed here and there as she no longer needs them, because they haven't been on a timetable as such.

I think basically I'm saying just go with the flow. Sometimes I've expected her not to eat much lunch, for example, if she's had milk shortly before - and then she's amazed me by eating loads. Other times I expect her to be food-hungry because she hasn't had much milk and it turns out she's just not hungry full stop. I've given up second-guessing now!

Why do some posts not have a reply button under them?

i have NO idea... i'll email the blogware company...

I'm just testing the reply buttons, I hope you can delete this after i've finished

still testing...

yes, andrew, because furrynorman just Isn't Very Professional, is it? LOL!

Mystery solved, ladies. i've been having a bit of a dispute with the blogware people who i hate (apart from andrew who is a dish) and they locked me out of the site and made it read-only. so no replies. quite why people could post questions in the first place is a bit mysterious...

anyway, let me remind you once again to bookmark this as www.babyledweaning.com so as to minimise disruption when/if i ever get round to ditching this crummy, ugly software package.

the reason I put 2 different names was to test the different means of identifying onself either through a reader account or through the contact information section

it was in no way to give a link to my website, no sir.

anyway, my testing is done, I'll let you ladies get back to it, I may post again when I have children of my own

lol well Babybear and myself have just doubled your hit rate...
very nice, apart from the rabbit with the habit. that was too weird.

Not sure if this is the right place to post a question. Find this blogware a bit odd compared to forums I've been on before.

How do you know they are ready?

Pudding has just sat on my lap facing me whilst I ate a bacon and egg sandwich. (Yes, It was my Sunday lunch, and yes this is probably why I am a Big Pud) She was watching every bite and drooling whilst doing really cute pretend chewing. DH had to be restrained from giving her a piece of bacon with brown sauce which he reckons is BLW friendly as the sauce is made from fruit! (No, I don't intened to leave either of them unsupervised at mealtimes)

However, she is only just 20 weeks, and although starting to shove things in her mouth more and more she hasn't got very highly developed motor skills. Should I wait another month? Am I projecting the desire for solids onto her because I'm looking forward to BLW?

Didn't want to put the question there under reply buttons! I ama a bit of an IT dunce and I don't think I've quite got my head around how this bloggy stuff operates yet!

Also, just scrolled up and found this covered under 'Potentially Controversial Question'.

Doh!

LOLOL! i'm sorry that the 'facility' to ask questions is so rubbish...
so what are you going to do, then? if you want to go for it, keep it strictly fruit and veg until 6 months. you'd better pass that message on to DH.

So Munchkin is at risk of allergies as DH's family is literally riddled with them (although she is yet to show the slightest sign of any - fingers and toes crossed!) not like my hardy side of the family (beams with pride!) This means we have to go at the world's slowest pace with introducing new foods - we started her off just over 4 weeks ago and we're now on green beans, broccoli, carrot, courgette, apple and pear. Pear is now out of the equation as they're all off now. I (and no doubt Munchkin too) am getting very bored of the same stuff. Any suggestions for other risk-free foods??? She'll be 7 months old on Sunday - doesn't time fly?!?
Also how many meals a day should she be on? At the moment she just does lunch around 12 (a veg followed by apple) with milk at 11am and 3pm. Can I introduce more meals and if so with what food??? Breakfast with porridge or cereal?? Tea with....? Bread? Yogurt? Yet more apple???
I'm not worried about how she'll cope with it as she loves it and is getting quite adept at shovelling food into her mouth!!
Any help / advice / suggestions greatly appreciated!!

Going to wait, as she's not shown much further interest. Obviously going to be a bacon sandwich kinda kid! DH will be strictly supervised at all times as he clearly hasn't got a clue. I have asked him to have a look at the site so he can find out about BLW, but he reckons I can just tell him; not practical as he suffers from male pattern deafness. (That's the deafness caused by your testicles blocking your ears.)

On purpose, I'm talking about... I've been stoically ignoring it since the beginning and he's now 11 months old. It's weird - even things that he's really enjoying and mostly cramming in his mouth, he'll take the occasional handful, shove his arm straight out and let it drop on the floor before putting the next handful in his mouth. And anything he decides he doesn't like goes immediately on the floor too... he won't just leave it; it's like he can't bear to have it on his highchair tray. D'you think this is a phase that will pass if I continue to ignore it, or is he old enough now that I need to teach him to stop and find something else to do with the food he doesn't want?

You've described exactly the sort of behaviour my Beeble shows, and also what young Fruit did long ago (she's now 5). It's something that is also shown very clearly in the BLW DVD.

Why they can't tolerate the rejected food on the tray - don't know, but it seems to be an instinctive behaviour. How would you teach your baby to stop such an instinctive behaviour? My memory with Fruit is that she gradually stopped doing it. Beeble is certainly reaching the development stage sometimes called 'emptying and filling' - she likes putting toys in and out of containers, and for the first time in the last few weeks she's been ever-so-carefully putting things *back* in her bowl! Hooray! She'll be one year old on Sunday...

Why don't they make high chairs with safety nets on either side?

Tink does this. She's very into cause and effect so I have to ignore it or she will do it more. Sometimes she will try to distract me (yeah, like looking cutely at me is going to work) and moving her arm over the side. When I know it is deliberate like that I bring her arm back and say no, but when she's sotring it up (on her lap, behind her, over the side etc) I just leave her to it, I guess their must be a reason in her wisdom.

A messy mat is very useful and you can sneak food back on the plate if the mats clean.

Small did this all the time at the beginning and everything got picked up and recycled back onto the tray (from the daily-disinfected drop cloth beneath!). However, she did stop throwing stuff away once she realised that It Was Yummy.

Now, at 11 months, the Deliberate Fling has come into play. Luckily for me, stuff she decides she doesn't like she leaves on the plate (because we absolutely refuse to eat from the table top now) but the end of the meal is signified by picking up the leftovers and dropping them overboard, one by one. She watches them fall & then looks back to me for a reaction.

We are now on a 3 strikes policy. As soon as the third piece of food hits the floor, its all over. All food is removed, hands wiped and that's the end. She is just going to have to learn!

A friend ended up putting a wastepaper bin next to the high chair on the preferred food-flinging side and taught her son to deposit everything straight in the bin. Made clean up pretty speedy.

IzzyMouse also does this as a sign that the meal is over, but also as PP mentioned, just because she fancies it sometimes, even in the middle of eating something she clearly likes. She's just turned 1 and I'm still ignoring it, although I do try to coax bits back onto the table if I see her considering a drop, by offering something into which to deposit it (see filling and emptying above, too). If I've done something to upset her (like offering The Wrong Cup), she'll occasionally do the Angry Arm Arc, which involves sweeping as much food, cutlery etc off the table in one smooth movement, then rubbing her hands in the detritus that remains with as much drama as can be mustered.

If it's something you definitely think is unacceptable for your LOs age and ability, then go ahead and try whatever behaviour modification works for you. Being a bit of a slack mum I'm hoping she'll grow out of it before I have to actually, well, do anything.

LOL! We get the Angry Arm Arc followed by the tragedy-queen gesture of tearing her hair out, then a collapse face first on to the table. Unfortunately I couldn't help roaring with laughter the first time she did this... duly noted by the infant thesp for future performances.

my little bug is almost 11 months, does the same thing. if i'm quick enough and say "could you hand that to me please" he does-- though, sometimes he pretends to, then shoves the entire piece into his mouth as if to say "how dare you try to take my food"

Hello,

You don't have a reply button under you, so I am posting here.

We can compete for the most allergic family, if you so desire! Minky is now eating just about everything although I have failed to try citrus fruit (she just spits in out) and shellfish and nuts. It took us a long time to introduce food eg gluten and dairy at 10/11 months.

At seven months, I'd keep going with as many fruits and vegies as you can think of (banana, nectarine, plum, apricot, sweet potato, parsnip, butternut squash, broad beans). If you want to introduce some protein, lamb is the least allergenic meat (in fact it is one of the least allergenic foods, I think, along with pear), turkey is good too. Carbohydrate-wise, rice is very safe, but I don't know the best way of serving it up - Minky still won't touch it.

She could have breakfast now, if you wanted. And tea. Doesn't matter really. I'd give her a bit of something whenever you're having a bit of something. Breakfast and tea don't need to be "proper" meals, ie you don't have to stick to porridge and fruit or beans on toast. I think I'm correct in saying Babybear was partial to a cold jacket potato for breakfast.

Great! I'm out shopping now to get some variety - finally!!
Thanks!

Me again, she with the never ending questions!! Anyone have any problems introducing porridge?? Tried it for breakfast this morning with Munchkin and it's the first thing she's seriously gagged on - apples are easy peasy in comparison! How much milk do you add? Is it stodge or liquid? How much do you cook it / heat it up? So you can't see separate oats?? Also how on earth do you feed them porridge BLW way??

Also first rice cake adventure yesterday - no one told me you needed a blow torch to get the remnants off baby skin!!!! How sticky is that stuff?!?

Have you tried Ready Brek as a starting point - much finer oats than porridge but essentially the same thing. We use both, and I add fruit & spices etc to make it a little more exciting. I tend to make it on the thicker side and add milk when it has been cooked if necessary. When thicker it is easier for the Pickle to spoon herself/stick to the spoon/get in her fists.

Tesco own brand also has no additives.

Unfortunately I live in France and so can only get Quakers oats. Munchkin is only 7 months old (this Sunday in fact!) is that too young to be expecting spooning abilities?? She is quite alert and on the ball though (she says with pride!)

we do porridge with water, and just follow the instructions on the pack. i dont make it runny, usually thick enough to stay on a spoon but not too thick and stodgy iykwim. as for how they eat it, i just used to load up a spoon for josh and see what he did. he never really eats loads of it, even now. the results can be quite funny tho - look:

argh, forgot to add, josh was about 10 months when we took the picture, he had porridge with some frozen summer fruits i had in.

Have searched for recipe for porridge pancakes on this site but can't seem to find it! Am I being thick with IT? Probably! Do you basically fry a blob of porridge?

much less complicated than that, i'm happy to say.

Fab, thanks! Sound great, though the political buttocks content was a bit disturbing for a delicate soul on a post red wine Saturday morn!

Hi, I wonder if anyone else is having this problem. Sam is taking and enjoying his food very well, but after almost every mouthful he flings the food or the spoon he was eating from down to the floor and I've got to desperately try to catch it!!! He still very much wants the food - just seems like he's doing it out of habit.

Does anyone have any ideas what I can do or is it just one of those annoying phases that will pass soon?

i suppose i'd say let it drop and then ignore it. All babies, BLW or not, go through these phases where they like to see what happens when the dump things over the side of the highchair. obviously you don't want to waste all the food so pick it up when he's occupied.

The Nome isn't doing this so much just now, but I did tend to sit by her preferred drop side (left), and just stick my hand out to catch stuff. She's nearly 9 months now, and really seems to have got the hang of feeding herself much more neatly - knows it's food rather than toys, if you see what I mean. Am waiting for the wilful flinging game to start up again as she gets older...

Been reading for awhile and so excited to have found this blog. When I was still pregnant I found out about BLW and fell in love with the commonsense approach (evolutionary biologist in me)... when I found this blog I fell in love with it as well... for its humor as much as its information. Even if sometimes the american in me can only guess at what some stuff means. I'm fairly certain BLW is even less familiar in the US... and I most certainly receive crazy looks.

The bubs is 7 mos today and S.L.O.W.L.Y. getting over his immense gag-reflex. He happily munches down onto carrots, zucchini/courgette, had tons of fun with broccoli yesterday night, and just this morning was Wildly impressed with the porridge pancakes. I had no fancy oats, but he was a big fan and barely gagged at all. We set him to it a little hungry so he was crying at first but I was overjoyed when he soon realized that he had FOOD in front of him and he stopped crying and started chowing down.

THANK YOU! For the recipes and the advice based on your experiences and for all the laughs!

welcome nutmeg, and thanks for the compliments, i really think we're getting a pretty valuable BLW resource here now that everyone is chipping in with their experiences. there are quite a few american visitors to this site... perhaps they're all guessing what we're talking about?

Hi, I wonder if I can pick your brains please. Sam was breast fed up until 5 months when I switched to formula. He was on Cow & Gate Premium which is meant to be very close to bm. Now he's almost 7 months old, should I be considering changing him over to Follow On Milk? I don't think this is close to bm, but it has the extra iron in it.

I'm only asking because he doesn't eat huge quantities and I don't want him to be deficient. I give him his greens/red meat etc but not sure if it's enough.

Thanks!

Hi Ali
My HV told me that apart from a tiny bit of iron there is no difference between first milk and follow-on milk. The companies only created follow on milk as they are not allowed to advertise first milk (as WHO or someone decided as part of promoting breast feeding) so they created follow on milk so they could advertise.
Hope that helps
Ali

We have just got back from holidfay in France, and while we were there, Euan discovered his appetite - big time. I can hardly keep up with him! He also decided to stop breastfeeding. It was a very dramatic stop. he went from 3-4 breastfeeds per day to nothing at all in the space of 2 days. He won't drink milk (either expressed milk or goats milk as he is cows milk protein intolerant) at all from a cup and has never accepted a bottle. So I was wondering how much cheese and fromage frais etc I should be giving him each day to make up for the lack of milk?

Anyone got any experience/thought?

how hilarious that it was just British cuisine he turned his nose up at... i kinda know how he feels.
if you look here you'll see that there has been some discussion of the calcium thing before. Moomin's yer gal, really, so perhaps she'll see your message. In the meantime, sardines are good but oh my lord the smell makes me heave so poor Babybear must go without.

Hello, 'tis me. How old is Euan? A one year old needs 350mg of calcium. I think that 100g of yogurt is about 150mg and that 25g of cheese is about 125mg. So, three "portions" of dairy should do it.

As Aitch said, sardines are brill for calcium (1 sardine = 100mg), tahini is good, if he like houmous, and an orange will give you another 75mg. You could also cook with calcium enriched rice milk or soya milk (although possibly not until he is one? not sure...).

Hope that's of some help.

Thanks for that. Euan is almost one, so that has given me something to work from. At the moment he has goats milk on his breakfast cereal, but does consume much of it, usually has a fair amount of cheese either at lunchtime or for a snack and always has a fromage frais after his tea. And he loves oranges too, so will definitely keep giving him those. He doesn't like houmous yet, and I am working up to giving him sardines (I have a bit of an aversion to fish and other seafood, so the kids tend to get it only when dad is home for mealtimes).

Just found a site which lists calcium rich non dairy foods:

Salmon
Tofu
Rhubarb
Sardines
Collard Greens
Spinach
Turnip Greens
Okra
White Beans
Baked Beans
Broccoli
Peas
Brussel Sprouts
Sesame Seeds
Bok Choy
Almonds

He loves broccoli, peas, beans and salmon, so I think I am feeling a lot less anxious about it now.

Thanks for yor help.
Katy

Just wondering if the arrival of teeth had any effect on your babies in terms of making them more willing to eat some things (after any teething pain was over, I mean). I know that having teeth is generally neither here nor there with BLW (and it hasn't really hindered the Pupster much, I think) but I haven't even tried giving him a whole apple, for example, or raw carrot, because at nearly a year old he STILL has no gnashers. He also seems perturbed by the texture of some things that maybe need something more than gums to grind up - things like lettuce and green beans seem to defeat him, for example.

Euan got his first teeth at 5 months, so before I started weaning. I actually found it more of a hindrance than a help, as he could bite off big lumps of stuff that he couldn't quite manage and never really did the sucking, gumming on chunks of food that other babies did.

Do you put food in a bowl? I've started now little J is 10 months, for some reason, like if its spaghetti or fish pie or something equally messy my partner gives me grievous looks if I just dish it up onto the table!
Little J just chucks the bowl around. I think I got bored of scraping bits off the table, but bowl doesn't contain the food either. What do you do?

We've always gone straight for the tray or hippo mat, Tink likes to throw her bowl around. She's getting better with them, but it's a lot easier.

Hi Megan, I've just got a really good mat called TinyDiner which is made by Kiddopotamus. It's basically a large mat which you put onto your table with a scoopy bit which goes under the edge of the table - the theory is food they drop falls in there. You just wash it in hot soapy water after and it's as good as new and perfect for taking out as it rolls up. I just slopped Sam's dinner out onto it and he ate it from there perfectly happily but still managed to throw food onto the floor. It was, however, a lot less messy than the normal carnage we get from a 7 month old keen BLWer!!!

I got it on www.ginghamybobs.co.uk for £12.90 incl P&P - only ordered it yesterday and it was here first thing this morning so excellent service.

HTH

Ali

I'll second the tiny diner as a great little gadget. I think it might even work later on as a placemat that would stop a bowl moving - but it is fab as a "plate" and using that and a pelican bib, our messy mat doesn't get too badly decorated....I got mine from the Great Little Trading Company.

That's what I meant

We started using melamine plates at around 10 months - before then, the plate was just treated as a toy! To start with she flipped the plate a lot, but I kept calmly replacing it and within probably about a week she got the idea (not that she NEVER flips it now, but hardly ever!)

Bowls are a no-no still, because she's in that developmental phase of wanting to fill and empty all containers within reach. Anything in a bowl MUST be taken out asap. Plates don't seem to trigger the same "must-empty-this-thing" reaction!

It's yet another thing that's made me realise how food isn't just about food.

I just had to post and tell you about my VERY proud moment yesterday.

I was out shopping with my little girl (13 months) and we stopped off at a cafe to share a baked potato and cottage cheese. E helped herself very nicely, then polished off a bowl of grapes and (sort of) proficiently spoon-fed herself some yoghurt.

There was a family at the next table and they came over as they were leaving and asked how old E was because they were so impressed how well she ate - they had an 8 month old and couldn't get her to eat anything pureed. I explained about BLW'ing and the dad commented that their baby was happy to eat toast fingers etc but just turned her head away if they tried spoon-feeding her, so they were going to look into BLW'ing and give it a go.

I was so proud!!! :o)

oh well done Esper and little E, the BLW ambassador! Wiz zis baked potato you are really spoiling us...

arrrgh.. just wrote out a whole comment which then disappeared, stupid technology...

just wanted to say thanks for giving me the confidence to move my 7 m/o on from mashed potato, much to his utter delight he had the full intact roast dinner last night and loved every chewy mouthful. and melon for afters! it makes so much sense! although, i think a lot of it helps if you can get over the mess and let them get on with it .

have recommended this site to a friend with a baby of weaning age to have a look at!

love the recipes too..xx

brilliant! i wanted to know how he'd got on with his sunday roast but hadn't wanted to bump the Aitch thread on mn as it seemed a bit, er, self-regarding. great that he just tucked in, i'm so pleased for you.

Well, the group I organise for mums with babies under six months had a talk on BLW today. The lady who was talking gave this website address as the place to get information.

So, I expect to see lots of Cambridge mums perusing this website for information on BLW. Arre you there?

lol, did she really? clever lady. (were you the lady, Moomin? are you here in disguise?)

I was not the lady. It was an independent lady. She said "For more information, you can go to the website". I thought "What official website is that?". Lo and behold, it was this one. So, you are being plugged as the resource for BLW. As it should be...

Hi there,

I have started BLW and am really ok with it (although I must say DS hasn't exactly gotten full eating whatever I give him except BM!).. but being Asian, my mom, and other Chinese asian moms have been breathing down my neck about "Why arent you feeding your son rice porridge!?! No wonder he keeps waking up in the middle of the night, he must be hungry! How can you not boil some rice porridge for him? It is a must!"

Umm... so ok. I am Chinese, and it's a very chinese thing to give a baby rice porridge. If not, there's something wrong with you. And rice is staple food for us here, not pasta, bread etc.
So, we cant be giving our babies rice, right? But porridge is quite mushy as it is rice boiled with lots of water at least an hour, sometimes throwing in some vegetables etc..

Any advice, BLW-experts?

Thank you so much..

Best regards,
raylis

lol, don't have time to answer this just right now but wanted to say that i'm Scottish, how much pressure do you think i was under to give oat porridge..? i feel your pain.

hi Raylis,
don't worry: it has less to do with you being Chinese than with you breaking with 'tradition'. People find it too suspect! We also got that: 'What, you don't feed him jars of carrot/apple/beef and rice?' and my parents were desperate for Matey to eat a rusk, until they saw how much he preferred real food.
You don't mention how old your babe is: we had a turning point with my parents pretty soon after the rusk incident. Then it started to be the game of: Try Matey with this piece of xxx insert food here xxx. They went on special trips to buy fresh melon and pineapple. Meals were planned around the finger-food rating system. And how proud they were when Matey chomped through his first roast beef and yorkshire pud dinner, including all veg sorts, with a taste of strawberry pavlova to round it off. He was just short of 7 mths old at the time and yes, a lot of food landed on the floor and in his hair but there was definite enthusiasm for the strawberry, beef and yorkshire.
Try out your wee one on something traditional you eat in your family and when they see him with his own little plate of noodles or whatever I pretty much bet they change their tune (keep the camera ready too!).
Good luck,
Lorbeer

Is there a cunning way to make rice porridge BLW -friendly. Can you reduce the water a bit so that it thickens up - or use something to add into it? I'm thinking how I've used breadcrumbs to make mushy lentils into a stiff enough paste so that it can be rolled into balls and picked up. And Small (along with a number of babies on this site) loves cold risotto which is just clumps of rice with stuff added.

Then you have the best of both worlds - you can blithely tell your Mum & concerned relatives that rice porridge is being provided but its up to your DS whether he chooses to ingest it!

We take Tink to the Chinese on a regular basis (we had her birthday there) and she eats pretty much anything.

I agree with the PP who said to give him traditional food because when your family and friends see he has totally skipped the gloop stage, they will get excited about seeing him trying new things.

Can you give it a bit of a token nod by using a sticky rice and making sort of rice balls (not very well explained I know, but a bit like rissotto balls). DS rather likes his rissotto like this - you can get fancy and breadcrumb them and put cheese in the middle, but I just scoop up a bit and squash it around.
My parents looovve watching DS eat all in his path, and the ILs were converted by the ease of just plonking food in front of him.

Surely some genius can think up a rice equivalent to the BLW classic porridge pancake? I would but, um, I'm not a genius, and can't even make the originals just now, as I don't have a working microwave...

Yes.....just cook Thai sticky rice...it's great and you can mould it into little chip shaped sticks...my son loves this stuff...and it's dead easy to make in a rice cooker....just follow the instructions on pack. Available from good chinese stores

Good luck!!

Being the proud possessor of a large number of advice books, I decided to have a look at the earliest ones I have about baby feeding - and it turns out that nothing but milk was recommended till 9 months ! And even then, it was a very slow introduction. It seems that until Dr Spock got involved in the 40's recommending weaning at 4 months it was much later.
It made interesting reading..

did you see the Clara M Davis research? seems like solids were introduced between 6 and 11 months in Canada in the 20s. what else does it say in your books? [agog] i LOVE this sort of thing...

Thats what started me off ! Theres lots of recipes on how to make your own formula, but there is a big emphasis on the first food being.... a bone with bits of meat on or hard crusts as ' this will develop the jaws, bring the teeth through, and teach baby to chew'. No pureeing, but they then do introduce soft foods.
I'll copy some choice bits out tomorrow

oh how fab... copy it onto the clara post will you? and do tell what was in formula. any immunofortis, for example? or had nestle not magicked that up yet?

so sugar, cow's milk and fish oils... apart from the lime water that sounds about right. why have you got these books?

It started from the family tradition of looking up all ailments in great grandmothers 'Modern Home Doctor' circa 1915 (mostly the advice is to rest or use leeches)- my collection is mostly ettiquette/ manners and I think that started when I got married and mum bought me a vintage 'Brides book' so I'd know my place... Of course, that was never going to work !
I think the lime water is to give the correct pH - but such useful information isn't included.

Inspired by the 1920's thread, I ran to my inherited copy of "The Book of the Home - An Encyclopaedia of All Matters Relating to the House and Household Management". (I must stress that this is exactly what is written and does not reflect the views of this poster! Some of it is quite extraordinary!)

It recommends breast feeding for the first 9 months unless "some constitutional taint" such as a "a family history of consumption, cancer, scrofula or insanity" makes it unwise for the infant to be fed by the mother. There is a damning condemnation of women who chose not to breast feed:

"unfortunately, there are also mothers who could nurse excellently, but will not do so simply because they object to what they call "the fag of it". They will not put up with the trouble of being always ready for the infant's wants, nor exercise the self-denial that requires them to eat wholesome foods, to keep early hours, and to stay away from parties that keep them out till late at night, or they object to wearing easy corsets, and dread even the remote possibility of injuring their figures."

If breast feeding by the mother is not possible, a wet nurse is recommended:
"A wet-nurse should not be under twenty nor over thirty, and should be a strong, cheerful, and healthy looking person, with a a healthy looking child. Her hair should be glossy, her eyes bright and teeth sound, as all these characteristics are signs of health. If her child is puny and peevish, it need hardly be said that she ought not to be engaged. A peasant women makes an infinitely better nurse than a town-bred woman. A very fat woman rarely makes a good wet-nurse, and therefore should never be chosen. A weedy-looking, nervous, excitable woman is also very unsuitable. In fact, the more stolid and equable-tempered a woman is, the better nurse she makes as excitement, anger, fretting and worrying all seriously affect the milk and may cause it to disagree with the child. It is sometimes thought that brunettes make better nurses than blondes but all the best medical authorities agree that the complexion is of no moment, so long as the woman is of sound constitution and good muscular development and in good health."

Failing all of the above, then bottle feeding is allowed with a very similar recipe to that posted from the 1920's. The lime water is added to reduce acidity although, scarily, it says that there is no need to buy lime water form the chemists as it can be made at home:
"Get an ounce of slaked lime from a buildingyard, place it in a bottle with a glass stopper, and pour over it two quarts of distilled or boiled water."
It does helpfully point out that the sediment should not be disturbed when adding it to the feed.

Finally, the recommended diet for the second year (as no solids should be introduced until teeth are though - and then only thin gruels until teething is complete!):
"7am - 8oz of milk taken with barley jelly to relax the bowel, while flour ball or ordinary white bread and milk may be taken instead if the child has at all a tendancy to be relaxed.
10am - Tea-cupful of milk, bread-and-butter, the yolk of an egg lightly boiled, with bread crumbs, a little white fish, bread dipped in bacon fat or dripping toast.
2pm - Beef-tea or broth with bread broken in it, or potato mashed with egg and butter. This may be followed by a large tablespoon full of custard pudding or ground rice pudding.
6pm - Bread-and-milk, or a little weak cocoa, bread-and-butter with a little marmalade or plain jam without seeds or a baked apple.
10pm - Milk to prevent them waking hungry in the night."

The poor little scraps don't get a "more liberal supply of vegetables" until their second birthday!

I'm back with more questions! So at nearly 8 months old we're about to progress onto meat (my at-risk-of-allergy munchkin is having to go very slowly). I'm allowed to give her steak and chicken apparently, so any tips on size and shape? Chip-like still? Will she be able to "chew" on it (2 bottom teeth and 1 top tooth)??? What's the chance of bits of it getting stuck (in her throat)? Having said that she's very good at coughing up what goes down the wrong way! Any recommendations from those who are on meat gratefully received...

Baby fist-sized is the way to go, lansgrim. a big old hunk of steak and, in my opinion, a piece of leg meat from chicken - you know the bits that come off in a teardrop-shaped piece? i found Babybear could really give big pieces a good chew but not too much came off in the beginning, she she got used to the idea before eating much of it, if you know what i mean?

Great, thanks, will give that one a whirl this week!

So chicken seems to be going well, but steak just seems too tough. She'll suck on it but getting anything off it is just too hard despite her 4 teeth (proud moment). What about mincing the steak then dishing up balls of that - anyone tried that or any other ways of serving up steak?

of course you can do that, but when when Babybear was very wee she used to get a bit gaggy on minced beef i think because it came off and broke up into little piece simultaneously. But try it, your baby may be fine.
here is a description of the revolting things she used to do to a piece of meat, and i note that swallowing it doesn't seem to have featured, just the sucking and playing that you mention.
what about trying minute steak, you know the really thin stuff, and then just flash frying it on either side so it's still soft? although it sounds like she's doing exactly the same as Babybear did, to be honest.

Casseroled? The Nome thieved (well, handled stolen goods thieved by her mother) several chunks from a friend's venison casserole in a restaurant last week, and loved it very much indeed. My steak, which I'd flaming well ordered well done for her benefit, was ignored for this new treat. Bah humbug.

omg, i absolutely love it. i think my mum has one of these books in her house, i must try to find it.

gggggrrrr. she's thrown it out. that woman has no sense of history. i noticed all her bloomin' Dick Francises were intact...

Hello everyone,

This is my first posting so bear with me. First off this site has been an absolute godsend, I found the whole weaning thing quite stressful to begin with and it just didn't feel right spoon-feeding our baby girl anonymous mush when I have been trying to breast-feed on demand and generally respond to her cues. So. BLW has changed all of that, it's really fun and I think that Iris has come on in leaps and bounds. She is not quite 8 months old and is showing a real love of food and has developed her pincer movement as well.

I do have a question (finally!) - I'm not convinced that Iris is showing any less interest in boob, is anyone else combining BLW and on-demand breast-feeding? How's it going? Should I actively be trying to drop a feed?

Oh and how do I submit a photograph?

send it to me as a jpeg, press my name and you'll get the address. have you had a good look at the BLW, Breast and FF posts, the question might be answered there. if not, i hope someone comes along soon. my daughter was formula fed but i must say that she didn't drop feeds until about 14 months old, nevertheless her appetite for food increased as she grew. not sure if that's that you want to hear, though...

Hello Aitch,

Thank you, I will have a further read of those posts. I'm not unhappy to continue breastfeeding, although Iris is not sleeping through the night yet which can be a little punishing. Her appetite is definitely increasing so that's great. If anyone else has had a similar experience then it would be great to get some further perspective.

josh also isnt sleeping through, we co-sleep though, which really helps. if he wakes up we just roll over, he latches on an goes back to sleep.

Hey Jeni,

Thanks for that. We're also co-sleeping which some nights works a treat.

It's really interesting to hear someone's experience. My friends with babies have either stopped breastfeeding or are doing mixed feeding and nobody I know is doing BLW!

the idea is its baby led, so they will tell you when they want to drop[ a feed rather than you actually trying to get them to nurse less and eat more. josh is 15 months and still is demand fed, he is down to about 3 breastfeeds a day now tho. you will notice that the change is gradual tho, well, i did anyway and its only now i look back i can see when it all changed. only in the last few months has he really started nursing less grequently and preferring food.

DS is 14 months old, demand fed, and it took him until 9 months to reduce his milk intake at all - but he did drop feeds of his own accord, and now he has boob morning and evening, and once in the night. As he seems genuinely starving at that point its just easier to feed him than fight about it - I trust that he will sort himself out according to his needs. He didn't drop all his daytime feeds until 13 months.

I guess I need to exercise some patience! Iris is feeding perhaps two or three times in the night, but as I mentioned previously we're co-sleeping so it's not always a problem if she goes back to sleep that is. Oh, I think it's more that I am worried that she thinks that she needs boob to go to sleep. Nobody tells you in the early days about the danger of them falling asleep on the boob do they?! Well nobody told me anyhow.

Following on from 1905 and 1920, I thought I'd post what I had heard yesterday about how Africans wean.

I was chatting with the receptionist at Tink's Daddy's office. She had commented on me wearing a sling and we ended up having a chat about that and then moved onto weaning. She told me that they exclusively feed their babies for 30 months and then went on to describe Baby Led Weaning! She did say that they sometimes give a little porridge to some babies before they are two and half.

And before it's said, not she wasn't talking about the famine struck areas or what they are doing now, she was talking about traditionally.

how interesting, you must get Tink's dad to ask her where in Africa they do that. i remember reading somewhere that in Sierra Leone they bf til at least 18 months and food is introduced s-l-o-w-l-y. it all rather puts this 'you must get started by at the latest six months or they'll never learn to do it' HV chat in doubt, doesn't it?

Ok, me again with more questions! Munchkin has now been BLWing for almost 2 months and is good on the old pick it up, put it in my mouth bit. The problem is she really doesn't seem to be a big fan of anything other than fruit - is that a problem?? So far veggie wise she'll eat courgette but almost anything else she can take it or leave it (and mostly leaves it!), we tried our first meat today with chicken so we'll see how that goes - she sucked it a bit but wasn't too interested otherwise.
However fruit is another matter altogether - she eats every single fruit I've put in front of her so far, we've done apple, pear, peach, nectarine, plum and apricot and she loves them all and will eat 3-4 different fruits at one sitting - when I say eat, I mean every last bit, no messing around with fruit, no throwing it on the floor!!!
So is this a big deal or should I just keep serving up veg, let her eat what she will and then keep giving her fruit until she says no? So far I stop at 4 pieces of fruit.

Have you tried making fruit a treat? Put other foods in front of her without fruit and then offer her fruit later when she's had a go of other things - obviously the big rule in BLW is not to make a fuss of what they do/don't eat. How about not giving fruit every meal?

We've done pretty well with Tink, there's not much she refuses, so suggestions is the best I can offer.

The way it goes at the moment is she has her main meal at lunchtime - so far 2-3 veggies (just starting meat now due to allergies) then once the veggies are well and truly done and I can't see her eating any more i.e. anything I even 'suggest' gets thrown on the floor. At that point I bring out the fruit - I make sure it isn't even visible until then!! I do leave the uneaten veg on the high chair tray in case some gets mixed up with the fruit and eaten by mistake!

She gets fruit as a dessert at lunchtime and sometimes after her tea of porridge. I don't really want to hold it back as it's the one thing she eats and she's tiny! As it is I'm sure people think I'm trying to starve my child! At her 7 month check-up she was 25 inches and just 13lb and 8oz - about the size of your average 4-5 month old! Having said that she's very alert, doesn't miss a trick and is already crawling, happy sitting and can pull herself up from her tummy to sitting which makes me think that if she was hungry she wouldn't be doing all this?!?

So is a milk and fruit diet bad for my baby....?

wouldn't have thought so... not if she's alert and lively. remember, when we go on diets we're told to ditch full-fat milk and eat more carrots so if she's getting as much milk as she wants then her calorific needs should be met.
with regards to the veggies, i gave them to dd as snacks i remember. so bits of cucumber, sticks or slices (dd prefers slices), bits of cold celery for teething on, and steamed carrot. broccoli is also good in a park situation as you leave the mess behind.
also, give her veggies while you're getting the dinner ready, i seem to remember Babybear eating a lot this way. she'd be excited about getting her dinner and troughed anything down that came her way.

She gets as much milk as she wants but just doesn't seem interested in eating anything other than fruit and porridge! She even ignored her preferred veg, courgette, yesterday when I offered it to her as a snack when we were out in the park!

Maybe it'll just be one of those things that will come with time!

Small is a fruit fiend as well. I offer it after lunch and supper - like you, when I see that nothing more of the savoury stuff is going to go down her.

I have had some suppers when all she has eaten is fruit - especially when she is teething. I'm pretty relaxed about it at the moment - I keep thinking that in 10 years time, I'll be more than happy with a fruit addict on my hands. And she does generally have a go at most of the main course before she attacks the fruit. Equally I don't offer much else in the way of other sweet stuff, other than the odd virtuous muffin, so I'm chilled at the moment.

I can see the day when she's older when we do the "eat another 5 carrots and one meatball" negotiations but I have yet to meet a child who hasn't gone through that phase.

Ho hum... I may eat my words when she's a sugar-fixated spotty obese teenager.

We do a lot of hiding veg in other things - so lots of veggie pasta sauces disguised as bolognese. Also she seems to prefer veg roasted (I guess its much sweeter - particularly carrots which she won't eat boiled/ steamed) Also LittleE loves frozen peas (or rather petit pois!!) which she adores straight fromm the freezer in a little bowl while waiting for dinner. I shouldn't worry too much though...they all seem to get there in the end (eventually) just keep offering veg. Good luck xx

Wiggles is also a fruit fiend, if there is any in the fruit bowl on the table and she sees it she SHOUTS and tries to climb on to the table out of her high chair to get it! So the fruit bowl lives on a chair out of sight and I only bring it out after she's had a fair bit of pasta etc.
I also leave the other food on the table and she does have a bite of fruit in one hand with a bite of pesto pasta in the other - grosses me out but she seems to like it! Would veg with a fruity sauce be too weird?

The Nome does this too - she seems to want a change in flavour for a bit, and will then go back to main course. Don't think John Shuttleworth would approve. I think she's a snob, and is expecting a sorbet palate-cleanser. What have I created?

Not to mention "some babies need it at four months because they get hungry" or "I know my baby better" (got to say that one really p's me off! One thing when you're saying "I KNOW my baby is ill" but to say "I know how mature her gut lining is better than any Dr" is stupid)

He just called me with the answer, she's from Zimbabwe, so not exactly the famine struck country that "BLW was invented for".

My friend's breastfeeding was saved by her Ghanaian HV who said (with accompanying nod and wink) that her British bosses would want her to advise formula but that in Ghana babies were left for A Lot Longer without top-ups while mum and baby got the hang of it. she didn't top up and cracked bfing, and speaks fondly of that woman to this day.

It's amazing how in our modern world we are so backward! I love looking at how other countries and times did things and they seem/ed to have a better hang of things than we do. Someone has as their signature on babyfit:

"Mother's milk and mother's arms have always been available, patiently waiting for the passing of man's foolhardy arrogance, which tried to convince us that his inventions were superior to nature."
Tine Thevenin

It makes me mad all the time that there isn't the right support. I nearly ended up stopping because of my HV, I'm grateful to the breastfeeding group that I didn't, but it still took me 3 months to wean her off the formula and fully back onto the breast. Of course, having started at 3 months, by the time we could give up the formula it was just replaced with solids. That was one of the appeals of BLW I think, that I wasn't putting something else into her. It didn't feel l ike I was replacing formula with solids.

I'm looking for some ideas for high calorie foods. Euan's weight has always been a bit of problem. He is seeing a paediatrician because of poor weight gain/weight loss. he had a lot of tests done but they didn't find a reason. His weight seemed to settle on the 2nd percentile, so the doc said we didn't need to see him again till Euan was 18 months.

A couple of weeks ago he suddenly stopped breastfeeding, and started eating much much better than before (at times eating almost as much as his brother who is nearly 4!). Because he was suddenly eating huge amounts, I thought his weight would be doing ok, but I got him weighed yesterday, and it has dipped again to the 0.4th centile - the lowest it has been - and back to what it was when he was 9 months.

The HV said it was almost certainly to do with him stopping breastfeeding and she told me to try to give him high fat/high calorie foods, so I am looking for ideas. He won't drink much milk from a cup (and wont take a bottle at all). I give him loads of cheese and fromage frais (3 pots a day at the moment), and eggs and cook things with goats milk as he is cows milk protein intolerant. When he has mashed potato, I always mash loads of cheese or avocado in with it. Has anyone else got any ideas, as I think he is going to start getting sick of having cheese all the time!?

Katy

Hello Katy,

I'm not sure how old Euan is from your posting but you could try these things which are high in calories - cream cheese (would this be okay with his intolerance?) it's about 50 calories per tablespoon, or smooth peanut butter which is about 100 calories per tablespoon. Another good source of fat is coconut milk, if you got coconut block which melts easily then you could mix it with sweet potato perhaps, and wheatgerm which you could add to something like pancakes or bread or sprinkle into his fromage frais, it's about 25 calories per tablespoon. Hope that helps!

hhhm, the fact that he won't drink milk from a cup or bottle is a pain. have you tried those trainer teats ever? they're quite hard, but not as hard as the cups, and have a cross cut into them so the baby kinda chews and sucks rather than sucks, iykwim? they were the only thing that my friend's baby would take. he got them in boots, as i recall. they were made by boots too.
how do you feel about adding peanut butter to his food? how close are you to the magic 1 year? and flaxseed oil can be stirred into those fromage frais to make them more calorific. oily fish like salmon might be better than white fish as well. good luck, it must be a bit of a worry (although has he really only dropped a percentil and a half? i don't know anything about it really but that doesn't sound horrific, were it not for the fact that he's being investigated already.)

Hello, i don't know much about milk protein intolerance but my ds has got a dairy allergy (still no idea whether its lactose or milk protein thats the problem but its a definite allergy) i used to give him biscuits with milk powder and butter all the time which he ate and seemed ok with, but after he had a big reaction to some cream i stopped giving him any dairy and his weight gain which had been pretty much non-existent for three months suddenly went up a lot.

Not very helpful though as most people wouldn't recommend cutting out an entire food group unless you have no choice, and i don't know if in our case it was pure coincidence and his weight gain would have improved anyway.

Hmm.. cream cheese if he can tolerate it? You can melt it over pasta, mash it into potato - its still in the dairy family but its a different kind of cheese altogether... Or nice (as full-fat as it gets) cottage cheese just to ring the changes.

If not peanut butter, then how about trying another nut butter? I keep meaning to give this a go. There is nut shop on our high street that freshly grinds nuts and a fellow-BLW Mum has given her daughter cashew-nut butter which she devoured.

Buttery scrambled eggs, bananas and dates are pretty calorific, potato salad with mayonnaise, sour cream on baked potatoes, butter on vegetables.... and I think I have just run out of inspiration! And not been very helpful on the non-cows milk front.

Hello Katy
My little girl is cows milk protein allergic and she's always been quite skinny and is very active, so I do push the calories a bit.

Things I've done:
- stir lots of olive oil into mashed potato, pasta sauce, rice or whatever else is feasible
- oily fish as aitch says
- bananas, avos, sweet potatoes (she LOVES sweet potato mash)
- high calorie muesli bars (make or buy) and raisins as snacks (needs good toothbrushing routine though!)

.. and I would move away from giving lots of cheese/cream/yoghurt etc because I agree, it might be hindering his weight gain rather than helping.

All the best, welliemum.

WELLIEMUM! never seen you here before, thanks for that. now that you've been tempted to come over here we'll expect to see a lot more of you, clever lady. i still haven't put your Clara Davis thing up yet, will do it today. i've not been putting much up lately as i'm trying to get the other site sorted out (i, she say... lol, i'm useless, it's a friend who's doing it) so it'll all go up there. eventually.

I am having even bigger problems now. Euan has suddenly gone off a load of foods that he used to like, and refusing to try anything new. We are almost getting to the point where he will only eat cheese/cheesy potato, raisins and fromage frais. He has stopped eating most meat, anything made of egg and even the vegetables and dried apricots that were a big hit before are getting swept to the floor. And because I am so worried about his weight, I don't want to just take it away and take him down from the high chair - so he gets his cheese and fromage frais. So now I worry that I am encouraging him to have some sort of food problem where he will only eat limited things because I am giving in to him and rewarding him for rejecting foods.

I know that 2nd percentile down to 0.4th doesn't sound too bad, as someone said, but he was between the 9th and 25th when he was born, went up to the 25th when he was solely on breastmilk, but it has all been down hill since we started weaning. And if his weight dropped when he was eating a lot, what is it going to do when he isn't eating much - especially as i can't get hime to drink more than a few sips of milk.

Sorry to whinge on so much, but I have just gone through a really stressful lunchtime of him refusing everything I put in front of him except cheese and fromage frais!

Oh, poor you - how stressful. Will he eat pancakes? You can put extra oil or cream into those if necessary - maybe spread them with cheese or dip into fromage frais? I also wonder if it would work to just keep offering other foods alongside cheese, raisins, fromage frais, even though you're pretty sure it'll get rejected. That way it maybe isn't a battle where he refuses everything, and then you get out the "good stuff".... No experience here, as yet, and I'm sure you've already tried all that. Good luck!

Sounds like your having a really hard time, how old is he, did he completely stop bf? Is he maybe teething or getting a bug, ds often goes through phases of eating next to nothing, usually after a week or so of eating everything in sight then just as i start to get worried he'll start eating again. Have you had any advice becuase of his intolerance? Maybe a dietician could help you out a bit?

Katy, when you say his weight is dropping, do you mean he's actually losing weight, or just that he isn't gaining in line with the curves in the HV's red book? Only what you say about his weight going up through the percentiles while he was still just on milk and then dropping down the percentiles after introducing solids sounds really typical for breastfed babies - they don't follow the same curves that are typical of bottlefed babes in the book! Sometimes their weight plateaus a bit or even dips briefly before going on up again - it isn't a nice smooth line in reality. I suspect those charts can do more harm than good because they give the false impression that all babies "should" be following the 50% average curve and that if they wander between curves there "must" be something wrong.

I agree. The charts were written for full term, white middle class babies who are bottle fed, any deviance from that and your baby won't follow the line! But then, your baby may just be devaint and not follow it anyway.

I do think those charts have a lot to answer for. Tinks chart has two lines, one showing premature and one showing on time. The premature line looks awful, it is on and off the bottom, barely holding it's place. The term one is off the chart all the way, but it gets closer to the line as she goes along, she is now just coming into the chart.

At 3 months she was 6lb 2oz and she stayed at that for four weeks. The HV panicked and with a lot of messing around, seeing different people who all agreed she was ok, Isobel ended up being supplemented with formula. It took until she was ready for solids until I was able to get her off the formula which she should never have needed in the first place.

I think the charts were based on ffed and bfed babies, weaned at various times, early, later, on mince and tatties and on wallpaper paste, not solely ffed babies. Not sure how much prems feature in the charts though.

The issue is when HVs use ONLY the charts to assess a baby's health, rather than taking the baby's weight as one part of an overall assessment.

There's no evidence that routinely plotting a baby's weight enhances child health at all.

If we switch wholly to bfed baby charts, there are massive issues with "making women feel guilty" for ffing their babies, imo. There aren't many babies in this country exclusively bfed (I think 92% of babies have formula at some point) - so without better bf support for women who want to bf, the charts will be meaningless for many babies and only make women feel guilty that they're "overfeeding" their babies.

I think that if a mum's worried about her baby's growth BECAUSE the chart says they're plateauing or whatever, and they're exclusively bfed, then it might be worth plotting them on the bf charts. Or it might be worth not getting them weighed for a bit! I know I took the latter route when DS1 started to plateau and lose a bit of weight - he was born on 75th and dropped to between 9th and 25th by the time he was 6mo. He'd been 10 days late and my HV was massively concerned by this, despite the fact he was patently fine. So I stopped seeing her, because it made us all feel better ;o)

The charts that are as standard in our red books are for Formula fed babies. They were developed by studying the weight gain of white middle class formula fed babies. It's a fact. There are breastfeeding charts that are too expensive to use so we breastfeeding mothers are made to feel guilty when our children aren't keeping up. The issue is that HVs are comparing BF babies to FF babies and it doesn't work like that. No one wants to go wholly over to BF charts, but we would like our BF babies on them!

The charts work just fine for premature babies, even mine who, at 13 months, has been in 3-6 month clothes for nearly 5 months, she's following her line perfectly.

Where do you get the figure 92% from? I think you will find that a lot of the women who do supplement with formula, do it to keep up with formula fed babies when their weight doesn't follow the FF chart!

The reason that weight is monitored is because we get on a cycle, the baby's weight doesn't follow the chart, so we monitor to make sure it comes back on. Formula is brought in to boost baby's weight, monitor to make sure it goes up. Baby is weaned off formula, monitor to make sure baby doesn't lose again!

Although some babies do need to be carefully monitored, such as small premature babies because their weight is very finely balanced. Tink had a wee and sent the HV into a panic about her weight as she dropped off of the chart she was hanging on so closely.

I really, really don't want to argue with you about this, but honestly, the charts in the red books aren't based on solely ffed babies.

I got the 92% figure from here (the NHS Infant Feeding Survey 2005, which is the most recent one): http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/health-and-lifestyles/infant-feeding/infant-feeding-survey-2005

specifically:
"Three-quarters of all mothers had given their baby milk other than breast milk by the age of six weeks, this proportion rising to 92 per cent by six months."

I agree that HVs shouldn't pressure mothers to give formula (oh, how I agree with you there! Nor should midwives pressurise mothers on postnatal wards with babies who are less than a day old, as happened to me - gah!).

And yes, I agree, there will be babies who need their weight monitored closely, such as prems.

Again, I agree that women often give formula so that their babies will keep on their "line", which is daft when it's a line on a chart not based on exclusively bfed babies. And yes, there's little point plotting the weight of a baby who has been exc bfed on a chart that's got babies fed in all sorts of ways on it.

But I would go a step further and say that there's not much point routinely weighing healthy, full-term babies at all, unless there's another issue that needs addressing. I'm not talking about prems here, obv. But it's clear from reading any parenting forum or talking to mums in real life that many otherwise perfectly healthy babies plateau, lose a bit some weeks or whatever - and they're fretted into giving formula by HVs who rely solely on the chart and can't take it as one part of the picture of a baby's health.

The current UK charts are based on predominantly formula fed babies, as UK babies at the time the charts were made up were predominantly formula fed. The WHO issue is that the current charts are telling us how babies do grow and include the fact that a great proportion of these grew up to be overweight. So there is a worry that the current charts are encouraging overfeeding. So the WHO set out to find an optimum, healthy group and compare babies to that group instead of comparing babies to how all other babies are.

They shouldn't be used as a stick to beat mother's with, merely as a tool to watch out for problems that might occur. My thinking is that a bigger problem is not the charts per se, but the general attitute that when a child puts on a lot of weight, they are described as "gaining well" and everyone is encouraged to be proud of how much weight a baby has put on, but if they put on weight more slowly, it is seen as a problem. This despite the fact (I am sure I have seen research) that slower weight gain is slightly more healthy.

The upshot is that you should be guided by your baby's appetite and not by feeling that they have to feed at set times or set amounts and not by their weight gain or lack of it.

they were talking about this on Woman's Hour today, funnily enough. it'll probably be on listen again shortly. it makes me a bit mad, actually... when dd was born every doc, HV and midwife commented on how pink of cheek and bright of eye she was before ordering me to top her up. oh if i'd only known then...

it's a disgrace that we don't have somewhere to go for up-to-the-minute in-depth bfing advice and instead have to rely on people who:

a. aren't actually very well-trained
b. aren't aware of the monumental emotional impact that topping-up and 'failing to breastfeed' can have
c. aren't really that interested, in all honesty

but at least they put the Breast is Best posters up, eh?

Yep, it's bonkers that as babies, HVs praise the heck out of you for having a big baby - I mean, some babies will be big, but an equal number (statistically) will be smaller. For some HVs, the top of the centile chart is a "goal". One HV I read about said, "Of, course, ideally, all babies would be on the 50th centile"...

Feeding to appetite is definitely something to be encouraged - all too often I've seen women encouraging their babies to finish their bottle, to finish their food (aeroplanes and choo-choo trains and the like) - it's not a healthy way to be.

I have then seen the flip side of this "heavy babies" thing with older children who are on 98th for weight AND height being told by HVs that they need to "cut down".

Actually, perhaps what would help is MATHS training for HVs!

Maths training - especially how to plot a graph. The number of times I have had to correct where they put the dot on the weight charts is ridiculous.

(Note: I don't want to bash all health visitors - I have had some very good ones along with the complete duds).

This has given me the nudge to get round to downloading the weight chart for breastfed babies from the WHO website and compare it with P's chart in the red book. On her red book chart she starts at 25th percentile, goes up to 80th and now (at nearly a year) she is on about 45th. On the WHO chart she starts at 50th, quickly goes up to about the 70th and stays there more or less all the way. That's quite some difference!

I couldn't find the WHO chart on their website could someone post it so I could look at it?? I also have a small for standard charts baby - she's just turned 8 months and wears 3-6 month old clothes still. She hasn't been weighed since her 7 month check-up, when she was 13lb 7oz, so I'm not sure how much she weighs now and I try not to worry about it too much as she is very alert - crawling backwards at 6 and half months, forwards at 7 and half months - which for me is not behaviour of a child that is lacking in food or nutrition... I get doctors trying to stress me out all the time about her size and weight but I try to smile and ignore them as I feel I know my baby better and she certainly doesn't seem wanting which for me is more valid than any chart.

Here's a link to the WHO page where you can find all the new charts.

http://www.who.int/childgrowth/standards/en/index.html

I have put the data from the WHO weight for age (boys only so far) info onto an excel spreadsheet to make up a chart for plotting your own data on. Have a done a chart with Euan's data on it for his first year. If anyone would like a copy, or wants me to do the girls one too, let me know.

I know most of us feel it's not worth obsessing about weight, but there are the odd few (like me) with babies with low weight gain who might like to see it on the new charts.

If you do a girls one, I'd love a copy!

Thanks!

I'll e-mail you when I have done it.

Katy

Hi could you email me the boys one please? claire@adamandclaire.co.uk

thank you very much!

I'd love a boys one please - alicoton@hotmail.com

Ta

If you did a girls one I'd love a copy.

Rach, what is your e-mail address? Or if you don't want to reveal it online, email me - mine should be in my profile.
Katy

When I say dropping, I actually mean dropping. I'm just looking at his red book. At 41 wks (9 1/2 months?) he was 16lb 5oz, at 45 wks he was 16lb 11oz and at 1yr he was back down to 16lb 5oz again. He did something similar around 7 months when he dropped to what he had been a month or so earlier.

When his weight first started plateauing, the HV checked on the breastfed charts, and said it wasn't quite as bad as it looked on the normal charts, but when it actually went down, we were referred to the paediatrician. He didn't want to see Euan again for another 6 months because tests were negative and the weight seemed to have stabilised. But the next time I got him weighed it has dropped again. If it hasn't righted itself when I get him weighted again in a couple of weeks, I suspect the paediatrician will want to see him earlier.

I think the food refusing crisis has been averted. Yesterday teatime, he was refusing everything and throwing a tantrum, so I took him down from the table and left him in the other room till we finished eating, then went to calm him down. When I brought him back to the table he sat on my knee to eat and ate everything! And today he has been much better.

Oh, well done, Katy - calm presence of mind in a tough and stressful situation!

I see what you mean. Glad to hear he's eating again! - sounds like you dealt with it just right yesterday, and hopefully he's turned a corner.

Just FYI, Euan was weighed again today and he has gone up from 7.4kg (16lb 5) to 8.16kg (18lb) in a month, putting him almost back up to the 2nd centile again. So it looks like the latest weight loss was just down to his sudden stopping of breastfeeding. It's a weight off my mind!

Brilliant! Well done, Katy and Euan!

oh that is GREAT news, well done you two.

OK this isn't part of the thread above but I didn't know where to put my question...

Did you still do the baby rice stuff or go straight to veg?

If and when I have another baby I won't bother with the whole babyrice thing. I'm not convinced it serves any purpose. It's all part of the bland anonymous mush, not to mention passive, route to weaning. Much better to breast or formula feed until 6 months and then BLW away!

no rice, brunosmum. it's a big leap of faith i know but you really do just give the baby some steamed carrot or something and see how they get on.

Ah, baby rice. It is just wallpaper paste, isn't it? Someone in the decorating industry must have been looking around for new business ideas.

Beck X

I have just thrown out my box of baby rice (from which one spoonful had been used to thicken some culinary disaster or other!). After 6 months, I finally got fed up with it falling out of the cupboard and onto my head. Who was it who said that the unused box of baby rice was the BLW totem? Probably Aitch.

Lin! i literally threw out my pack of baby rice last night, despite the fact that the sell by date was good for, oh, about another decade...

Ha! I found one this week. Best Before October 2007. Best Before dates like that always scare me.

I know I should have nailed this by now, what with IzzyMouse being 14 months and everything, but I seem, somehow, to still only have yoghurt and/or fruit to offer for pudding in my narrow repertoire. I guess it's partly because I associate the word 'pudding' with 'lots of processed carbohydrate and sugar in a bowl topped with a bit more sugar and probably some dairy products', none of which seems right to dump in front of a child you don't want to become fixated on sugar. And I don't really like fruit that much, so I can't think of anything interesting to do with it. Any thoughts? Organix biscuits are too pricey to be buying tonnes of, too...

Oh, and we've overdosed on Franny's Fab banana cake so I'm giving that a rest for a while.

To be honest, I stick with fruit and yoghurt. When I was a kid we only ever had pudding on a Sunday as part of the whole Sunday Lunch Ritual and I am carrying that on for Small.

I do have a sliced loaf of Kami's Rival Virtuous Muffin (Banana Mix Variation) in the freezer and I very occasionally defrost a slice of that for her if she's demolished the fruit and is still looking peckish. From time to time I give an Organix biscuit with the fruit if she's been a bit low on carbs but otherwise - fruit it is. I do yoghurt or Fromage Frais about 4 times a week.

On Sundays, however, she has cautiously approved of rhubarb crumble, lemon muffins and - once - a tiny taste if ice cream. Oh the giddy sugar high that ensued.

We only really offer fruit, but sometimes I go mad and offer blueberry muffin, jelly or rice pudding. However the muffin eating is usually saved for Saturday trips to Costa for a muffin and babycino (get us !) as it makes it more of an occasion.
I do make a point of buying all sorts of fruit - DS loves blueberries, red currants, mango, pomegranate, as well as some that he loves, but the mess gets even me a bit twitchy. Raspberries in particular apparently must have your finger inserted in the hole and then squished before consumption

Hi

LittleE loves all fruit, the more exotic the better. And ice cream (although frozen fromage frais is acceptable too!! She also likes homemade rice pudding, crumble, pancakes, fruit cake. But usually it is the old staples of yoghurt and fruit
Alison x

Glad to know I'm not alone. We did try rice pudding but it was given very short shrift, and ice cream was just nibbled then given back to Mummy (damn, not another meal I have to struggle to finish off). But crumble is an interesting idea. We do ring the changes with fruit offered (how did your babes deal with pomegranate, btw?) as well as the staples of bananas and, currently, strawberries. She just doesn't seem to enjoy crumbly things, she'll have just one mouthful and then give up. Ho hmm, I wonder why pudding seems important. Is it another of those 'you must do's that doesn't actually have any basis in sense?!

i definitely think it is. Poor Babybear hardly ever gets pudding, and even if she does it's usually strawberries. (she often has fruit while waiting for dinner, funnily enough, often a clementine, so i don't think she's wanting for anything). i'm delighted to have been reminded that we only ever had pudding on a Sunday when i was a child... when did that change i wonder?

Pudding was definitely a special treat when I was growing up although now mum does it EVERY time we go home! If I want to do pudding other than a bar of chocolate now, I do grilled or steamed fruit - maybe with custard or ice cream...

Speaking of puddings, did you wait until your LO was eating veg well before introducing fruit? I gave Bruno some steamed apple today as part of his lunch and it was a real success compared to the potatoes he had with it!

They're saying now there is little point as breastmilk is far sweeter than any fruit, even if you FF your LO is built for it anyway - IYKWIM?

I think you've all just proven the Paul McKenna diet - if you make something a treat it becomes more desirable - for this reason I don't plan on making anything a treat. I think we too eat more desert than we had as children.

That's good to know as I'm the main man when it comes to eating fruit in our house - she's unfair not to share.

Hi, another first timer here. We started blw a week ago now and so far so good. This site has been a huge help, so thanks! Still learning about what to give my little one and just wondering if sausages are ok - supermarket ones, unfortunately, no time to make them from scratch myself!

Tink loves her bangers and mash! I've found it's one of the easiest meats for her to eat and there is rarely anything left (unlike her older cousins who need the ends cutting off).

Thanks. Will they be ok to give to a 27 week old?

As I recall, I am sure LittleE had sausages fairly early on in her the BLW experience. They are still one of her favourites and the spicier the better - very keen on pork & chilli and pork with leek & stilton!! I am always on the lookout for new recipes incorporating sausages as we are getting a little bored of sausage stew, toad in the hole and bangers & mash!!

cassoulet? Cheeky hasn't had sausages yet..... maybe if we had some barbie weather........

I have sausages with pasta - throw in some veg and a fairly chunky / spicy sauce and its yum yum!

check the ingredients on sausages... some of them contain a preservative called sodium metabisulphite which can be an allergen (skin and breathing reactions) for some people, so you'd want to watch the young 'un when trying them for the first time just in case.

Grovels if this has already appeared somewhere (I did look, I promise).

Ba started on solids at about 24 weeks (in retrospect I allowed myself to get panicked by the health visitor, which I regret). He was sitting up, picking things up etc. so we started offering him finger food and he loved it and we were all happy.

However, after a week or two of happy family meals he started waking up at night. Sadly I'm not one of those people who can say "my baby slept through from 2 weeks and then he started waking up". Ba has never done more than 6 hours in a row, and that's only been twice since he was born. BUT the pattern of his waking changed, so he would wake up and not go back to sleep and wriggle and be uncomfortable - for an hour or two, once or twice a night. As soon as we held him upright he'd go back to sleep, but laying him down flat would wake him (even if we did this holding him -- so I think it was being flat, not being put down, that woke him).

I think this is to do with solids. And I think it's his digestion. We've stopped offering him solids in the evening but still sometimes it happens. I think it's to do with what he's eaten, but maybe also with how much (he's super-efficient at getting things into his mouth -- none of the "he ate hardly anything" for us, perhaps unfortunately).

Is this just us? Do we have food intolerances or something equally frightening? or do some babies just do this? help...

(ps I spent ages trying to find clever way of getting "a (butternut) squash and a squeeze" in to the above but gave up since life is finite).

i really wouldn't bother about the two weeks thing with the weaning, it's so close and if the baby was eating one would have to think that he could, iykwim?
all i know is that Babybear's sleep got disturbed when we started weaning, and so we moved food back to 4pm so that she would enjoy her milk more.
can you identify certain foods that it happens more with? i don't know anythign about reflux but indigestion is indigestion... perhaps raise the head of his bed?
someone posted on here about acid reflux before, so have a read of this and the links and see if it rings any bells. she certainly seemed to think that some foods were especially irritating, and in fact proposed the for AR babies BLW may not, in fact, be perfectly suited. not that i'm saying that your baby has reflux, but there might be some interesting reading in it. good luck, hopefully someone else will be along soon.

We are 4 weeks in to BLW and all is going well, however we have developed a problem with eye rubbing. The Squinny will insist on rubbing her eyes during meals, which means food gets in them, which means they irritate, so she rubs more etc etc. Currently I am having to interrupt meals to clean eyes and hands to try and cut down on this, but am aware that this is less than ideal. Does anyone have any suggestions?

So solutions I'm afraid but ba does this as well -- I don't think he's ever managed to get anything in his eyes, but he gets a lot of food on his face. Um how about baby sunglasses? (that's a bit of a silly suggestion, isn't it...)

Of course - swimming googles! We even have some that are bizarrely tinted blue, which might curb her irrational preference for red food.

Unfortunately I think it's a Phase... P did it a lot with fish (phee-ew), mainly in frustration when she couldn't pick a piece up or it fell out of her hand on the way to her mouth. I can't remember the last time she did it now, so take heart, I'm sure yours'll grow out of it quickly as she gets better at eating!

Have a look at Tink's face pack in photos. She loves mashed potato and it does get rubbed in, as does most food.

I don't have any soloutions, I just leave her to get on with it, it's usually when she's tired though.

I need some help - Munchkin is now 8 1/2 months old and we have only ever BLWed her, starting at 1 week before she turned 6 months, up to then she was bfed only but not on demand as she goes to a nanny 4 days a week (so my milk in a bottle.)

She is tiny - still in 6 month old clothes but in general very happy and lively - sleeps through the night (12 hours) and has been crawling for a month now, and is very alert in general. I haven't had her weighed for about 6 weeks but last time she was 6.12kg (13lb 8oz) for 64cm (25 inches) which is pretty in proportion but small (don't know about centiles as they don't really do them here in France).

So she seems to love BLW and will eat fruit no problem but I'm having real problems getting anything else eaten - she'll play with chicken, steak and veg i.e. suck on them, spit them out, pick them up, suck on them etc. but I'm not sure anything gets ingested. When people (mother-in-law, nanny, and of late hubby) comment on this, I say well she's not hungry, and she's discovering etc. However a couple of times the nanny has "accidentally" given her courgette soup (Munchkin tried to steal it from the baby next to her's bowl, so the nanny gave her some too) and apparently she guzzled it down, all mouth wide open, baby bird-like. This really upsets me as I do want to BLW but am I doing something wrong? Am I depriving her and she's hungry?

On top of that she's cutting back on milk quantities - I'm now having to give her mostly formula as after months of expressing my let-down is too slow and Munchkin too fidgety so we only manage bfeeding first thing in morning and bedtime feeding. Which means I can see how much milk is being taken in and it's not much - instead of the 210ml she's "supposed" to take, she'll take on average 120ml, sometimes more. I think with the bfeeds she gets her 500ml a day but I wonder with her lack of solid eating if she is getting enough.

BTW - she has never been ill, not even a sniffle, so I don't think she's lacking anything, but how can I fight everyone who's determined to see me give up BLW? My one ally was my hubby but even he is now thinking we should move over to purees...

Sorry for rambling, but any suggestions, personal experiences or support would be greatly appreciated!

but what's the point of moving her onto purees, lansgrim, that's the question...

if it's to get more calories into her because you are worried about her size, then i can understand that, but courgette soup is not the place to start, obviously. you'd be wanting to give her high calorie foods, i presume, things like macaroni cheese etc? also stirring cream or avocado, olive or flaxseed oil into everything, even smoothies, will up the calorie content.

by all means try her with a spoon if you think she'd like it, BLW isn't a religion, if you know what i mean, and i personally think that spoon-feeding with a 'BLW head' on is still very positive.

however, as i understand it, in terms of calories you're pretty much better off with milk so i'd be looking for ways to get her milk up before doing anything else. bearing in mind that milk is the most important thing, i'd make sure that she never ate solids when she was hungry so that you can be sure that if it's calories she needs, she's being filled up by milk.

with regards to meat etc, i'd try serving it up differently now that she's a bit older. we ditched the fist-sized and finger-length things quite quickly as i think Babybear liked to exercise her pincer group.

on the other hand, if you're feeling under pressure from people to give her purees but you as her mother instinctively feel that she's doing well, you'll just have to ignore it and try to keep an eye on the milk situation for calories. if her father is really against it then, well, in the interests of domestic harmony i'd let him do a bit of spooning. careful, though, no empty-caloried carrots, though.

is she teething, by the way? i wonder if that might make spoon-feeding more appealing to her? Babybear loved frozen peas (still frozen) when she was teething, in fact at 20 months they are still one of her favourite snacks.

Thank you for bringing me back to reason! I think the point of moving her back to purees is because that is the "done" thing. But you're right courgette soup is not going to up the calorie content at all. I make sure that milk feeds always come before solid meals despite being repeatedly told that that is not the way as the idea is to wean her off milk!!! (exasperated sigh)

I think until I start feeling she's suffering from being BLWed I'll keep her on it - maybe with a touch of spoon-feeding in the name of domestic harmony as you say!

And you're right about teething - I hadn't even thought about it, but the last day or two she's been gnawing on anything and everything. Is she too young to be started with frozen peas? I'm thinking of choke risk - she has pincer grip pretty well though, so a la Gill Rapley I'm thinking that means she's ready.

What do you think about yogurts if milk intake wanes anymore?

And don't worry about her size/ weight. LittleE is 14 months, still in 6-9 month clothes and has a 4 month old cousin who is heavier than her!! She has been demand BF and BLW and is happy healthy and small (plus she has only slept through the night about 4 times - so you have one up on me there!!). If you can just try and relax - I am sure babies don't ever starve themselves and they really do seem to know how much they need to eat / drink. I am sure she has no-where near the 'righht' amount of milk but as she is BF I really have no idea. If your little one is healthy and happy relax and go with it!!
ps LittleE loves yoghurt/ cheese/ ice cream etc and has had them all since around 7 months

What a relief! Thank you! Maybe I'll try her on some cheese and yogurt then. Any particular ones to recommend / avoid??

The way I finally got her to go through the night was a heavy dose of porridge around an hour before she goes to bed - it works a treat, but if we ever skip it she's guaranteed to wake up...

Maybe we should try the porridge thing! Cauliflower & Broccoli cheese for dinner!. As far as cheese goes - the stronger tasting the better as far as LittleE goes. She rejects Babybel & Edam! Although she is quite keen on Philadelphia. You can use that stirred into pasta sauces (a tip from the dreaded AK!!). Yeo Valley yoghurts are good but have sugar in. Rachel's organic yoghurts (Waitrose & Tesco) have no sugar, just Yoghurt & fruit. Haven't yet found sugar free fromage frais, but I figure they are fairly ok. They are aslo nice frozen (the ones that come in tubes!) Have fun x

Try natural yoghurt with mashed banana and any other squishy fruit we have to hand. That, and porridge were the only things the Nome ate baby bird beak style, but now it's hands in (so less mashed fruit in the yoghurt is handy). No sugar, and absolutely gorgeous, so we share it.

Sainsbury's own brand kids fromage frais don't have any added sugar. Little Dish are good too (no added sugar and slightly thicker consistency so good for self feeding).

It's hard when you have a little one, isn't it. IzzyMouse has always been 2 to 3 months behind her age in clothes sizes, but she crawled and walked early, and is full of the beaniest beans you can think of, happy, incorrigibly inquisitive, independent etc etc. The point of BLW is, of course, the BL bit. If you or your nanny do a bit of spooning with stuff she's interested in and can't pick up, like the soup, and she's asking for it, is that a problem? As long as there's no shovelling going on (cheesy wink emoticon follows). You can always offer her the spoon too, so she can do it herself, we use at least 3 spoons with very sloppy food or yoghurt - two for IzzyMouse (one in each hand of course) and one for the person loading it up. Madame has started leaning forward to nibble grub delicately off the end of the spoon, but I'm hoping it's a phase as I haven't spent 8 months rustling up fab finger food for her to start expecting me to blooming spoon fed her!

Don't forget, too... that they'll be taking in a little less now, as they are growing a little less quickly.

We spoon yogurt to the bub and he loves yogurt and he gets angry if he sees spoons and there is anything other than yogurt on them! Unfortunately, I think the dairy may be causing constipation for us. We are going to add it back immediately and hope for the best. Unfortunately most fruits that are good for relieving constipation are hard to do BLW style.

Good luck, lansgrim

Thanks to all - we ended up having a great day today with her shoveling everything in, and in front of Papa, so feel much better about things. She had had her morning nap quite late so maybe that had something to do with it... will see, we're off on holiday this weekend for a week so will see what the more relaxed attitude of both parents does for BLW!

LittleE still does it (aged 14 months). It is definitely exacerbated if we draw attention to it in any way (ie by washing her mid-meal!). I now try to ignore it and she only dfoes it v accasionally now, usually when she is tired!

No suggestions, just wanted to say we gave the bub couscous the other day, which he loved.. until he rubbed it in his eyes.

The debate over puddings has really got me thinking about the relationship between food and treats.

Given that I have always struggled with my weight (too much sugar & carbs!) I am really keen to ensure that Small develops a sensible attitude to food - especially sugar. I agree, in principle, that any "treat" becomes inherently desirable but can't shake a gut feeling that lifting all embargoes can't be the right way to go either.

Puddings on a Sunday were a treat as a kid but because they were part of a routine, we always knew they were coming and didn't pester for them midweek. Likewise, we knew that there was special food for birthdays or Christmas and those kind of foods weren't forthcoming at any other time.

I'd like Small to know that sugar, in the processed form of biscuits or puddings, is something to be eaten in moderation when compared to fruit. Therefore, building them into her diet in the correct ratio should teach her what is a reasonable amount. To that end, I have been trying to incorporate this principle as part of her diet from about 10 months.

Personally I am (theoretically) against any use of food as a bribe or incentive for "good" behaviour as it disrupts the whole philosophy that I have just outlined! How well I stick to that theory when coming under pressure from a willful toddler - who knows? Maybe "clementines as bribe" will come into play!

Now, I am aware that this whole topic is potentially inflammatory and that there will be plenty of differing opinions so I am really interested in what everyone else thinks. Especially as to how to combine the BLW child-centred principle with the parental control over what is offered!

Stop everything! i'm posting this up as a Proper Thread and will come back and answer when i get a minute.

Does that mean I shouldn't be replying to Lin here? Sorry if it does... I just wanted to say to Lin that this was the way I was brought up (right through until I left home, so toddler years and teen years) and I have never craved junk food - I never buy it and only have it in the house if it has been bought for me (i.e. boxes of chocolate). Because of this I eat a varied diet and have never dieted or calorie counted, I have been a size 10 for most of my adult life thanks to this healthy approach. I enjoy food - I live in France so they kick you out if you don't! and have (I believe) a very healthy attitude to it. I hope to pass this on to Munchkin too.

I did a quick search on this but couldn't find much, so sorry if I am making you all repeat yourselves. We have been blw for almost 2 weeks now and are on to 3 "meals" a day, although mostly still just having a taste and spitting a lot out. My health visitor is all in favour of the finger food approach, in fact she brought it to my attention, but said that he needs to be eating more now than he actually is. Our biggest struggle is breakfast. I have tried him on toast but I think he still finds it a little rough and coarse, and we have tried weetabix, dry and mushy, but he's not overly keen on them. He eats a lot of fruit at lunchtime, so I guess I was looking for an alternative to fruit, toast or weetabix for breakfast, and something that would be suitable for his early stage of weaning. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Hmmm, not sure your HV has quite understood the "baby-led" in BLW! I'd say the person who really ought to dictate how much your baby needs to be eating is your baby... especially when you've only been at it for 2 weeks (sounds to me like he's going great guns, by the way).

Piglet's regular breakfast is porridge, overcooked so that it goes quite solid so she can pick it up (cut into pieces). Although these days I cook it wetter and stickier for easier self-spooning practice. Search under porridge in the box to the right and you'll find a more detailed recipe.

Good luck!

The Pupster often has Raisin Wheats soaked a little in some milk... although, er, this morning he had last night's salmon fishcakes reheated. He's only 12 months old, so how's he to know fishcakes aren't traditionally eaten for breakfast? [evil cackling]

The bubs has porridge pancakes (do a search, as suggested) pretty much every morning, sometimes he eats what they are having at daycare (he goes three times a week).

He was having banana or some yogurt for breakfast also sometimes, but since we had a nasty bought of constipation we took those away.

Anyone have tips for easy to handle fruits I'd love to hear.

I steamed some apple which went down a treat although Bruno is a lot younger... He just had 8ths but you could use quarters?

If you are OK with Nestles, you could try mini Shredded Wheat, or Shreddies.

For breakfast Euan has a slice of toast (lightly done) and jam, a bowl of probably too sugary cereal (multigrain hoops or similar) - we don't mind about having more sugar than we would normally consider as we are struggling to keep his weight up, then either a banana or a handful of grapes or whatever other fruit we have kicking around. Before he could manage toast, he quite liked breadsticks, which we dipped in jam. He also likes french toast/eggy bread (makes the bread a lot softer and easier to chew, so that may be worth a try). If he likes fruit, I would give him fruit along with something else which he can take or leave.

But to be honest I wouldn't worry too much if his weight is ok and he seems happy and full of energy. Different kids have different appetites and there really is no set amount they should be eating. Euan really ate practically nothing until he was 8 or 9 months and didn't start having what I would consider a proper meal sized portion (instead of throwing most of it around) until about 11 months, when he suddenly discovered his appetite. And now his appetite seems to disappear completely whenever he has a slight cold or is teething.