Feeding your baby BLW style

Hey Marijke

You have helped so many moms with this wonderful thread so keep the info coming.

I wish I had started solids sooner. I was feeing purity and Dylan's daycare was feeding him regular food and I was shocked but I started then feeding Dylan by dishing him up some of our food and gave him a spoon and let him get on with it.

He eats some by hand, some with a spoon and the rest he feeds the dog. When he is finished he pushes his plate away. Sometimes we worry that he hasn't eaten enough but he is fine and I want him to learn not to overeat.

to be honest - i hate eating with my hands, and i hate it when my eldest eats with her hands. i work with a lot of muslim ppl and when they have lunch it is with their hands. in the beginning it use to freak me out, but now it doesn''t. i learnt why they do it and i respect it. ive even tried eating with my hands but cant.

Now that Lorelai is eating with her hands it still freaks me out, but eventually when she is older i will teach her to eat with a knife and fork. hopefully she wont mind.

My point is, again it is a situation where something works for some ppl and not for others.

We did a combo of Puree and BLW and it worked great. K was first introduced to solids at 6 months and I have been making her food since then.
Initially I made her food smooth and gradually increased the texture and there was never a problem of her not wanting ore textured food. I allow her to eat with her hands or spoon whichever she prefers on the day. At 15 months, I must say that I hardly spoon feed her as she wants to eat by herself.

I have a few recipes for toddler foods on my blog so when you have some time, go check it out: blogs.food24.com/pistachetchocolat (food24 is down at the moment)

I must admit that I find it very condescending for people to say eating with hands = barbaric

For Muslims, it is part of our religion and culture to eat with our hands and we have to teach and encourage our children to eat with their hands as well. Some reserachers say that when you eat with your fingers, there are some enzymes that get released at your finger tips that help with digestion of food (I know there will be other research that will counter this argument, thats why I say some). Eating with our fingers also allow us to make smaller bite sizes as compared to the spoon and this aids in eating slower and not overeating.

lol what can i do but laugh!!!

Will reply to everything a bit later, EP you too, have to go to work.

Charlotte, I see that you are under fire in Jan 2010 thread now. Don't worry about it, we all love you!

Okay, so because james is nearing readiness for solids each day I went through the baby led weaning book again on Friday, plus I did some research into the weaning of other primates and read the WHO document on child feeding. (yes I have no life).

Anyway according to WHO a childs most important foods are milk feeds in the 1st year of life and any additional foods are meant only to be "complimentary" - to add the nutirents that may be missing in breast milk. According to their 170page document all children should be given milk feeds before offering their solids (and they talk about purees) because if they eat too much solids they will not eat as much milk and therefore not get as much important nutrients. At 8/9 months children will start dropping milk feeds in favour of foods (at about this time their digestive system is suitably developed to do this)
My mom started my sisters and I on solids at 4 months at the advice of the clinic sister (we were all breastfed) - up to this stage we had more of less been folowing the middle weight line on our charts. From 4 - 9 months we all dipped to well below this line and after 9 months climbed back to meet it. I found this quite interesting.

Another thing that I have noticed is that peadiatricians who frequently advice starting solids because it "helps" avoid allergies, then advise rice cereal - which I dont thing one person in the world is allergic to (the reason why it is a 1st food)? How does this introduce potential allergens earlier anyway???? Surely if there is evidence that starting solids earlier helps avoid allergies then we should be introducing potential risks such as egg, dairy, wheat, nuts etc???

Marijke, there is very little support for all things "Unconventional" As you say people are just scared by it so they just avoid it where they and their kids could actually be benefiting from it. I Think it's a fabulous idea and i am extremely sorry I didn't know about it sooner. About the Choking, all babies choke slightly on foods at some stage or another so wether it's because you actually put the food in their mouths for them or they put it in there themselves it's all the same. Luckily gag refexes in babies are really strong and they shouldn't choke too seriously, it should come out before anything actually gets stuck into the throat. It's with things like small beads, coins, marbles and things that some parents leave lying around that you should be more concerned becauase this is very likely to cause severe problems as they can't be chewed at all and then just slip straight down and get lodged into the airway. Chewed food will not make it's way down the throat quite as easily and would result in the baby gagging considerably and dislodging the food for the most part.