Feeding your baby BLW style

So today B is 11 months old and we have been doing exclusive BLW now for 6 months. It really is the best decision I have ever made. Mealtimes are fun and exciting for B, she stays engaged through family dinner and is usually still busy eating when we have long forgotten that we ate!

B and I go to the coffee shop once a week and if I only order coffee I also order an ice tea, they bring a glass filled with fresh pieces of fruit and the bottle of ice tea. I keep the bottle and give the fruit to B. If I eat anything B is free to try whatever is on my plate. She even tried a piece of grapefruit the other day that was in my side salad!

B has decided that she doesn't like sippy cups so now she gets her straw cup and loves her tea with a straw, thank you


Here's a pic of her after eating bread and oxo with her scrambled eggs. I'm surprised by the sudden rise in the amount of egg she eats. In the beginning she hardly had any and now she hardly leaves anything!


Until this point we fed yoghurt to B, it was the only thing she would take off a spoon. About two weeks ago we started giving her the spoon during dinner so she can play with it, since she loves rice so much we preload the spoon and give it to her. This quickly got her very independent and here's how yoghurt now gets eaten in our house



B is so in love with rice at the moment. The other evening she finished her whole plate of chicken with sauce and rice (hubby gave her more rice off his plate) and I thought she'd be so happy if I never make anything expect that ever again. She also still loves cucumber, cheese, pasta and mince - well come to think of it, anything really!

I get a lot of people telling me how wonderfully 'advanced' she is. Random people in coffee shops tell me that! But here's what I think - if it's true (and I don't know if it is because I can't and don't compare her to anyone else) then it is because of BLW.

During the month of June she got 2 more teeth so now she has 3! And she started walking on the 25th. She still drinks on average 2.5 (175ml) bottles a day. I bought my last tin of formula recently so will start weaning B to regular milk bit by bit soon. She already loves her milk with tea!

Dinner is still the best time of my day. Preparing a meal and watching B eat it sometimes brings tears to my eyes. I'm not the worlds best cook and we lived off takeaways before B was born (and while she was still young!) but it is just so amazing and worth the effort!

With regards to combination feeding, the book says this in the Q&A section page 220

"Most babies find it more fun to feed themselves than to be fed by someone else - they enjoy doing things for themselves and learning new skills. And many parents have turned to BLW because their baby already refuses to be spoon-fed. Some parents want their baby to be used to being spoon-fed in case they ever need to do it, and some simply want to have the option to spoonfeed alongside fingerfoods.
However, your baby may have other ideas. Many BLW babies quickly make it clear that they don't want to be fed by someone else. There are all kinds of ways they do this - most commonly simply by taking the spoon from the other person's hand. This seems to be especially true of breastfed babies, who are used to being in control of their own feeding. Bear in mind that if you sometimes insist on spoon-feeding your child, while letting him feed himself at other times, he will be getting mixed messages about how much you trust him and how independent he is allowed to be.
If your baby does accept a spoon, there's no harm in combining spoon-feeding with self-feeding. However, if you are attracted to BLW because of its advantages for your baby, we recommend that you don't spoon-feed at every meal. This is because, if you do, your baby may not get enough variety of texture, or as many opportunities as he could to develop his skills. There's also a chance you might be tempted to pursuade him to eat more than he wants. It's better to reserve spoon-feeding for certain foods or to hand your baby a spoon ready-loaded with food every now and then and let him decide whether or not to eat it."

Juno, I think if you follow the rules regarding feeding this should never really happen, will just go through them quickly:

*Baby has to be 100% in charge of what goes into their mouth.
*Baby has to be sitting upright (not crawling or walking around with food)
*You have to start off with food that are soft but not mushy but turns mushy when saliva is added.
*Avoid choking hazzards, this would be small nuts, any hard type of food that requires chewing to break down.

The Book says: Page 62 "Often worries about choking are based on seeing babies gagging on food and confusing this with choking; these two mechanisms are related but they are not the same thing. Gagging is a retching movement that pushes food away from the airway if it is too big to be swallowed. The baby opens his mouth and pushes his tongue forward; sometimes a piece of food appears at the front of his mouth and he may even vomit a little. It doesn't seem to bother babies who are feeding themselves and they usually carry on eating as if nothing had happened.....The gag reflex may well be a key part of babies learning how to manage food safely. When a baby has triggered this reflex a few times he learns not to do it. As he gets older, whether or not he has been allowed to experiment with self-feeding, the place where this reflex is triggered moves back along this tongue so that gagging doesn't happen until food is nearer the back of his mouth. As the gag reflex moves back towards the adult position it becomes less and less effective as en early-warning sign. So babies who haven't been allowed to explore food from the beginning may miss the opportunity to use it to help them learn how to keep food away from their airway."

Also check the true signs of choking that I posted previously. Whatever you do, don't freak out, having you run around like a headless chicken in this situation isn't going to help your baby, never put your fingers in babies mouth to try and get the piece out because you could push it further in. If they are having difficulty you let them lean forward and pat (with the heel of your palm at the top middle of their back) with a suitable amount of force 2 - 10 times. That should help but yes, look at diagrams on how to do the Heimlich on babies.

Yes I read the earlier post re choking and get the whole gag reflex thing. I just thought there may be more to it. Your last post is great as this is definitely an element that is at the forefront - how do you know whether they are in fact choking and what to do about it if they are - learn how to do the Heimlich maneuver for babies as well - actually have a good diagram showing how.

I actually tried him on a piece of apple this am and although he was interested when he tasted it, he lost his grip a few times so developmentally I still think he has a way to go (prem and still not quite caught up). However I think one way to actually improve his hand eye is to experiement a little each day until he tells me he is ready..

I like the sound of your approach Jems - combination.

Also, from my own experience, my little girl (now 11 months) still sometimes gags. She bows her head down, opens her mouth, closes her eyes and her face goes slightly pink to red - to describe it better she looks like she might vomit at any second, then the piece that is bothering her moves forward in her mouth. Usually she then continues chewing it or just spits it out.

I usually count, to 5 if she isn't making any sounds, to 10 when she makes sounds while doing this and if I see her struggling I will get up and pat her firmly (not violently!) on her back. In the 6 months I have been doing this exclusively (not the patting on her back bit but the BLW bit ) I've had to pat her twice - once because she ate a hard simba chip and once while sucking on an otee but both times I actually overreacted because looking back, by the time I patted her back the piece of food was almost out already.

But not once was she actually choking. These are the true signs of choking as described in Wikipedia:
# The person cannot speak or cry out, or has great difficulty and limited ability to do so.
# Breathing, if possible, is labored, producing gasping or wheezing.
# The person has a violent and largely involuntary cough, gurgle, or vomiting noise, though more serious choking victims will have a limited (if any) ability to produce these symptoms since they require at least some air movement.
# The person desperately clutches his or her throat or mouth, or attempts to induce vomiting by putting their fingers down their throat.
# If breathing is not restored, the person's face turns blue (cyanosis) from lack of oxygen.
# The person does any or all of the above, and if breathing is not restored, then becomes unconscious

Juno, I'm very lazy tonight so I'm just going to copy and paste the post I made about choking/gagging.

The appropriate age to start with solids (real food) the BLW way (not that starting earlier with purees are necessary from my own experience) is when your baby can sit up (supported or not, I used a bumbo seat till B started sitting unsupported in her high chair) pick up a piece of food and take it swiftly and accurately to their mouth and make chewing motions with their mouth.

Here's the copied piece - it's written keeping in mind the 6 month guideline age to introduce any type of food - if you read the whole thread from the beginning you will see that I started B at 5.5 months:

OH MY GOSH, WON'T SHE CHOKE?!

The short answer is no. She will gag but don't overreact to this natural reflex because it might scare your baby. Here's what I know:

Babies are so brilliantly constructed. Their gag reflex is so much closer to the opening of their mouth than adults. (the gag reflex moves back in their mouth as they grow older) Your baby might gag on big pieces bitten off but this doesn't mean that they will choke on it. Because the gag reflex is so far forward the food isn't even close to their airway yet, gagging and coughing out the big pieces is a vital learning curve that your baby has to go through. This teaches them to bite off smaller pieces and to use their tongue to manipulate the food. My LG gagged 6 times at the most and for the last 2 weeks she hasn't gagged at all because she has already learned what fits into her mouth.

That is why it is important that your baby is always sitting upright when playing with food (so they can expel big chunks) and that you never force anything into their mouth. If you are overly worried about choking, learn first aid but in a month of doing BLW my LG hasn't choked once. And above all remember that gagging doesn't equal choking and that you have to leave your child to gag out whatever is in their mouth. Some babies even vomit a little but that doesn't stop them from trying again.

Spoon-fed babies tend to choke easier because they suck the pureed food off the spoon like you would suck a liquid off a spoon and the food bypasses the gag reflex, that is why, when food starts to get chunkier these babies haven't learned to chew the chunks and just sucks it up which could more easily make them choke.

So when you see your baby gagging or coughing on too big chunks, rest assured that your baby is in fact dealing with the problem and learning at the same time. Remember to never leave your baby unattended with food. At around 8 months (if your baby hasn't been introduced to solids in this way or has been spoon-fed until now you should be more cautious of gagging as the gag reflex slowly starts to move backwards)

I started my baby on solids at around 4 months - the traditional way and its been ok though I've had to get a bit creative in making the food and the experience a bit more interesting for both of us.

The more I've been reading about BLW the better its sounding. I am however still terrified of the chocking aspect. Can anybody give a more detailed explanation of why this is in fact a rare occurence? I also don't think he is quite ready developmentally speaking - what miles stones should have been reached by the time this way of feeding can start?