Feeding your baby BLW style

Hi Marijke

First of all, thanks so much for starting this thread, a while back I started to read the thread when my little girl was only a few weeks old and I knew I wanted to give this BLW thing try.

Paige is now 5.5 months old and although we were going to wait till 6 months to introduce solids, she keeps pretending to chew and trying to grab our food, so we thought its time.

about a month ago I bought the book as well as the cook book and it all just made sense. I am use to people judging my choices, since I decided to have a natural birth with no pain meds and go the hypnobirthing route, so quite frankly its my child and I will do as I please. each to thier own right ?

So we started solids last friday and P loves it , she has tried all of the following so far : melon, pear, apple, avo, weetbix, sweet potato, marrow, cucumber, carrot, pita bread, toast, rib bone,

and tonight I made my first recipe out fo the cook book, fish cakes and veg, she loved it, she was caked from head to toe, but the enjoyment she got out of it, made the two hours worth of prep worth it !

I love that I dont have to fight with her or feed her, so far she has tried everything I have offered her a best of all she seems to be in her element

I will admit in the begining its a bit daunting, because you are moving away from the norm of cereals and purrees and you just hope you are doing the right thing, but it feels right

right, time for Paige's bedtime , will write again tomorrow

Hey! So great to have everyone back here again!

The reason for me that the thread has died a bit is because I feel that B (being almost 21 months) is at an age where all children should be eating "family style" (love that phrase Sarah) anyway, so there is nothing special about it anymore. If you understand what I mean.

If anyone else is just starting out and want to share their journey then please do so! Until then you can still go to the front of this thread and start reading my journey (somewhere in the middle you can follow the terrible fighting with regards to this topic also - just to prepare you for the silly comments other people would make about your choice )

So as I've mentioned before, B is almost 21 months, she loves most foods but there is a clear distinction in what she will and won't eat and the distinction is this - anything I haven't introduced to her before about the age of 15 months she still doesn't even want to see on her plate, whereas the things she already got exposed to often (whether nummy or not, she still will eat without any fuss)

She started daycare at the end of last year, she was in the baby class and got moved to the potties somewhere in March I think, and since then has really grown up. She now eats more than before because the baby class still get fed with a spoon and I think she hated that so would come home so hungry, but now with the bigger kids they sit at little tables and chairs, so she has mastered even tricky things with her cutlery.

She only recently (since starting school) discovered chocolate and sweets which I purposely left out of her diet most weeks, but some parents send their children to school with cold drinks, chips and sweets galore - you should see the amounts of unhealthy snacks out of the backpacks every morning - it could feed an army and it makes me SO mad.

But anyway....

The things that I will always be grateful for towards BLW is:

Patience to let B learn and explore in her own time (not only with food but it spilled over into everything in her life)

Patience and the 'know how' to deal with those days that she doesn't eat as well as others - the book really put my mind at ease, especially now that she's a toddler and everything becomes a struggle (more on that later!) strangely food isn't one of them because BLW has given me the tools to get through it - believe it or not.

And lastly - amazing cooking skills, either that I didn't know I had or never even tried. I feel sorry for women who with their first baby do purees and hardly ever cooks or cooks when baby is in bed and they eat late at night or something like that, there's a huge adjustment in getting everything done on time and for the whole family to enjoy at the same time, I also struggled with it in the beginning but B was only starting off with solids and by now it's so ingrained in me that I can tell the time left before dinner without a clock. Had it not been for BLW, I'd possibly still feed B mush while we did takeaways! It's hard to do on busy days, but the rewards - wow the REWARDS!

Personally, I think B's HUGE vocabulary is 100% because of dinner table conversations, either between hubby and I or by including her even at 6 months when we made up what she was trying to tell us through her gurgling sounds.

So that's us, if any of you ladies haven't yet added me on fb and you want to, feel free. If you have a blackberry and want to add me, you can also find my pin on my fb wall somewhere or just ask. And lastly if you have any questions for me or anyone here, feel free to ask, I get an email and will hurry to the computer to reply asap

I miss this thread!!!

The thread helped me so much too! And special thanks to Maryke!

Nathan is 4 months old now,so I'll be looking back at the tips real soon. Hoping to put off feeding him for another 6 - 8 weeks as he is defnitely not ready and being 7 weeks prem, his digestive system is still immature.

We did BLW by pure chance in the beginning, and its defnitely the way I'll go 2nd time round. At 19 months, Sarah eats so well and anything too!

yay, another new post on this thread too:)

Sarah if it werent for Marijke I would not have known about BLW, but I'm so glad she introduced the idea to me, and since she has I've realised that a LOT more people actually do it this way!

Hey Sarah,

Got a message on my bb this morning that there was a post, I thought it was just another post on our month thread as always, but to my surprise it was from this thread and found myself smiling at the mop while cleaning! Thanks so much for making my Sunday!

Skye is absolutely adorable!

Keep us updated on how BLW is going for you and her!

I know this thread is old, but we started solids recently BLW style. Bubs is 5.5 months now but been tasting food off my plate for a little while now. I'm nanny to 2 little boys aged 1 & 2 yrs and we eat all our meals family style around the kitchen table. Skye just gets whatever they're eating or dry cereal if they have something she hasn't figured out yet.

She LOVES feeding herself. Hubby is totally on board and our friends think we're mad lol

Here's a pic of her eating rice noodles for dinner last night.

I also tease dh about sugar in the porridge, lol.
It must be frustrating if you have the perfect person to take care of the golden boy and then 'lose' them and have to search for someone new. Maybe in durbs you'll have more luck. I dont know I'm always thinking the grass is greener on the other side.. I WISH I could find someone awesome so I could go back to work without feeling like a terrible mother.