Talk to me about BLW

jmorta04

I am fully planning on doing a lot of research on my own about this in the near future, but I figured I would start here bc you ladies are so knowledgeable!   L has his 4 month appt in September and I know we will be discussing adding foods into his diet at that point.

Those of you who do BLW, what have you found to be the pros and cons?  Has anyone done it with a FF baby?  What did a typical "meal" look like at the beginning for your LO?  At what age did you start BLW?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

PennyLane26

I'm interested to hear responses! From what I've read, it sounds ideal for us. I will probably start around 5-5.5 months (so mid September). I'll try avocado and banana first, I think. I know that I will probably add yogurt and homemade purees as she gets older, too, but primarily G will be fed through BLW. 

pb_bride

I asked the exact same question several months ago and got some very helpful advice.  I got the BLW book from the library and read it cover to cover.

In the end, I decided NOT to start with BLW, because with BLW, you really cannot start solids until 6 months (or later) when LOs have the motor control in their hands to grab foods.  

I wanted to start M on solids before 6 months, because based on some recent scientific studies, there is new evidence that giving babies foods (esp "allergenic ones") between 4-6 months of age may reduce their risk of dietary allergies.  

So I ended up doing purees at 4m1w, when M was sitting up well and lost his tongue-thrust reflex.  I did purees for about a month, then moved on to coarser textures (eg, fork-mashed).  I made M's food.

When he turned 6.5 months, I started offering him some solids BLW-style to see if he could grab it, though I was still spoon-feeding him.  Once he was able to self-feed, he started to fight the spoon more and more.  After fighting with him for about a week, I switched to BLW completely.  He's happy as a clam self-feeding.

We started off with bananas (halved length-wise), strips of mangoes, roasted sweet potatoes, roasted butternut squash.  It took several weeks for M to develop better grasping techniques.  I always find myself surprised by his resourcefulness.  Even foods that I thought it may be hard to self-feed, he manages to do so (eg, frittata, flaky white fish, angel hair pasta).  Tonight I made Chinese fried rice with chicken, shiitake mushrooms and peas - M was able to grab it by his handful.

I'm not a BLW loyalist though... I still spoon-feed M at lunch with oatmeal mixed with yogurt.  This is the only foods that he'll happily accept the spoon (b/c he loves it so much).   

What I like about BLW is that we are eating meals together (instead of me spoon-feeding M while my dinner gets cold), and M really loves the independence of self-feeding.

TJ1979

I second the BLW book by Gil Rapley. And you really need to wait until 6 months for BLW. But it has been great for E. she started with baked sweet potato and avocado. By the time she was 7 months, she was eating a deconstructed hamburger. Pickles, patty, tomato and all. These days, she pretty much eats everything we eat, even avocado rolls at the sushi place. On the rare occasion that we don't want her eating our food, ie it's expensive or unhealthy, we steam her some veggies and give a leftover turkey patty or chicken breast. She will eat anything and everything, and tons of it. I would definitely do BLW again.

Mrs.AmyDylan

We started around 6.5 mo. J wasn't sitting up super well, so we waited. I gave her banana first. From there we have done two foods at a time : avocado, banana, apricot, sweet potato fries, red bell pepper, and blueberries. There was diaper-a-graphic evidence that the blueberries made the trip through the intestines. I love BLW and so does J. We don't do it everyday, but when she is well-fed (breastmilk) and well rested we give it a go!

PennyLane26

These are all great stories! Makes me think I'll introduce purees and then introduce BLW after G hits 6 months. I like pb's idea - that I'll probably stick to BLW when we are eating meals together. Thanks for posting jmorta!

jmorta04

Thanks for all the info ladies!

pb_bride

PennyLane26 said:

These are all great stories! Makes me think I'll introduce purees and then introduce BLW after G hits 6 months. I like pb's idea - that I'll probably stick to BLW when we are eating meals together. Thanks for posting jmorta!

Hi Penny, the BLW authors actually don't recommend mixing purees with BLW, so what I'm doing is sort of a no-no, if you ask the BLW-purists.  But that's the decision I came up with, after reading the book and assessing what we want as a family.

TJ1979

pb_bride said:

PennyLane26 said:

These are all great stories! Makes me think I'll introduce purees and then introduce BLW after G hits 6 months. I like pb's idea - that I'll probably stick to BLW when we are eating meals together. Thanks for posting jmorta!

Hi Penny, the BLW authors actually don't recommend mixing purees with BLW, so what I'm doing is sort of a no-no, if you ask the BLW-purists.  But that's the decision I came up with, after reading the book and assessing what we want as a family.

I didn't want to say anything and step on any toes. But I do agree and recommend reading the BLW book before making that decision so that you can understand the difference between learning to swallow purées and learning to swallow solids.