BLW meal ideas and resources?

emmyloustu

Lydia is just not doing great with purees and cereals. She likes them ok, I think, but she just has zero interest. She shuts her mouth tight and spends the whole time trying to wrestle the spoon from my hands. She will open up for the spoon if she does it herself.

I have tried a few spears of food here and there and she shows far more interest in that than spoon feeding. She even ate some cucumber last night. I will admit, the gagging gets my blood pressure up and she gagged quite a bit with it.

What are your typical BLW meals? Favorite resources?

Thanks!

GypsyEsq

We really wanted to keep it as easy as possible so it was very much DD eats/gnaws/sucks on what we eat. Last night for example we had pizza. If she was still BLW we would have given her a strip. Remember it's all practice for flavor and texture. There's no requirement that Lydia eat a certain amount.  That said, I would not give crispy vege or fruit right now. Early on it should be soft and mushy so that if a piece breaks off it doesn't become a choking hazard. Gagging, is unfortunately part of the process. But it passes quickly. 

Theres also a lot of photos on the Internet of babies eating BLW-style. That might help. GL! 

superned

GypsyEsq:

We really wanted to keep it as easy as possible so it was very much DD eats/gnaws/sucks on what we eat. Last night for example we had pizza. If she was still BLW we would have given her a strip. Remember it's all practice for flavor and texture. There's no requirement that Lydia eat a certain amount.  That said, I would not give crispy vege or fruit right now. Early on it should be soft and mushy so that if a piece breaks off it doesn't become a choking hazard. Gagging, is unfortunately part of the process. But it passes quickly. 

Theres also a lot of photos on the Internet of babies eating BLW-style. That might help. GL! 

Ditto this.  Part of the idea of BLW for us was that DD would eat what we ate.  At the beginning I did have to do some separate preparation for her (cutting into strips and cooking things extra so they wouldn't be too crunchy).

I also always had yogurt or applesauce on-hand in case we ate something that she really couldn't share (like a leafy salad or something like pad thai with nuts in it).

And also ditto on the crispy fruits and veggies.  I was paranoid about that.  DD ate mushy pears pretty early on, but I wouldn't give her an apple until she was well over a year old.

Yellow_Daisy

Due to M's allergies we can only feed whole foods and almost never what we eat.  We started with half bananas, avocado slices (skin left on), mango slices (skin left on), yams (spears or big chunks), we moved onto apple slices at 7 mos and he did fine with them, pear slices, bell pepper strips, broccoli trees, quartered cherry tomatoes, chunks of chicken, hamburger pattie torn apart, chunks of turkey, black beans, tofu cut into cubes, quartered grapes and our two processed foods that he's not allergic to kix and rice chex.

He's allergic to most of that stuff so we can only feed him a few things from the list above.  If he wasn't allergic to milk I would also do the squeeze tubes of yogurt and cheese.  If he wasn't allergic to eggs I would be giving him scrambled and hard boiled eggs.  We haven't found bread he can eat yet, but you can also do toast sticks.  I have some vegan waffles we're going to try soon.

gymnst1013

We also mostly give N whatever we are eating for dinner for sure.  Breakfast and lunch we don't eat regularly so he gets his own meals there.  A typical breakfast is a piece of fruit (pears and bananas are a big hit) and a waffle - I get the Earth's Best blueberry mini waffles.  On weekends he may get some french toast or a scrambled egg instead of a waffle.  Sometimes he gets Os if I've run out of waffles but I try not to resort to that too often - for some reason that feels more like a snack to me than breakfast.

Lunch will be some veggies - red pepper strip, cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, etc., maybe an avocado, string cheese, leftovers from dinner - usually chicken or meatballs or something like that.

And then dinner is whatever we are eating - tonight was baked chicken, pierogies and broccoli.  I've discovered N loves Mexican and Indian which makes me so happy because they are 2 of my favorites!

Gagging is definitely par for the course, but it doesn't last long and you'll get more accustomed to it.  Plus the more she practices, the better she'll get so the gagging will decrease quickly.