BLW? questions!

BeachBlondie456 · March 2012

hello! i thought this might be an appropriate place to post this?

my problem: we started solids at 4 months per my pedi. Im making my own. She showed an intolerance to brown rice cereal, so we moved on to bananas, which she loved. Then we did squash and she wasnted interested AT ALL. she LOVED sweet potatoes, and had intolerance to peas, NO interest in avacado, and no interest in pears. SO. i thought we would give it another couple of weeks and try again when she turns 6 months. But every time im eating, she grabs at my food. I have let her taste crackers and steamed fruit and let her feed herself, which my pedi said was ok, and she loves to eat that way. so im investigating this baby led weaning and i have some questions.

If you have already started, how is it going for your lo? how did you start? what made you decide to take this approach as opposed to purees?

if you havent started yet, what will your approach be?

do you stick to the age appropriate foods or give them anything you want? what size should the food be? how do you prepare it?

what about choking? digestive problems?

do you wait for 6 months to start this?

how often and how much do you feed them?

do you BF and if so will this change how often you feed them? i EBF and want to continue for one year.

does "solid" food change their poop to "solid" poop?? (sorry if this is a silly one!)

any other advice? thanks ladies!

tokenhoser · March 2012

We started when LO was 6 months. It's going great - some days he eats lots, other days he doesn't. He eats a wide variety of foods, though, and mealtime is never a fight. I decided on BLW because it just made sense to me. LO had been deciding how much to eat at the breast. Now he decides how much to eat at the table. It also just made sense to me that if a baby needs to eat solids, he'd be able to eat them himself.

I started with sticks of food about twice as long as his hand. Mostly just plain fruit and veg for the first few weeks, steamed to be soft if necessary. Avocado, banana, apple slices, pear, broccoli, whole green beans, snap peas, carrots, etc. Once he was 7 or 8 months, he just got whatever looked like he could handle it (no salt, no sugar).

Choking isn't an issue if the baby is fed only upright, in a high chair, while supervised, and they put the food in their own mouth. It just hasn't happened, and it really doesn't often. My baby is more likely to choke on a random floor item than on food at the table.

Digestion: babies don't actually get much out of food for a while. You'll see things come out as they went in. This is true of purees as well, but it's harder to see.

Yes, we started at 6 months and it took a few weeks for him to eat much of anything.

I started offering 3 meals pretty much right away. I give him a couple pieces of whatever, and if he eats them I give him more. When he throws them on the floor, we're done.

BLW is very bf-ing friendly. I still BF on demand.

Alas, we're still in intermediate poop hell. Poop changes when they eat a lot of solids. Some babies do this quickly, others drag it out for many months.

The book ("Baby Led Weaning") is really good and answers lots of questions.

jcsumm0 · March 2012

If you have already started, how is it going for your lo? how did you start? what made you decide to take this approach as opposed to purees?

We started w/sweet potato fries. She still mostly gets simple things like pear wedges, strips of meat, blueberries, but I do now give her things that we eat too, as long as they are low salt and no sugar. She's had fettucini alfredo, shepherd's pie, meatloaf, pumpkin pancakes.... I decided on this approach after reading a lot about it. It just made good sense to me, seemed simple and intuitive, and I didn't want to be one of those moms "airplane-ing" food into my kid's mouth.

do you stick to the age appropriate foods or give them anything you want? what size should the food be? how do you prepare it? See above. I started w/things she could easily pick up in wedge shapes. Now that she has her pincher grasp down she likes to pick up small things like blueberries and cheerios. I prepare it how I would prepare it for us, but w/o salt.

what about choking? digestive problems? As token said, choking isn't really a risk any more than any other feeding method. She does gag occasionally, but she works it out on her own and it doesn't bother her. She's had no tummy issues. I personally think that you avoid a lot of the starting solids tummy issues because they eat so little in the beginning.

do you wait for 6 months to start this? YES

how often and how much do you feed them? I offer food at every meal now, but in the beginning I offered 2x a day. She eats what she wants. Most of it ends up on the floor or squished on the tray. Some days she eats more, some days not much. She still really isn't into it that much and most of her nutrition is coming from breastmilk, which is just fine.

do you BF and if so will this change how often you feed them? i EBF and want to continue for one year. Yes I BF. She hasn't really cut back on her nursing sessions at all. She still nurses about 8-12x in 24 hours. Every baby is different though. Some "get" solids sooner and cut down on milk feedings sooner. Right now I don't really see her cutting down on nursing for a while.

does "solid" food change their poop to "solid" poop?? (sorry if this is a silly one!) Her poop is still mostly like BF poop with bits of food in it. Days she eats more, it gets more solid.

I highly recommend you read Gil Rapley's book. www.baby-led.com and www.babyledweaning.com are also good resources.

I love BLW--it is really fun and easy and I believe has a lot of benefits.

SortaCrunchy · March 2012

We started with homemade purees at 4 months, then I heard about BLW. At that point, we stopped the purees, read the book, and started BLW at 6 months.

From the start of BLW, DS just got whatever we were eating, only steamed or deconstructed as needed. His first real meal was a chicken burrito. The next day we were on to salmon in a lemon butter sauce. Big Smile We just fed him whenever we were eating, the same as we continue to do now. We kept BF on demand, but he eventually asked to nurse less often as he was eating more solids. We didn't stop BFing until after he turned 2. BLW and BF really go hand in hand!

We chose BLW because it is so easy. Also, I liked the idea of getting DS used to a variety of flavors and textures from the get go. I really do think it made him a more adventurous eater. As for gagging, we did deal with that-- a lot. To this day, DS stuffs his mouth full of food and ends up gagging. :;eyeroll:: The BLW book does a great job of discussing the difference between gagging (normal and protective) versus choking (obviously a bad thing).

DH and I loved BLW, and we're totally going to do it with our new LO, too. GL!

nosoup4u · March 2012

I did BLW with both my kids. We started them both out with soft ripe fruits, or roasted/steamed veggies. DS2 had a good amount of salmon (when it's cooked, it flakes really easily, so it's perfect baby food) in the beginning, along with avocado. We started spoon feeding them yogurt by 9 months, and also eggs (we stuck to yolks with DS1, but DS2 started out with the whole thing).

Things like mashed eggs w olive oil or butter mixed in are nice for spoon feeding (we let DS2 hold the spoon himself really early on), or strained/greek yogurt. Tuna salad, minus the celery, is a good first food, along with anything soft.

I am sooo paranoid about choking, so I would stick to really soft and mushy foods in the beginning, but my DH would be more adventurous and give them big chunks of food. I usually get more comfortable feeding them by about 12 months, and at that point they are eating pretty much everything the rest of us are.

Just go slow and follow her leaf. Start with things you are comfortable with, and there's no harm in giving her thick mashed foods she can eat with her hands or a spoon. It's going to be really messy - I use a pastry board scraper to get the big bits off the floor, and stripping them down usually makes clean up easier, too.

As for poop, you can tell what they've been eating at first and then it turns into peanut butter consistency. DS2 has had a harder transition to solids - he strains when he poops, so I've been making stewed prunes for him to mix with yogurt, which seems to do the job. Her poops will probably slow down when she really starts eating. Oh, and don't worry if she doesn't get into food for a few months - DS2 got into it by about 10 months, but DS1 was closer to 14 months when he started really liking "people food".

As for breastfeeding, I didn't really ever change how I nursed or when I offered, both my kids just naturally cut out nursing sessions the more they ate.

hope that helps!

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