I'm new on this board... How many do BLW here?

[diana.filipi]

Hello all,

I am new to this board. My name is Diana and my husband and I have one child so far. Ophelia is a touch over 6 months and we are doing Baby Led Weaning. It's going really well....amazingly well actually. Do very many here do BLW?

[fruitfulmomma]

Welcome and yes, there is a whole forum for it here...
http://www.mothering.com/discussions...play.php?f=305

[diana.filipi]

I don't mean the weaning off the breast part. I mean beginning handle sized food at 6 months. No purees or cereals given.

[Norasmomma]

Lots of moms on here do BLW, I never had heard of it until I had DS last fall, but I researched and basically have done this. My babies like food early so we did a very short stint of purees, a few weeks *maybe*, but mostly did small pieces of what we eat. He has a huge appetite, so self feeding does work well.

It's funny with my DD we did this too, but I just was going with the flow with her. It didn't have a specific name, or if it did I wasn't aware of it.

[Xavismom]

We do. DS is a super happy and excited eater, and we are starting to get a bit more adventurous now that he is almost 8 mo. At first we were just doing fruits and veggies.

DS had Yaki Soba for lunch today, he had a blast.

[Knitting Mama]

Cecilia's too young for solids yet, but we will be doing BLW when she is older. I don't want to give her jarred food and I personally don't like the texture of pureed food, so I would imagine she might not either!

[Pookietooth]

We did that with ds because he had refused pureed foods, but to this day he still won't eat pureed anything, and has texture issues with things like beans and rice, so this time I'm actually doing some purees -- but letting dd put her hands in it and feed a lot of it herself (well, what doesn't end up all over her, me, the high chair, etc. ) and she's been ok with them. We also do real food too so she gets to explore multiple types of food. Ds was also anemic at one year, which is rare for a breast fed baby, and I think it was at least in part due to how little food he ate (and that he ate mostly just fruits, since he refused a lot of the other table foods we tried).

[laughingfox]

We did BLW with DD1, but just like PP, I had no idea what it was called, or that it even had a name. I was just doing what made sense to me and worked for her.
She had absolutely zero interest in spoon feeding, and eventually, she just started taking food off our plates. We just went from there, making sure to include soft healthy bite-sized foods with each meal and making her a part of family mealtime.

[texaspeach]

Originally Posted by fruitfulmomma

Welcome and yes, there is a whole forum for it here...
http://www.mothering.com/discussions...play.php?f=305

child led weaning is weaning from the breast - blw means baby led solids/self fed solids, confusing I know. the names are so similar.

we do blw. ds doesn't like to be spoonfed but will tolerate it for soups and yogurt. there are a lot of threads about it in this forum if you search for BLW.

[Ruby2]

I learned about BLW here and am doing it with my 7 month old dd.

I can't really say it's going "great," but it's going! She doesn't seem to ingest a whole lot yet. I think we're still at the playing and tasting stage. It's a little frustrating at times because we're of course trying to include dd in our mealtimes...okay, dinner time...and her attention span because she's really only playing with the food, not trying to satisfy any actual need to eat, is MUCH shorter than our regular meal time. This makes things a little hectic, but I should probably just get used to that!

Over all, it's fun. Dh and I love watching dd discover new tastes and textures. The best so far was an overripe apricot she discovered she could easily squish between her fingers - she was so amazed!

[Knitting Mama]

That playing is exactly what she's supposed to be doing at that age, from what I hear! She should still be getting her nutrition from breastmilk or formula, and food is just for fun!

[Xavismom]

Originally Posted by Cecilia's Mama

That playing is exactly what she's supposed to be doing at that age, from what I hear! She should still be getting her nutrition from breastmilk or formula, and food is just for fun!

That pretty much sums it up. I think DS actaully swallows about 5% of what we give him, mostly he has fun tasting and making a huge mess!

[To-Fu]

Yep, with both kids.

[mrsfrenchy]

We did BLW with DD1 and we're doing it with DD2 (we started a bit early...she was exhibiting all the readiness signs a week or so ago so we gave her a bit, she barely swallows anything, so its not really a huge deal--she'll be 6months in 3 days)

Anyway, so far we've only done fruits and veggies, but I think we've found her favorite food.
She absolutely LOVES roasted (or grilled) zucchini squash. She sucks and it and chews on it and screams if you take a piece away from her.

[hakeber]

I do, too.

I give her big slices of things because her pincer grasp is not quite there and she was getting SO frustrated with the tiny pieces. So now I give her big bits of mango, slices of avocado, apple sticks, and carrot sticks to suck on...papaya has been a big hit! I just watch her carefully in case she gnaws off a chunk of chokable size. And let her practice with spoons with soups, mashes and cereals. I have three spoons on the go in rotation, one in her hand, one on the floor, and one for me to scoop and hand over. It's been very messy, but very fun. If I need to minimize mess, like if we are at a restaurant, I use a mesh feeder. She loves when I put breast milk ice cubes in her feeder. I think the cool plus the texture feels good on her itchy teething gums. She also likes baby cereal teething biscuits, basically just mashed banana and baby cereal mixed to a cookie dough texture, cut into rectangles and baked at 250 until hard and crunchy.

[Aufilia]

We're doing BLW with our 9-month-old. We did the standard purees approach with DD and I have to say, BLW is sooo much easier and it's working really well! DS actually had his first "stuff on a spoon" experience last week with applesauce... I loaded up the spoon, he stuffed it in his mouth.

So far our only issues are that he seems to be really sensitive to acidic foods -- both because of reflux and because he has gotten a nasty diaper rash (5 pea-sized dried up bits of strawberry resulted in a horrible rash!!). Dairy (like creams and sauces) doesn't seem to go over too well with him either. Avoiding both acidic and dairy-laden foods really limits his diet at the moment.