BLW - Baby led weaning support thread

Yay, that's brilliant that your five year old is getting involved and benefiting too. I'm sure that BLW is going to add at least ten years onto me and OH's life just from cutting out the salt and processed crap that we used to eat.

A doidy cup is a slanted open-top cup with handles. The fact that it is slanted makes it easier for baby to learn about tipping and drinking because they don't have to tip the cup as far to get a drink and they can see what is happening more easily: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bickiepegs-D-Red-Doidy-Cup/dp/B000RBE6Q6
 
Ref the pincer grip, Kyran has been successfully eating blueberries for weeks now, he would eat a whole punnet if i let him!

He has only this last week or so been able to manage raisins though, before he was picking them up but they were dropping through his fingers before reaching his mouth, now they go in most of the time :thumbup:
 
does anyone have a hamburger recipe that they can recommend? I have a load of mince to cook and am a little bored of cottage pie and lasagne.
 
No hamburger recipe I'm afraid.

Does anybody elses LO seem to hate pasta? G will have max about 5 pieces but usually just has 1 pulls a horrid face and will not touch the rest. I've tried, shell, macaroni, penne, twists, spaghetti, soup pasta, giant pasta...
He will take soup pasta with loads of sauce off a PL spoon but only if its mostly sauce!

I keep trying it but won't touch it either at lunch or dinner or as a snack (not tried breakfast yet :rofl: ...)
 
OH makes lovely burgers - I just asked him for the recipe, he is a bit vague though, this is as good as I could get:
Mix the mince beef with very finely chopped onions. (can add breadcrumbs if you want but he doesn't bother)
Add some herbs (e.g. chopped parsley or 'whatever's there') and a bit of salt and pepper (leave out the salt for babies though).
Add a beaten egg yolk to bind it together.
Form the burgers into patties and cook them on the pan 'until they're done'.

Sorry for the non-specific instructions, LOL, they are lovely though! And Thomas loved his little mini-burger when we had them last.

Joeyjo - my LO loves pasta - he will always eat loads of it! They are really all different.
 
Hello all and can I shove into this group please as my LO is just beginning BLW, I've been so excited about starting and I'm really looking forward to introducing her to the world or tastes and foods!

So the first of my I'm sure may be endless questions.... Do you have set meal times that you stick to each day?

At the mo I'm going to do one 'meal' a day for a few weeks and do it at whatever point she seems best in the mood for it. However the idea of fitting three meals a day and two snacks suddenly seems very daunting as we seem to have packed days already! So do you tend to do them at the same times each day or vary them - and what success do you have with this? We don't really have a routine and never have done - most days it seems to suddenly be bedtime and I know I will soon have to get all these meals in there as well!


(and should I be posting my BLW specific questions in here and not filling up the main weaning board with them? )
 
Re: Hamburger

There is LOADS you can do to make good burgers (says the American whose Hubby is a cheeseburger FREAK). :haha:

Start with the hamburger (mince to you) add any or all of the following:

Breadcrumbs (helps make the burgers thicker and stick together better -- makes for a better patty but doesn't add taste. As for amount, just add until, when mixed, the meat doesn't crumble and split apart so easily)

Soy sauce
Worchestire sauce
Seasoning Salt (like Lowrys)
Basil
Oregano
Parsley
Sage
Mint
Finely chopped onions or scallions
Minced fresh garlic
Salt
Pepper
Chili powder (just a tad if you want a kick of spice to the burger)
Tomato Paste (adds thickness and a bit of tang)
Shredded Cheese (if you want to build the cheese into the burger)
Blue Cheese crumbles (same idea as shredded cheese)

You can also buy packets to mix in. They are usually mixes for dips, soups or dressings, but when mixed with the mince make a great burger, too. Any flavor that sounds good to you is worth a try. Ones I usually use:

Onion Soup
Ranch Dip/Dressing

With these, just becareful that you don't add too much of the mix per meat. It can overwhelm the meat and end up too salty. I don't know how big your packets are over there, so just start out conservative and you can always learn to add more the next time if it doesn't taste strong enough for your liking. :thumbup:

Also, when making the patty, remember that the meat will shrink A LOT when you cook it. It will also get thicker. So, make the patties MUCH thinner and with a much bigger diameter than you would think you want the final burger to look like. It will shrink in diameter and thicken as it cooks.

Of course, add a slice of your favorite cheese to the top after the burger is cooked. Just until the cheese is melted -- yummy cheeseburgers! :D
 
Hi Eldar & welcome.

Fitting everything in ios daunting but surprisingly do-able - I wouldn't worry about fitting snacks in at first, George still doesn't have them as a routine thing.
 
When we have burgers we do

500g mince ( i like lamb mince best)
6 jacobs cream crackers bashed to smitherines
i egg
1 tsp mustard
flat leaf parsley
pepper
finely chopped onion

mix all together, form into burgers (makes between 4 and 6 depending on how big you want your burger! Put in fridge to firm up for an hour (not essential) and fry until cooked through.

JoeyJo - Sophia LOVES pasta, will eat an adult sized portion sometimes. It is great as it is such an easy meal to do.

Eldar - we have set (ish) mealtimes now but this didn't happen until a few months into BLW. It gets easier although I must admit we are much more restricted with going out than we were before as like to be home for 5pm for dinner.
 
Hi Eldar! Welcome!
Bun has been a really slow starter when it comes to eating - he has only recently been interested in sampling a few things. Right now I offer something 2x a day, but it varies. He isn't really eating for sustenance yet - more of an exploration at the mo. It does take much more time than bf though - especially with the clean-up! lol

xx
 
Polaris, TigerLady and Shiv, thank you all for the suggestions! I cobbled together a mixture (mixed chopped onions and peppers with the meat, some breadcrumbs and egg, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce) and cooked them and good god I am amazed, they were really really nice. :D Adam seemed to like them, he ate most of his, and Chris (husband) loved them, he said they tasted professional. :rofl: So I now have 4 burgers in the freezer as well. Oh and TigerLady, thanks for the tip on them shrinking, I've never made burgers before so I didn't know. :)

Will have to try lamb burgers sometime, too. I love lamb but rarely buy it for some reason.

Jo, Adam has mixed feelings on pasta, I'd say he is halfway between George and Sophia - sometimes he eats quite a bit, other times he just - doesn't. I usually make it with creme fraiche and veg, simply because it's less messy than with a tomato-based sauce. Apart from lasagne, which is done the traditional way. Actually Adam does seem to prefer lasagne to other pastas, think he likes picking up a chunk. Though he has no problems handing other shapes now, but some are easier than others, think spirals are better than penne, for example.

Eldar, welcome! I hear you on the fitting in meals thing - it gets better when they drop milk feeds, for sure. Adam usually takes a bottle (as much as he is going to have of it, sometimes all sometimes not) in about 5 minutes now, so that's less of a chunk of the day gone. And I have to say, meals in the beginning took a long time, Adam was a slow eater till his skills picked up, and we could go on for 45 mins sometimes; also his "I'm done" cues were hard for me to read to start with, but now it's pretty clear!

We don't have absolute set mealtimes, it all depends on what time Adam gets up. We have breakfast about 30-60 mins after his first bottle, which is about 10 mins after he gets up. Lunch is usually something snack-like, and this is the meal I am happy to have while out and about, we bring sandwiches, fresh and dried fruit and ricecakes spread with whatever. Dinner is a cooked main meal and anything between 6.45pm and 8pm, though I try to make it as early as I can. In the beginning we just had one meal a day, usually breakfast, and if he was awake when we were having dinner he'd have bits of veg with us. We quickly moved to 3 meals a day as he started to be very upset if he saw us eating when he wasn't!

Oh and congratulations Sun and Bun on the breakthrough! :D
 
Welcome Eldar. It is very exciting and great fun. Regarding mealtimes, I found that once we started weaning Thomas miraculously got into a regular(ish) routine regarding daytime naps - which had NEVER been the case up till then. Also within a couple of weeks he had dropped a milk feed to 4 feeds a day and is now happy to breastfeed on a roughly four hourly schedule, I was shocked as he always ate every two and a half hours. I do feed him earlier if he wants it but he usually doesn't look for a breastfeed early now so I will offer a feed after four hours and he will happily take a feed at that stage. So we do have meals at pretty much the same time each day within about half an hour either way.
This is our approximately daily routine now:
6.30 - Get up
7.30 - Milk feed
8 - Breakfast
9 - Nap
11.30 - Milk feed
12 - Lunch
1 - Nap
3.30 - Milk feed and sometimes a snack
4.30 - Short nap
5.30 - Dinner
6.45 - Milk feed
7 - Bed

It's actually not too bad to fit things in. Thomas tends to eat loads at breakfast and a good bit at dinner but is more picky at lunchtime. That suits me because it means that I can make lunch our snacky meal and we often have lunch out and about if we are out for the morning, I just bring a few bits and pieces with me. However I find the easiest time to go out is after his lunchtime nap as he can catnap in the pram/car on the way home and I don't have to worry about solids. I do make sure to have him home for dinner by 5.30.
 
Yay, that's brilliant that your five year old is getting involved and benefiting too. I'm sure that BLW is going to add at least ten years onto me and OH's life just from cutting out the salt and processed crap that we used to eat.

A doidy cup is a slanted open-top cup with handles. The fact that it is slanted makes it easier for baby to learn about tipping and drinking because they don't have to tip the cup as far to get a drink and they can see what is happening more easily: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bickiepegs-D-Red-Doidy-Cup/dp/B000RBE6Q6

Thanks hun :thumbup: Id seen people mention doidy cups but never know what they were!! Do normal shops stock them, or are they something that you can only buy online??

xx
 
Is anyone else dying for their LO to get a couple of teeth so they are able to properly manage a wider range of foods?

Thomas has reached the stage now where he would be pretty pissed off if he wasn't able to actually eat much of his dinner, so it does require a bit of extra thought to make sure that it is reasonably accessible for him. Mind you I am always amazed at how well he manages most foods with no teeth. But there are still some things that he just can't chew properly with just gums and he does find it frustrating at times!

NO signs of teeth here at all, his gums look totally normal, he's not drooling much, no red cheeks, chewing on stuff but no more so than normal. I still check every morning just in case though, LOL!
 
P, are you still BFing? Then don't be in too big of a hurry for those chompers! :haha:

Otter has 6 and is working on more. :shock: When he bites during BFing, it is not fun. :dohh:

But, I will admit, he has gotten very good at taking proper bites from things with them. :thumbup:
 
John Lewis stores stock doidy cups, at least I've seen them in the Bluewater branch.
 
We can only get them online at Amazon here. :( And they are expensive because they are imports. :hissy: Last time I bought a few they were $10 each!
 
Polaris ~~ Gabriella was born the day before Thomas - at exactly 11.56am too - spooky!! and she already has 6 teeth!! 4 at the top and her 2 middle ones :)

I dont have a John Lewis near me, so I guess Ill oreder her one off the net :D Im sure it'll be worth it, lots of you mummies seem to rate them xx
 
Nic got two teeth a month ago and he really uses them to good effect shaving bits off things like apple and potato wedges, he can make short work of it. I never twigged that's why he was doing so well. :dohh:

I'll look out for the doidy cups, sounds like a good idea :thumbup:
 

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