BLW - Baby led weaning support thread

[Mum2b_Claire]

hi girls just a quick qustion, do you still do the 4 day test when led weaning? giving them one food for 4 days to see if they have an allergic reaction? this is all too confusing to me, if i even mention giving toas to my baby my husband will say are you mad?! but i want to try

I don't think most people do this with BLW. I think the four day thing is from when babies were being weaned routinely at 3 or 4 months. The gut and immune system of a 6 month old is much more developed than that of a 3 or 4m old.

However, this may be different with people who have allergies in the family...

 

[faille]

Sorry ladies just another q from me...

Did your LO's go off their milk at all before you started BLW?
I'm not sure whether Violet is going off her milk or just getting fed up and we need to up the teat sizes (which I can't try until we go shopping either Fri or Sunday). She used to take 7-8oz and now she'll only take 5-6oz

 

[Mum2b_Claire]

Sorry ladies just another q from me...

Did your LO's go off their milk at all before you started BLW?
I'm not sure whether Violet is going off her milk or just getting fed up and we need to up the teat sizes (which I can't try until we go shopping either Fri or Sunday). She used to take 7-8oz and now she'll only take 5-6oz

Hi, Ruby is the same. She has been draining 9oz bottles since she was 3.5m old, but now she is only taking 6oz. We're on the fastest teats. Her weight gain has been ridiculously fast since birth though, she doesn't want to feed any more often, so I'm not worried.

 

[kirsten1985]

Freya has also started taking less milk. She has 4 bottles a day, containing about 6/7oz each. She used to have 5 or 6 bottles. She has been doing this for about 2 weeks now.

 

[Laura--x]

A quick question from me girls;

I started weaning (puree) Maisie at just over 5 months. Shes now on 2 meals a day, breakfast and dinner where she has powdered baby food. Although for dinner i will start making up our own food.

She loves her purees. She adores her breakfast, dinner was a bit of hit and miss finding the right tastes but she enjoys the actual weaning process on a whole. Shes been very good with her food.

Should i bother starting to introduce blw even if shes enjoying puree? Would it mess things up and complicate things?

Also, if i was to start blw, how would i start it? Carry on with her 2 meals and slowly let her 'experiement' with the finger foods or would i replace her evening meal with them and let her take it from there?

 

[Mum2b_Claire]

Laura I would give her some finger foods to experiment with. She might not eat any yet but if she's anything like Ruby she'll enjoy holding, smelling, licking and squashing food!

My friends baby loved purees for a few weeks and then started flat out refusing to be spoon fed, so she started BLW and that was very successful.

 

[sublime_ivy]

i am just excited that i get to BLW in three weeks. yey. I have a dvd that i can lend to someone on BLW if you are interested. It belongs to my doctors surgery so i will need it back but let me know.

 

[sublime_ivy]

oh and dex is taking less milk to. he used to want to breastfeed every 2 hours but he goes 3 or 4 without one now and even when he does feed he is too distracted half the time. He is still waking up for his feeds at night but being on breastmilk and nearly 18Ibs i cant really blame him. Plus he is crawling now so he is burning a lot of energy in the day.

 

[faille]

It's reassuring to hear that other LO's are taking less milk - I was getting worried!


We gave Violet a bit of bannana last night..... But stupid me I didn't leave any skin for her to grab so she spent the whole time chasing it around the tray

 

[Mum2b_Claire]

Haha that's exactly what happened when I put Avocado onto Ruby's bumbo tray! Slimy foods do not seem to be the way forward!

 

[Lu28]

Has anyone found that their LO is more than happy to feed themselves (until they get tired! ) if food is handed to them but not if they have to pick it up themselves off a tray or table? If I hand Aisling finger food she'll usually go for it although she seems to get bored after a while. If I just put it down in front of her she completely ignores it

 

[Mum2b_Claire]

Ruby won't pick up food from her bumbo tray, but will stuff things in her mouth if handed them. I assumed that was because she isn't quite old enough to pick the stuff up and eat it....is it wrong to hand them the food? I was wondering that.

 

[CountingDown]

It depends with Olivia, if she sees me eating something then I pop it on her tray she will grab it and start to eat. Though sometimes I pop things on her tray, I have to point them out to her so she notices that they are there.

I think it is because she is still so distractable at this age, sometimes she needs to be pointed in the right direction lol x

 

[Lu28]

I think it's meant to be that you leave a selection on the tray and they'll eat what they want, giving them total control. But that wouldn't work with Aisling at the moment, she wouldn't notice its there and if she did she doesn't seem to know what to do with it!

 

[kirsten1985]

I haven't tried Freya with any food yet, but she shoves anything and everything into her mouth and grabs all sorts of stuff. I assumed she would do the same with food, but maybe not. I have been putting her in her highchair at the table and putting her toys out infront of her as practise food, lol.

 

[helen1234]

rhys will do both but he eats the most in say the 1st 10 mins, then he just mashes it throws it on the floor i end up handing it to him last night he had a baked sweet potato cut into 4 wedges a square piece of cod and baked beans, he ate 2 wedges threw the skins on the floor and about 3 mouthfuls of fish the rest he thumped to a pulp on his tray lol, i feed him about 6pm at the latest and he goes straight in the bath after.

for tea we have chicken stir fry and cheesy jacket potatoes he'll get his hands in the stir fry but i'll have to hand him the pieces of potato.

just do whats best for you, by 12 months she'll be able to get the hang of dipping the spoon in and take it to her mouth, i think handing stuff is temporary, but ask me in a few months i'll prob change my mind lol.

the nursery nurses at a baby group cant believe how independent rhys is with grabbing stuff and working puzzle toys out and i'm sure its because he's been feeding himself.

also i know i've said it before but the biggest thing i've read and is really true, rhys doesnt get constipated because he see's the food coming wether handed food or not the stomach makes the connection with the arm movement to the mouth, the chewing and the enzyhmes getting ready to break down food. imo this is one of the best benefits of blw. i'm biased of course

 

[faille]

Violet homes in on anything in front of her haha
We've only tried giving her bannana twice tho.

Oh and I remembered to leave some skin on the second time.... She got a lick of it but she managed to peel it

 

[claire-lou]

Jack is still on 4 7oz bottles a day and HV told me to drop a feed. She said he's on too much milk and it;s no wonder he isn't eating loads. But in the bible it says to let baby dictate when to drop. If I was BF'ing I wouldn't know how many oz's he was having anyway. Thought we were doing really well until we went to clinic yesterday, now I'm totally confused as to what is best for him, should I force him to drop the feed. She basically told me that he'll never up his solid intake on the milk and just end up very fat. He's big anyway. Just over 75th percentile. Don't think I'll go back to her clinic, I'm go on a tuesday instead in future,

 

[Lu28]

I'm not sure hon but I've basically been given the same advice even though I'm trying to get Aisling to put on weight I was told to try and make bfing more of a snack (god knows how I'm meant to do that!) so that she'd up her intake of solids - I honestly can't see how that's a good idea when milk has more calories than solids... Unless they can give me a good reason to the contrary, I'm going to let her dictate how much milk she takes and go from there..

 

[helen1234]

i dont think hv understand blw'ing, mine looks vacant at me when i've tried to talk to her about it, so i just get him weighed once a month and come home i dont chat with them anymore,
i honestly couldnt tell you how much rhys drinks in a day, i boil the kettle in the morning and make up feeds as i go along i'm not so strict on all the boiling water letting it cool etc now he's older, i just go with him, he'll have milk as a drink as he's eating and only in the last couple of days he's took interest in the sippy cup and actually drank more than a mouthful out of it.
its a good point when hv say drop a feed how can you reason with a baby and say oooo no you cant have this milk go without they naturally drink less and less and maybe about 12 months they may go to a feed am/midday/pm and water in between.
plus the more i feed the more cuddles i get i dont think you can over feed milk surely