how did you begin with blw?

[liz1985]

Interested in doing blw weaning this time around. Pretty much no all the principles of it but was wondering how you started. Did you start with one meal a deal and then add new meals as they started eating more or do you just offer something everytime you eat?

 

[JenX]

I think you have to start and then see how your baby responds. In my case, we started at 7 months, and she just wasn't that interested in food for a while, so it was an occasional thing at first. Maybe one meal a day we would offer some, but not even every single day. She always sat with us at the table during meals, though. Sometimes she just played. We gradually increased the times we offered her food as she became more interested. We didn't get to three meals a day until after she was 10 months old.

Other people start off with 3 meals a day right away and that is okay too. Some babies are really into food right away. It is baby-led, so follow your LO's cues and figure out what is right for them.

 

[iiTTCii]

We started with lunchtime and then depending on how she was, offered a snack (breadstick, rice cake etc) in the afternoon, we did for about a month before we offered breakfast, then eventually dinner.

 

[MindUtopia]

We just started with one meal to begin with (lunch) as that was the easiest. She wasn't eating a lot at first and it gave me time to get used to preparing food for us that she could also eat (frankly, at 6 months, we still weren't eating the healthiest as we were still getting used to the idea of life with a baby and cooking hadn't been a huge priority up til then). Probably around 7 months we were doing 2 meals and by 7.5 months, we were up to 3 meals a day, always 1-2 hours after milk. Though she was eating from the start, the quantity was still pretty small. It really wasn't until about 9 months that she really started to obviously eat for the sake of it and not just because it was something to play with.

I can't say enough good things about BLW. It's been such a wonderful experience (and the difference between how/what my daughter eats and what friends' babies eat, who didn't do BLW, is amazing). Yesterday for dinner she had roasted butternut squash and pearl barley 'risotto' followed by 4 whole pickled beetroots. Today, she had pesto and pine nut pasta. She loves olives, all sorts of pickled vegetables, seaweed, feeds herself a whole chicken leg, etc. She's a much more adventurous eater than even I imagined a 16 month old could be, and I really think doing BLW had a lot to do with it.