weaning question

[Crosby]

So i started giving solids to my 6 mths old. We have been on veggies for 5 days now, courgette cauliflower broccolli carrots.

I initially planned on mixing blw with puree. I tried giving her chunks of courgette and broccolli to pick up herself whilst i spoon feed carrots and cauli. I think im confusing her. She takes food from the spoon ok but doesnt pick up the food from the tray - just smooshes it around. Have i made a mistake in making her realise already that food comes from the spoon? Its only been 5 days(( i really am pro blw but im scared of certain foods including carrots. Had anyone done a combi blw and traditional weaning? Want to add that no mattet what at 7 months we are defo switching to blw.

Second question is - when do i start introducing fruits and cereal, bread, meat etc. I have read so much but i need your real time experiences please. This begs another Q - at the mo we are only eating solids once a day, when do i give a second helping? And third if there is a third..

I have been to weaning groups but they all say at 6 mths you can start giving everything from day 1. Hmmm really?

Any other comments i would love to take on.

 

[minties]

I gave all sorts of foods right from day 1 of weaning with Sophie. She had toast, bananas, beef mince etc.

As for the finger food, playing with it sounds normal. Maybe have a meal where LO gets nothing by spoon and just has some food to play with herself? I found toast to be great as it wasn't slippery like banana etc. Little tiny pancakes, grated cheese and cream cheese sandwiches were firm favourites at 6 months.

I don't see the point in just giving veggies as they hold such little calorie amounts.

At 6 months I have one small meal a day, I think, between breakfast and lunch time. I think I added another little meal in the afternoon closer to 7 months.

 

[lau86]

You haven't confused her by spoon feeding, she just needs to practise picking up food and eating it.
My daughter eats exactly what we eat and has done since day one. I built her up to 3 meals a day over about a month but I know people take much longer.
I recommend getting a book, the ones I use are annabel Karmel (traditional weaning) the baby led weaning cookbook and the baby and child vegetarian cook book. I found my books really helpful as they really did explain all aspects of weaning.

 

[noon_child]

When we started weaning I wasn't really bothered with her getting any food in her tummy. I gave her things to play with and practice holding an biting from (bananas in thirds, asparagus spears, slices of pear, toast fingers etc.). When I could tell she was trying to eat, not just play, she had family foods like stew, cottage pie, grilled salmon, pasta etc. Apart from no added salt, no raw honey, and no whole nuts, there aren't any foods to avoid.

 

[donnarobinson]

I feed him breakfast of a spoon he had a finger food lunch and j feed him his tea I'll eventually let him feed him self his tea when he's eating more totally normally for them to just look at it etc my lo doesn't eat much at all X

 

[Crosby]

So yest i gave nothing by spoon and gave her a banana and a toast after she was half way thru.

Whilst a banana went down really well, a toast wasnt welcome. Her face was priceless lol perhaps it was too spiky/prickly? She would put it in her mouth and then take it out straight away. After 4-5 times she just mooshed it with a leftover banana but didnt eat any more

 

[lau86]

It just takes a bit of time to work out how they like things. Was it dry toast or did it have something on it? I soften toast with a bit of fruit purée or Butter

 

[jessmke]

So yest i gave nothing by spoon and gave her a banana and a toast after she was half way thru.

Whilst a banana went down really well, a toast wasnt welcome. Her face was priceless lol perhaps it was too spiky/prickly? She would put it in her mouth and then take it out straight away. After 4-5 times she just mooshed it with a leftover banana but didnt eat any more

Isla does that whenever I offer her something with a new texture, then once she has it a few times she gets used to it and she no longer looks at me like I've fed her poison.

Isla absolutely loves toast with almond butter or cashew butter on it. She will often suck the nut butter off and leave the soggy piece of toast, then whine until I give her another piece with more nut butter.

 

[MindUtopia]

I wouldn't say so much you're confusing her, but you're maybe expecting too much too soon. If you're feeding her purees, you aren't really giving her a choice to taste them, they just go in the mouth and it's easy and she doesn't have to work on developing the hand-mouth coordination that goes into eating normal foods. That's why she seems to be eating purees but not finger foods, because finger foods take time. Most babies who do BLW (that is only normal foods, no purees or spoonfeeding) take several weeks to even a couple months to get used to eating and eat in any quantity. I would say it took my daughter about 2 weeks of BLW before I saw anything at all come through in her nappies. She wasn't eating in any quantity until about 9 months. So I think it's just that your expectations are a bit high for her. She needs time to figure out how to handle food and how to eat, and mushing it around and exploring with her hands is the first part of that. So it's not that you're confusing her, but if your goal is to do BLW, then do it, offer only finger foods, let her explore and don't worry about the mess or how much she eats. If you want to carry on doing some finger foods and some purees, that's fine too.

We did BLW, so no purees and no spoonfeeding, and I started with just one meal a day (lunch) for the first month. That was fine and worked for us. When you do BLW, they don't eat much at first, so it felt a bit pointless to make 3 meals a day as most just went in the bin after. I felt she got the experience of exploring food and practicing eating enough just offering food one a day to start. From about 7 months, we added in breakfast and then probably by about 7.5 months, dinner most but maybe not even every day. It was really just exploring and trying things though and practicing picking this up those first 2 months. I would say it wasn't really until she got her pincer grip around 8-9 months that she started to really eat and she wasn't eating loads until 9-10 months and then it really took off.

You can offer everything except sugar, salt, whole nuts (nut butter is fine) or honey from 6 months. There's no need to withhold any foods (unless you or your husband have food allergies to something, then you might want to get some advice from your doctor about introducing that specific food) or stagger when you introduce things. My daughter's very first meal at 6 months was carrots and parsnips roasted with rosemary and garlic, a yorkshire pudding and mash. I found really the only obstacle to offering anything at every meal was just the time I had to devote to cooking from scratch and adjusting our usual meals to suit her needs (as in not seasoning until I took her portion out, or adjusting spiceness in curries and things). That took time to figure out at first, so I was in no rush to offer her meals 3 times a day of everything we were eating. I needed a bit of time to work out how to cook for all of us first.