Yet another food-related post

[Deleted]

I need help with feeding DS. For some reason I am having issues wrapping my mind around the leap from purees to "real" food. We were going to do BLW but H had concerns about choking and again, I couldn't really wrap my head around it for some reason so we went the traditional route and started on purees or mashed food (like a mashed banana) at around 6 months. Now he eats oatmeal with pureed fruit in the AM and a veggie and fruit at dinner (sometimes two veggies and no fruit). HE LOVES FOOD. so now I kind of want to try BLW but am concerned he will find it frustrating since he is used to the immediate gratification of purees.

So I have several questions. FTR he is 6.5 months.

1) if you started with purees and then switched to BLW, how did your baby do?

2) are babies supposed to actually eat the food during the early stages of BLW or just kind of gum it? I've given him some roasted carrot sticks and he gummed them but didnt actually eat them (not soft enough??)

3) With BLW, can you just give your kid regular food? The book talks about giving 8 month olds pasta and the like. For some reason that seems so odd to me.

4) if you didn't do BLW, when did you start giving your baby "real" food? I dont want him to be the weird child at daycare who is still only eating purees when he is 2 years old. LOL


and finally - for a 7 to 8 month old, what was/is their eating schedule like? Right now DS gets breakfast and dinner and then nurses throughout the day (or has several bottles at DC). when should I start incorporating lunch and/or snacks?


Thanks!! I dont know why this is such a mental block for me.

[ijack]

BLW is very a much a jumping in with both feet type of activity, so if you aren't comfortable, then don't feel forced to do it.
We kind of did a hybrid and it worked for us - we started with purees, but at each meal I would give DD some of what we were having. Piece of pasta, roasted veggies, soft fruit, bread, etc, were all things that she would gnaw on while we ate. At first they aren't going to take bites and chew things up, it's very much about them learning to explore food and what they're mouths can do.
If you're going the more "traditional" route you start with very thin purees and kind of work upwards toward thicker textures and purees. Then you start with small bites of chunky/soft foods and go from there. At 6 months you definitely don't need to be worried about him being the only kid eating purees. He should still be getting all his nutrients from bm/formula and "real" food is more about exploring.

[pamela]

We started with a mix of purees and real food. I never really made him specific food. If we were having something he could gum, I let him try some. No real system about it. He didn't have any issues about purees being easy and the other stuff not. His favorite though were things like a piece of bread that he could easily hold while gnawing on it. Remember, at this point their real nutrition is coming from BM/formula so don't worry about the exact mix or he's getting too much of this or that. They are just practicing eating.

[hannamaren]

We didnt do BLW
She had cereal first
Then purees
Then a mix of purees and real food (probably around 8mths). Most of her nutrition was from the purees, the big stuff was for fun. She ate with her fingers. (Watermelon, pasta, soup)

[karinothing]

1) if you started with purees and then switched to BLW, how did your baby do?

Okay well you know my story. Started on BLW, then refused food for three months. Did two weeks of purees and then back to BLW. He did fine on the switch and seemed to prefer to feed himself. He just shoveled food in his mouth.

2) are babies supposed to actually eat the food during the early stages of BLW or just kind of gum it? I've given him some roasted carrot sticks and he gummed them but didnt actually eat them (not soft enough??)

It took him a while before he got the concept of eating down. When we first started he just gummed the food and then later on (when he got more teeth) he realized he could bite parts off. Then it took him a little while to learn to chew.

3) With BLW, can you just give your kid regular food? The book talks about giving 8 month olds pasta and the like. For some reason that seems so odd to me.

Yup, he eats everything we eat.

4) if you didn't do BLW, when did you start giving your baby "real" food? I dont want him to be the weird child at daycare who is still only eating purees when he is 2 years old. LOL

Okay, this doesn't really apply to me BUT our pedi really stressed table foods by nine months. The daycare also really encouraged table food at nine month as well.

[/quote]

[starlily]

My kid wanted nothing to do with table foods until she was around a year old. She wasn't even interested in puffs until 9 months. It really didn't click with her until she saw the other kids eating in the toddler room at daycare. Up until then we did purees, starting at 6 months.

[SusanBAnthony]

We did purées and blw.

We offered purées to try to fill them up (like if I was gone and they couldn't nurse). It was never on a set schedule. As they got older and loved purées, we continued to give them. Typically it was just a jar of regular applesauce, though, no baby-specific.

We offered table food whenever we were eating, so multiple times a day. For my kids it was mostly playing and experiencing until at least 9 months. They got a little in them, but not enough to replace a nursing. They didn't consistently eat enough to fill them up until a year probably.

[Ashley&Scott]

1) if you started with purees and then switched to BLW, how did your baby do?
n/a- we started with BLW

2) are babies supposed to actually eat the food during the early stages of BLW or just kind of gum it? I've given him some roasted carrot sticks and he gummed them but didnt actually eat them (not soft enough??)
In the beginning he would just suck on it & gum it. (some would go in his mouth but often back out after he moved it around for a while)

3) With BLW, can you just give your kid regular food? The book talks about giving 8 month olds pasta and the like. For some reason that seems so odd to me.
We typically just give fruits & veggies. In our regular rotation: avocado, sweet potato, peas, carrots, apples, pear, black beans, puffs. We steams foods that aren't naturally soft. When he developed his pincer grasp we added smaller things like black beans & peas. (We've also done toast fingers, banana, peach, nectarine, mashed potatoes, broccoli, green beans)

4) if you didn't do BLW, when did you start giving your baby "real" food? I dont want him to be the weird child at daycare who is still only eating purees when he is 2 years old. LOL
n/a

and finally - for a 7 to 8 month old, what was/is their eating schedule like? Right now DS gets breakfast and dinner and then nurses throughout the day (or has several bottles at DC). when should I start incorporating lunch and/or snacks?
We started with solids once a day at dinner time. (6.5-10mo) At 10 mo we went to 2x per day. (added late morning meal at daycare & continued dinner at home)

[Deleted]

So, we are kinda doing a mixture.....basically whatever he will eat. So today he had some oatmeal (by spoon) and then some rice rusks. he LOVES rice rusks and would eat 4 or 5 if i let him.
What I'm really struggling with is he coughs sometimes on things - gagging almost. Not choking, but he hasn't quite mastered some of the chewing/swallowing. So I'm struggling not to be afraid to try foods. What do you guys do?

[Deleted]

Here's my "Help with BLW" post from a few months back, I got lots of good responses:

pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=mmmoms&action=display&thread=56578

I highly recommend the BLW book, I found it very helpful. There's a book and a cookbook, I got the cookbook since it starts with the BLW basics and has recipes. The reviews said the book book was kinda repetitive and the cookbook had everything you needed.

www.amazon.com/The-Baby-Led-Weani....eaning+cookbook

I know you guys don't like her (I do), the Art of Making a Baby has a good post about BLW and choking

prebabyblog.com/category/healthfitness/healthy-food/

Good excerpt:

To quickly explain, according to the book, coughing and gagging is a completely normal natural response to simply having food in their mouths at that age. In adults the trigger for “choking”, and hence coughing from it, is in the back of a person’s throat. For infants of 6 months, though, that trigger is in the middle of their tongue. So when they bite a piece that is a little too big, they start coughing as if they are choking before they even had a chance to move the piece back into the actual “danger zone”. During these beginning months, they learn to bite proper size pieces, not stuff their mouths, chew, swallow, move the food around in their mouth, which, apparently, are all very complex movements. By the time that the coughing trigger moves back where it belongs ( nine months if I am not mistaken), an infant who has been fed non-pureed foods has learned to handle foods safely enough to be able to chew them up, or spit them out if the bite is too big. This way, most babies who were BLW’ed don’t ever need their food cut up in small pieces for them (except for choking hazards like grapes, cherries etc), and they enjoy family meals from an early age, because you feed them what you are eating ( with some modifications in the very beginning).

[Deleted]

We cut everything into spears (about the size of my pinky) so he can hold one end and gnaw the other. We feed anything that's not sweetened or salted, no choking hazards (grapes, hot dogs), and no allergenic foods yet (nuts, sesame, or soy). As far as quantity, here are his meals today. He still nurses full time (he has always nursed every 4 hours).

7am nurse

9:00 breakfast, one whole pear (unpeeled) but cut up. We don't peel anything b/c that's where a lot of the nutrients are. He spits out the peel if he wants to.

11:00 nurse

12:00 lunch, leftovers from last night. 3 spears roasted chicken, 2 spears potato, 2 spears carrot

3:00 nurse

5:00 nurse

6:30 dinner, 4 sweet potato spears and pile of garlicky kale. We're having smoked brisket sandwiches, which have too much salt for him. But normally he would get whatever meat we're having. He LOVES hamburger (cooked throughly), steak, and pork chops.

7:30 nurse to sleep.

Basically we feed him what we eat, with no sugar or salt. We salt our food at the table. If the whole meal is inappropriate for him, like pizza, I always have avocado and fruit on hand. I hope this helps! I know it seems like a lot to take in, I was overwhelmed at first too. But it got a lot easier with time. Just try it out, I bet you'll be surprised what LO will eat. Who knew DS would love sauteed greens?!?

ETA: I will say, he gagged (not choked) a lot in the beginning. Like I said earlier, it takes them awhile to learn how to take appropriately-sized bites and chew/smush the food before they try to swallow it. DS has never choked though, knock on wood. He just gagged and coughed up the piece if it was too big. We started BLW at 6 months, and now at 9 months he eats effectively and hardly ever gags. So clearly he's learning.

[Deleted]

Dec 5, 2012 1:27:24 GMT -5 @supergreen said:

Here's my "Help with BLW" post from a few months back, I got lots of good responses:

pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=mmmoms&action=display&thread=56578

I highly recommend the BLW book, I found it very helpful. There's a book and a cookbook, I got the cookbook since it starts with the BLW basics and has recipes. The reviews said the book book was kinda repetitive and the cookbook had everything you needed.

www.amazon.com/The-Baby-Led-Weani....eaning+cookbook

I know you guys don't like her (I do), the Art of Making a Baby has a good post about BLW and choking

prebabyblog.com/category/healthfitness/healthy-food/

Good excerpt:

To quickly explain, according to the book, coughing and gagging is a completely normal natural response to simply having food in their mouths at that age. In adults the trigger for “choking”, and hence coughing from it, is in the back of a person’s throat. For infants of 6 months, though, that trigger is in the middle of their tongue. So when they bite a piece that is a little too big, they start coughing as if they are choking before they even had a chance to move the piece back into the actual “danger zone”. During these beginning months, they learn to bite proper size pieces, not stuff their mouths, chew, swallow, move the food around in their mouth, which, apparently, are all very complex movements. By the time that the coughing trigger moves back where it belongs ( nine months if I am not mistaken), an infant who has been fed non-pureed foods has learned to handle foods safely enough to be able to chew them up, or spit them out if the bite is too big. This way, most babies who were BLW’ed don’t ever need their food cut up in small pieces for them (except for choking hazards like grapes, cherries etc), and they enjoy family meals from an early age, because you feed them what you are eating ( with some modifications in the very beginning).

Lol thanks, I did read the Pre baby post and I have the BLW book but it confused me even more for some reason.


Thanks for the responses ladies, I think we may stick with purees for a bit longer since he seems to really like them! Maybe I will try incorporate more table food though to get him in the habit.

[bunch]

To add, some kids don't gag. Mine did - all.the.time. It was frightening until I got used to it.

[knitty]

1) if you started with purees and then switched to BLW, how did your baby do?

LOL, this is called normal weaning. Most people start with purees, then start putting something soft on the table while they're feeding the purees, then back off on the purees after a couple of months. At nine months they should be having a significant amount of finger food and fork mashed food instead of purees.

It's pretty simple to just leave out part of what you've cooked, and give it to them as is and mash the other stuff. Other handy things are peas and corn from the freezer (bit older), banana rolled in oatmeal (the finely ground oatmeal you use for their breakfast), a few bits of plain pasta.

[drloretta]

We didn't do BLW because I never heard of it until it as "too late". We just increased the chunkiness of the food over time so DD transitioned to real food.

I really liked the book from Williams Sonoma that gives increasingly chunky recipes for kids as they get older so you don't end up with that 2yo eating purees FWIW, DD is almost 3 and has eaten regular food for quite a while now. And has never choked. She's just not a choker.

[whitepicketfence]

Dec 4, 2012 10:52:32 GMT -5 hannamaren said:

We didnt do BLW
She had cereal first
Then purees
Then a mix of purees and real food (probably around 8mths). Most of her nutrition was from the purees, the big stuff was for fun. She ate with her fingers. (Watermelon, pasta, soup)

This is essentially what we did with both of our kids. By 9-10 months, they were pretty much done with purees and ate mostly table/finger foods. It's perfectly normal for kids this age to gnaw on foods moreso than eat them; as others have mentioned, their main source of nutrition at this age should still be BM/formula.