When did you start BLW?

[rugbykaf]

Hi,

not sure if I should have put this in the BLW support thread but . . .

when did you guys start BLW?

Did you do it exclusively or combined with spoon feeding?

Is it ok to let my boys "play" with food at 5 months if they've got the motor skills to do it?

Kath

[RachelC]

Bumping this for you

[becj86]

I'm interested too... anyone?

[RachelC]

Sorry there has been no response here. I would think you would want to wait until the recommended time to intro solids in general, which does vary by country, but is generally about 6 months. Maybe try posting on http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=184657.0

[mumofalice]

I started BLW when DD was 6 months (26 weeks) which was the recommended age for the introduction of solids at the time - I *think* I read a post recently that said the 'guidelines' have changed.

I didn't do a mixture of spoon and BLW - just the BLW itself. There was a lot of playing with food to start off with - but DD finally started to eat around 9 months (and hasn't looked back!   - I think you have to be fairly patient to do purely BLW but you just keep telling yourself that for the first year of a LOs life their milk intake is their main source of food and solids are just for fun.

Good Luck  

[skatty]

My dd was around 6 months too. It is not really BLW if you are spoon feeding too, that is of course fine but the whole point of BLW is that it is child led and up to them, I must say it was fab not faffing around with spoons etc and my dd has always been a very adventurous eater and to this day very independant which is probably down to personality but maybe it helped 

[SylvieA]

With both kids I started with spoon feeding around 6mo, and DD refused and after a few tries, I gave up and went BLW, but wasn't interested till closer to 9m0. DS never refused solids in any form, but by 7mo we were done with spoon and on to BLW. I also always gave a spoon for them to play with, so they were able to eat softer foods like yogurt or apple sauce by dipping in until they figured out to scoop out. Such a fun way and less work for mommy

[rugbykaf]

Thanks guys 

I really like the whole idea of BLW. I can remember meal times being a real trauma when I was little as I was a really picky eater. I dont want my boys to have the same experience.

Not planning to start for another couple of weeks. . . . although having said that, was at a BBQ tonight and E took the slice of pepper i was about to dip and had a good old suck and chew on it for 5 mins or so!

J not interested yet but its stillvery early days.

Can I ask if any of your LOs are FF, and if so was there much of an increase in the amounts they were taking before the solids actually started to become part of their calorie intake?

[Khalam's Mama]

Agree with katt blw with some spoon feeding is really just regular weaning. We have started at 5mo to offer but tbh he isn't really eating anything yet just having a good feel which is the 1st step i think.

[Lemonthyme]

I think there has been an influence of BLW on traditional weaning though which is no bad thing.  I did traditional weaning with my son and probably introduced more finger foods more often and he used to have a completely self fed lunch most days.  But as others have said, that's not really BLW.  

I don't though see the point of having to stick to the 'rules' of a technique.  It's a technique, not the law and if you want to take inspiration from it as I did then I see nothing wrong with that.  Also as my son had been a bad sleeper since day 1 and a hungry, hungry boy, I couldn't psychologically not feed him his tea because I was too scared about him being hungry in the night.  I know that milk is the main source of calories till 1 etc, etc but it's tough when you've been woken up 4-6 times a night since birth and you're doing PUPD to try and get him to drop those night breastfeeds.  I also wanted to have more influence about the nutritional content of what he ate.

Anyway, sorry for hijacking.  The thing is whatever you do, you get to around the same point by about 18 months - 2 years.  There are lots of claims that BLW are less fussy and the book makes claims about obesity but I've never seen any research on it and certainly my traditionally weaned son isn't fussy at all and is still following the same growth curve he's followed since birth.