Baby Led Weaning Support Thread #11

[amayzie]

Sounds like BLW is a really great option for you amanda!! The gagging at touching the food is very sensitive! A very discerning young man clearly!! This will really give him an opportunity to touch and get used to the foods before he eats them.

Basically with BLW you can offer anything you are eating- but you ensure you prepare it with no added sugars and no salt or sodium. They can only tolerate a small amount of sodium in the day. When you are preparing foods make sure they are soft cooked or if they are hard (like meats) that they can sort of gum away at but that bits won't breal off. So something like a raw carrot is going to be too hard.

[*Ali*]

Yeah a Katy says you can pretty much just feed him whatever you eat. So any meat, (slow cooked is easy to gum), softish veg,  pasta shapes or fruit are all great. Just give him bits to try while you are eating it. I would put a few bits straight on the highchair tray to start and offer more when he had finished with that. If I put too much all at once he got overwhelmed and just squished it round.

[Amanda5555]

Thanks ladies looking forward to our BLW adventure lol.

[eva026]

I'm new to BLW myself but I have a few meals we can all eat and are easy for LO to hold and self-feed, not sure about DS's allergies though.

Roast chicken thighs with rosemary potatoes, apple and pumpkin - this one is  great because you season and then just stick all the ingredients together in a oven dish and go do something more interesting than cooking;)
Fish baked in tin foil with cauliflower cheese
Spaghetti Bol - but here I'd be careful about the tomatoes, maybe use other veg that are less acidic instead. The pasta makes a crazy mess but DD loved it
French toast for breakfast
Pumpkin fritters (2 cups mashed pumpkin, 2 cups flour, 2 eggs, 3 tsp baking powder, curry or cinnamon, bit of salt - drop them in a pan with olive oil and fry till golden brown) DD had them plain, we put garlic sauce on ours. They are supposed to be a but mushy inside so don't worry that they are not cooked through. I think you could probably substitute the pumpkin for zucchini and it should work too.
Beef burgers - DD got a bit of bun, a bit of the burger, some cheese, cucumber and mashed them all up on her tray herself;)
Rice noodles with chicken, zucchini, carrot and green bean stir-fry (added soy sauce after taking out DD's portion

That's all we've tried so far. I'm trying to introduce food more or less in the order suggested by the wholsomebabyfood site just in case, so our ingredients are still pretty limited.
 
 

[amayzie]

That's an awesome site hey!

[Amanda5555]

I love that site!!!!!! I went through a bunch of printer ink printing off different charts etc ( I love charts and checklists)

Eva- can you come to my house and cook? It all sounds so yummy. I'm going to make DH read your recipe ideas and make them lol. Kidding I will try them.

We had chicken breasts, broccoli and cauliflower and creamed corn tonight for dinner. B literally shoved the food in his mouth in fist fulls. I only gave him a couple of pieces at a time but he does this sweeping motion and in the fist full of food goes. He is very difficult to slow down. If I give him one piece at a time he shovels that in and starts to  grunt and bang his fists to say more now. Its like every meal is his last and then he ends up with this mouthful of food which he apparently swallows just fine. He hates his food to go cold too. What a little prince he is lol. He's going to want caviar and duck L'orange for his first birthday. LOL Who's child is this anyways?

[eva026]

What a little prince he is lol. He's going to want caviar and duck L'orange for his first birthday. LOL Who's child is this anyways?

lol, you are in for it;)
DD is a typical girl, quite dainty (for a baby) when she eats but is soo picky. She refuses to eat the same thing 2x in a row, even 2 days in a row so to be safe I have to have 3 days of different meals for her.
We only do BLW once a day before bath time though.
She gets cereal and fruit off the spoon for breakfast and lunch is some kind of chunky puree. If she refuses it I smear it on bread and she feeds herself.
I'm wondering if she isn't eating too many carbs though? Bread and pasta are the easiest to self feed though:/

[Amanda5555]

So I think we are definately reacting to something. The other night after the broccoli,cauliflower and corn we had a horrible night. Within an hour and a half B was up screaming, his nose was stuffed up and his reflux was way worse. I have had afternoons like this but to be honest with B's regular gut problems its hard to tell whether its the food or not but that night I was sure. The other interesting thing is that he can't do prunes reacts terribly to those too. Peaches are also bad. So will have to look into that with the allergist. Hmmm 

Is it terrible if LO's have the same thing every day as long as they are still on formula? Our list of choices is quickly diminishing.

[eva026]

Sorry to hear that Amanda:( I'm no expert but I think that as milk is priority till they are 1yo, they should be getting most of what they need from that?

[creations]

So sorry to hear there was a bad reaction Amanda.
It's dine for LOs to have the same thing to eat each day so long as there is a decent amount of milk too.  Of course there is a wider variety of nutrients and vitamins in a wider variety of food but that isn't possible for everyone.  If the milk intake is good I wouldn't worry at all as formula has a stack of vitamins in.  If the milk is low or you feel concerned then you could supplement with infant vitamin drops.  In the UK they are advised up to age 5 but not everyone uses them.  I did (and still do) because my silent refluxer took so little milk so wasn't getting the level of vitamins that another LO would get from their formula.  hope that helps a little.
My LO also shovelled the food in, right from 6 months, it was like he'd been starved for the first 6 months of life and was intent on making up for it.  I found we needed at least 1.5hr between solid feed and BT to avoid reflux or gas pain after BT if that's any help to you too.
xx

[Amanda5555]

Thanks  Yes we definately try to do mealtimes early enough before bt. He too eats like its his last meal and will never eat again. He's usually fussy and bloated by the evenings so its so hard to tell whether its the food or just his crappy digestion. Meh hopefully we'll figure it out soon. In the meantime onwards we go. I think we will avoid broccoli and corn for a bit though lol. He is loving feeding himself right now which is fun. He's starting to figue out those pincers so hopefully he'll stop shovelling in the handfuls lol and be a bit more polite hahahaha.

[mumofalice]

Hooray  Pleased to see some more Mummies and LOs have joined the thread!

DS is 8 months today - so we've been on the BLW journey for a couple of months now. He seems to have really got into it the last couple of weeks though and his pincer grip is coming along nicely - just introduced blueberries and he's loving rolling them around the tray 

Amanda - I think you said you were going to try oranges with DS . . . forgot to warn you the downside to oranges (DS LOVES them!) is that they stain really bad  If anyone has a tip on how to get orange juice out I would really appreciate it as most of DS's clothes now have hints of orange all over them - despite being covered in a dress bib and pelican bib when he's eating LOL!

[eva026]

I'm kind of a half BLW because we still do at least 1 meal where she is spoon fed.

hmm I've just realised I've been going too far with giving DD exaclty the same as we eat. Too much salt I think.
Sunday and yesterday she got what we were eating in the restaurant so roast potato, carrots with melted cheese and grilled chicken in goats cheese sauce.
Maybe a good idea to cook things separately for her in a little sauce pan and not add any salt because I've just been adding less salt to our food and giving DD that.
She also gets bread, cheese, cream cheese and ham to munch on so that is prob too much salt anyway.

[creations]

Eva, if she's only having little tastes and not eating much then the salt is probably not as bad as you think, however if she has really started eating and is munching down on everything you're giving I really would cut right back and alter the way you cook as much as possible.  An under 1 should have 1g or less of salt per day which is really really small amount.
My DS was such a keen eater I had to really watch his intake, half a slice of bread and spoonful of canned tuna and that's it for the day, therefore no second slice of bread for another meal, no cheese or sauces or baked bean etc on top of that.  I even had to work out how many home made fruit/veg muffins and pancakes he would be 'allowed' in one day because of the sodium levels in flour.  Pre-cooked cold meats, canned fish, and any pre-prepared foods are danger areas.  Your bread is likely not as bad as the UK bread, we have extra high salt in our shop bought bread.

I stopped using salt in my cooking, it isn't too hard.  For example I steam all the veg, don't add any salt to cooking water for pasta or potatoes etc.  Things like potato wedges or sweet pot wedges I sprinkled herbs or spices on rather than salt so there was still seasoning.  If you are salt lovers you could cook all in one pan, take out a little to cool down for DD then add salt to the pan which is for the adult food?  I sometimes do this with gravy, make a very very low salt gravy, take some out to cool for DS then hike up the flavour and seasoning for the rest of the family.
It's no bother once you get into the swing of it.

[eva026]

That's what I was doing, then she started loving every thing so I started giving her whatever we ate when we were out etc and kind of went too far.
I'll go back to cooking without salt and separating out her portion, like you said.

As to giving her ham/cheese/bread etc. You you think that if I only do one meal like that it should be ok? No clue how much salt we have in our bread. I try get "healthy" bread in a bakery but it doesn't have a list of ingredients.
She does manage to eat quite a lot. Swallows things whole, judging by her nappies:/
We do breakfast/supper of cereal + fruit - spoon feed
Lunch of meat, veg, fruit, pasta/potato
Breakfast/supper of bread with cream cheese, hard cheese, ham, veg/fruit, egg

I was thinking of adding cheese sauce to to the veg and meat she has for lunch because she loved it, but that would be too much reviewing the amount of salt she already gets.