I don't think this is a BLW issue. Even with purees, it's developmentally appropriate around 10 months or so to start giving your baby bite sized things like cheerios or smashed peas or cut up blueberries, so they can start working on their pincer grip and feeding themselves. If you go down the baby aisle, there are age ranges and milestones for various snacks. We didn't do BLW, but around 9 or 10 months, after we'd introduced a good number of foods, we started offering what we were eating (as long as it was soft and mashable), cut into really small pieces.

Anonymous wrote:I have an eight month old baby. For context, she was an early roller, crawler, and cruiser. She only has two teeth. We’re not nursing anymore. I am struggling a little with feeding her. I intended to do a BLW approach and just let her have what we’re eating, but I’m very anxious about choking. As a result, she mostly eats stage 2 purée style food. I’m worried that I’m holding her back. She has minimal interest in self feeding, and wants me to feed her when I do give her finger foods. We have a pediatrician appointment next month and I’ll talk to them then, but wanted to get some perspective from other parents. I’m trying to move past my worries about choking and include her more in our meals, but it’s difficult to relax about it.
Any words of wisdom?

Don't do anything you're not comfortable with, but she IS at a good age. Just put a few little bits of soft food on her tray. Banana, avocado, sweet potato. If you're having pasta, just cut up some little pieces for her. She'll probably get into it, and these foods are very low choking hazards.

Anonymous wrote:I did BLW for all my babies but where I am from it is much more common. All my American friends thought I was a totally negligent parent! I have no idea why it isn't popular here as it is so much easier but you definitely won't be alone doing purees and you'd probably find it hard to find friends doing BLW. Do whatever you like, it really doesn't matter in the end.

I'm in DC and don't know anyone who feeds purees to their baby (other than pouches for when you're on the go).

Feed you baby whatever you want to feed them. If you enjoy pureeing foods- have at it!

My 3rd child just started solids at 6 months. I did applesauce for a few days and then just moved onto oversteamed vegetables, beans, scrambled eggs. She just eats whatever we make. I just give things that aren't choking hazards, like peas. Peas are easy to grab and mushy enough for her to chew without teeth. I don't have time to puree things and also want my baby to get more peanut, egg, shrimp, wheat and other allergen exposure than the little gerber jars have.

Food before one is just for fun. Oh and those saying their babies needed more food and that's why they started solids earlier... food has less calories than breastmilk.

I did BLW for all my babies but where I am from it is much more common. All my American friends thought I was a totally negligent parent! I have no idea why it isn't popular here as it is so much easier but you definitely won't be alone doing purees and you'd probably find it hard to find friends doing BLW. Do whatever you like, it really doesn't matter in the end.

I never really did super smooth purees. Not out of any sort of stance, but because I am lazy and cheap. I found mashing up soft foods and feeding that to my kid worked well. I did buy the store bought jars to get exposures in, and for the meat.

Otherwise, I'd just mash up a sweet potato, or an avocado, or a banana or whatever and feed the baby that. After the first few weeks, they got good at it and I never had this drama about perfectly smooth purees.

Yeah, we start with purees. Easier, less messy. We started with a little baby oatmeal (iron-fortified, especially good for breastfed babies) and then added in a bunch of store bought purees. We'll add it some little basic finger foods like cheerios at 8 or 9 months, whenever the ped recommends, I forget (this is my second).

We do work up to eating everything we eat pretty quickly after that. By age one, my son was eating everything we were eating, just in tiny pieces and with no honey or raw/undercooked things. He's still a fabulous eater now at age 2.

I am a bit concerned about you though - you're worried about choking, you're worried about holding her back by feeding her purees. Is this level of anxiety limited just to starting up with solids? If so, I understand, new things are stressful, I'm sure you'll find your groove. But if this is a common though pattern with you, or specific to parenting stuff, you might want to consider talking to a professional. Parental worrying and uncertainty is part of the package, but if it's crossing over to anxiety that might be clinical, it's worth getting checked out. At the end of the day, a parent with untreated anxiety is much more worrisome than how you introduce solids.

I've never understood why BLW is such a thing or why it's now seen as the "right" thing to do. Follow your baby's cues, if you want to feed purees do it.

I don't believe all the stuff on Solid Starts and her kid has major issues with food that frankly are atypical. That impacts her views and some of those women in BLW groups are psychos that will throw people out if they even mention purees.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never did BLW. I actually loved spoon-feeding feeding my kids fresh purées. DH and I both over-salt our food so there would never be anything we could share anyway. Both kids are advanced in every way the pediatrician asks about at 3 and 1.5 and started feeding themselves when they were ready.

+1. I loved feeding my babies! They’re like little birds! All kids turned out great, extremely independent, with no issues around food.

+2. It’s such a short stage of their lives.

It helped me to watch videos of babies gagging on food to better understand the difference between gagging and choking. There’s going to be some gagging no matter what you do.

I don’t think this is super critical. But spears of avocados, bananas, steamed carrots etc would be a good and safe place to start.

SolidStarts has a free library on website and app of food and how to cut it for babies based on age. I’ve enjoyed their videos on IG as well and realize choking isn’t a huge issue when you understand the mechanism and that few foods are really dangerous (e.g. nuts). I’m using it with solid food because I fear raising a picky eater. It’s also easier and cheaper than purées.

I did purées too. My first was HUNGRY and at 4.5 months he was needing more and more formula so we started purées bc he was on the younger side for starting solids. I gave little tiny pieces of things like cheese, banana etc when it seemed like he could handle it

There’s really not a big choking risk with baby led weaning. Obviously you cut the food into small pieces, and you are there to supervise.

I did purées with baby 1 and baby led weaning (I guess?) with baby 2 and it was no contest for me. Baby led weaning was way easier. Feeding baby 1 purées is my number 1 “why did I waste all that time?” parenting thing.