Weaning help..again

[Tillytots]

Only me

Ok, so James has been eating well again, he has breakfast and dinner now BUT he will only eat pureed carrot, butternut squash, swede and sweet potato mixed together and he hates bits, they make him gag. I gave him a broccoli florret to eat and when he got it in his mouth he went mad. How can I overcome this? Shall I switch to BLW and give him finger food to eat himself to get him used to actually eating or will this just confuse him about food? He really enjoys his dinner and eats baby cereal for brekkie but just wont have lumpy stuff.

help!!! xx

 

[Magic Monkey]

Hey hun,

Ella was like this with lumps, so we did switch to BLW and she has been fine. But I wanted to do BLW anyway so that suited me, if you don't want to I think that you just have to perservere with the lumps.

Does he have homemade food or jars? The lumps in jars can be a bit big to begin with, so maybe go slowly and first make the purees really thick, then start mashing food and move on from there.

My HV told me that to get them to eat lumps you should put the food into the side of their mouths as this encourages them to chew, whereas putting it in the middle, they swallow it straight down and then gag.

Could it be that he is a bit young for lumps still? I don't know maybe someone else will?

 

[beanie]

You can't switch to BLW, you either do BLW or puree led weaning but you can move onto the next stage of "normal" weaning which is finger foods. If you look on the BLW thread there are loads of ideas for finger foods. This should get him used to lumos at his own pace. It is the fun part of weaning but very messy

 

[Babylicious]

I gradually made harrisons food lumpier and the sausage didn't notice

 

[leckershell]

If Ryan got stroppy with lumps I just stayed on the puree and baby rice for a bit longer and tried again in a couple of weeks. There's no rush to get him onto stage 2 hun he'll get there in his own time. As long as he eats something and is happy, then all is right in his world. xx

 

[Tillytots]

cool, thankyou!!

I wasnt trying to get him to eat lumps, its just if I give him finger food he gags an awful lot and I was worried we'd be stuck on puree forever

 

[Sherlock]

Gagging is natural and his way of not swallowing things he should not (ie big lumps of food that need more chewing). The gag reflex needs to kick in when discovering chewing foods.

If he is gagging then he is learning how to handle foods and I'd not worry overly.

I posted about BLW and Galen's lack of gagging having gone this route. Chewing is something babies start to do around 6 months. My understanding is that puree fed babies need to get used to non pureed foods but tend to gag more than BLW babies. Bug gagging is not choking and James should not come to any harm other than to spit the food back out.

I'd keep going with finger foods. Cooked carrot sticks, roasted sweet potato and butternut squash have been good ones for our LO. I cut the squash and potato into rounds and Galen loves them. Because they are soft he bites a bit off, chews it round then swallows it. As he gets better with biting and chewing I'll start cooking them a bit firmer.