Stressing for no reason...

[~ Mylitta ~]

You are all so fantastic. These sorts of responses are exactly why so many people feel so comfortable asking questions and raising their concerns on BB

I was telling my DH about it all and his opinion is that the nurses probably HAVE to tell you to start with rice cereal and most likely aren't generally allowed to tell you alternative methods (like BLS) because they have to stick with their current guidelines. He figured that if a child happened to get sick from BLS and the nurse had recommended it, then they are opening doors to lawsuits. I guess he's right, but at the same time I would have thought that the nurses would want to be up to date with current research and methods and even if they aren't allowed to recommend BLS, at least they could be supportive if you mention that you are going down that path...

We ended up getting some rice cereal just to see if Kyson would even be interested. I made it up with breastmilk and he still mostly turned his nose up at it. Usually if I give him spoonfed foods he grabs the spoon and shoves it in his mouth himself, but with the rice cereal he played with the spoon until pretty much all the cereal had fallen off, and then he just chewed on the spoon, lol. I then gave him his broccoli and he chowed down like he hadn't been fed in days! HAHA!

[Panda74]

I had a similar experience this week with my GP except my DS is 8 months so you can imagine her shock when I said he's still feeding during the night! My DS is not interested in food until about 7pm, he's so full of milk. However I have been offering him solids at least twice a day every day for three months. I have tipped SO many bowls of mush (vegies, fruit, rice cereal, various combos of the three) in the bin!! We've had good days and not interested days and at the moment he's blowing raspeberries at almost everything offered...however he will pull himself to stand to grab my apple and has just started tasting veges and toast (I think he likes the carbs like Mummy!!) off my plate - without coercion and I think thats the way forward for us..

Thanks for the post KrystieLove, I was feeling a little teary after my docs visit..

[CAH]

Oh thank goodness I've read this. I was bit woried as we don't really seem to be getting anywhere fast with actually eating solids, not even 1 meal a day! She is interested but not alot actually goes down, I was panicing as to when its a problem as in when do they stop getting what they need from milk (DD is formula fed), DD is now 6.5MO. As for the 3 meals a day thats just silly, way too soon to be doing that!

I told myself last night that DD will do this when she is ready & not before. She was born a month prem & had inital feeding problems, that felt like it would never improve but within a week she had got the knack so I'm thinking this will eventually twig with her & away we go!

[~ Mylitta ~]

Well, we decided that seeings as we bought the rice cereal, we might as well try to use it up rather than have it go to waste, so even though I'm now secure in my feelings that he doesn't actually need it, we've been adding some cereal to his other foods. I haven't given it to him just by itself, or to replace his finger foods though. He still gets his chunks of broccoli, sticks of cucumber (which he is loving at the moment!) and other chunky foods. The most success we've had is when it chopped the small green tops of the bits of broccoli that were too small for him to hold, and mixed it in with the cereal. It didn't look appetising to me, by he seemed to quite enjoy it, lol.

I've very happy that we are doing BLS, and am amazed at how well Kyson is getting the hang of it, and how much his fine motor skills have improved! Also, the other day I was at my mothers group and quite a few of us had pulled out some food for our bubs. All the others ladies were sitting there spoon feeding their babies, while I was sitting there enjoying my drink and biscuit while Kyson happily munched away and fed himself I think they were all a bit surprised and didn't realise that their babies could even learn to do it at this age. I wonder if any of them will start doing the same now...

[CAH]

Oh wow Kyson was born same day as my Attia!!! A very, very special day indeed!

[~Kaz~]

I was at my mothers group and quite a few of us had pulled out some food for our bubs. All the others ladies were sitting there spoon feeding their babies, while I was sitting there enjoying my drink and biscuit while Kyson happily munched away and fed himself I think they were all a bit surprised and didn't realise that their babies could even learn to do it at this age. I wonder if any of them will start doing the same now...

Hahaha!! Krystie, I do the same thing!! A couple of the mums have expressed interest and I think have introduced their bubs to finger food earlier than they would have otherwise. The other response I've had from others is in regards to the mess. I just tell them that their babies will have to progress from being spoon fed to feeding themselves at some stage and mess is unavoidable. They look horrified (it's not that bad in my opinion) and I am inwardly laughing at how they will cope when their kids get onto solid food.

In regards to the MCHN, you seriously can't win. Mine is pretty good, has "vaguely heard" of BLS and hasn't given me anything but support about how I feed DS but apparently he's not moving around enough and she wants to refer him to a physio if he doesn't improve by 9 months. It stressed me initially but now I think they really need to start to actually LOOK at the baby they have in front of them instead of running through their mental checklist according to age.