Today's inspiration comes from the Yahoo B-LW Group. Every now and again you see mothers mentioning that their nurseries have been suspicious about giving small babies finger foods, and today one mother told in her message, that the

"daycare fought us about not feeding her purees from a jar (...) and ended up phoning up [my child's pediatrician] when she gagged on a piece of potato".

I find this sort of behaviour very unprofessional from the nursery teachers. My first reaction was, are they trying to tell this mother that they know better what's best for her child? That shows a serious lack of respect, something that she shouldn't have to deal with with the current prices of daycare in the UK.

On any other field of service industry, companies are falling over themselves to stay tuned to the marketplace and to understand what their customers want in order to improve their services and make themselves more attractive. Childcare professionals (along with the health professionals) should finally start doing some research, follow what is going on in their industry and get themselves up to date on the latest parenting trends.

With all the fuzz about healthy food, Jamie's School Dinners and the child obesity concerns, nurseries should be the first ones to look into how they could improve their services to comply with the most recent scientific research. Looking after babies doesn't need to be rocket science, but if you're going to tell someone you're not providing the service they are asking for, you have to be prepared to lose that customer. There will always be a demand for daycare places for children, but no business should ever take their clientele for granted, not even nurseries.

There isn't much information available about baby-led weaning in printed form, but you can find links to the the Guidelines article here and there. Googling "baby-led weaning" brings up several links telling you that gagging is really quite normal and doesn't put the child into any kind of danger. Lukas gags more from sucking his forefinger (apparently it's habit-forming :) than from any food I've ever given him.

In the little story we started off with, the nursery teacher had resorted to ringing the pediatrician for advise. In essence, that was probably the right thing to do, but telling to the mother about it just reaks of martyrdom and sneers, especially if after they had already openly disagreed with the mother about the subject. I just hope the doctor explained the caller the difference between gagging and choking.

I have been quietly complaining about the low quality of the Wikipedia entry for BLW for ages. I am delighted that someone went through the trouble of creating one, but it's had a "requires cleanup"-tag for ages and I just wish someone would have done the job already. Actually, I have had my Wikipedia account for a while now, but I couldn't possibly take such a heavily loaded task upon myself! Or could I?

The only reason I even started re-organising, re-wording and finally re-writing the entry was, that I'm getting sick of building my own BLW emporium here at the BLWbaby. I've managed to get the recipes section half-heartedly up an running. This means drawing up a plan for it, building a frame (which is what you see if you click on the "Recipes"-link on the top panel) with links to all the nice stuff that's going to be there one day, then losing concentration and interest for a few days. It's still very unfinished but I'm hoping to get all the promised stuff up there the month is over.

There is a strong admiration of Wikipedia in our little family, but I wouldn't have thought to be contributing to it in a million years. It seems so big and full of intriguing information, that the idea of writing or even modifying an article seemed daunting. I don't consider myself an expert in any subject (well, in maybe a couple of very, very specific subjects), but I could think of a good few ways to make the article more informative for someone who has never even heard of baby-led weaning before.

After all, the article doesn't have to be perfect - if there is a problem with it, anyone is free to correct, delete and add in the article as they see fit. At least I have done my part, and it feels nice.

I'm sure that anyone who has done their research on BLW would agree with me in that it seems to be a perfectly safe and sensible approach in introducing your own child to the wonderful world of solid foods. Then, why are the Health Visitors so against BLW? All I read is negative experiences of mothers who have accidentally let it slip to their health visitors that they have skipped the purees and moved straight into the more hands-on approach for the baby.

The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes in my head: Health Visitors are just being careful about the advice they give to the new mothers. There is no research or long-term practical knowledge available about BLW, so by expressing their doubts about the method they are really only covering their own back. Many mothers religiously believe every golden drops of wisdom that passes their Health Visitors' lips, so the HV's can't afford any mistakes. They're best off sticking to what they know, at least with puree-feeding they have something to refer back to.

Health Visitors' advice is often vague and based on what they think, not what they know. Even what they know mightn't be up to scratch - who knows? There is so much conflicting information about weaning available in books, on the Internet and in conventional media. We have decided to just do my homework on babies' nutrition needs and provide him everything he needs, in the way I see fit. 3 months down the BLW road, I know my son's chewing abilities well enough to know in what form I can give foodstuffs to him to be confident in myself.

For example, last week I saw someone mentioned in their post in the Yahoo B-LW forum, that a health visitor had stated that babies should be fed purees "at least 2 weeks" before introducing finger food. I have ever since put my (advanced, if I may say so) googling skills to test, while I've been searching for any sort of basis or justification for this comment. Needless to say, it's all been in vain - the time-frame certainly has a slight made-up twang do it.

The question of Health Visitors disapproving BLW became a personal matter to me when I made the mistake of informing our HV of my baby's diet. As a result, she organised 4 counselling-type home visits with me and gave me quite strict orders to reduce breastfeeding(!) and start spooning the solids into my son. For a few weeks I did as she told me, but as soon as the haze lifted we went back to finger foods. I realised I actually didn't have to do as she told me, but as we felt was best for Lukas.

I know now that for us, the best way to do BLW is to do it without the Health Visitor knowing about it. However, this is not something I openly recommend to anyone, it's our own decision and I realise the responsibility it carries. I still go to the monthly weighing, but unless something alarming comes up, I will just have to alter the truth a little bit if she asks how Lukas is eating. I can list what he eats, but I just won't mention that it's not me who's scooping it all in.

When I first started learning and doing BLW, I had these big dreams that if I educated myself enough, had a first-hand experience and wanted to spread the word, maybe I could offer my HV to come and give a little introduction speech about BLW in their weaning discussion groups. I have since become disillusioned - I don't think it's the time for that in another few years, but maybe one day. I won't be here then, but wherever I am, I would like to help.

Like the new look? It took me hours but it's finally nearly done, some tweaking is still required and I'm going to change the header image as soon as I can take & make a better one, but this one will have to do for the moment.

Here's the rant about breastfeeding re: Aitch's post yesterday that I promised in the last message. I better start off by saying that even though this is a bit of a rant, I did not write it to criticise mothers who give their babies formula. If in doubt, please read through carefully.

I've had some rough opinions in the past about bottle-feeding and "posh mothers whining about how much they would've loved to breastfeed but just couldn't", but yesterday Aitch's post made me think again. Her story was so genuine and my heart goes out to her and everyone else who have had no choice but to give their child formula. It immediately made me regret some of the 'statements' gave a couple of months ago.

Well over the toughest part of breastfeeding, I hope I can finally muse upon the subject without being too subjective. It broke my heart even to give Lukas even those few bottles when he was screaming his hunger in the dead of night during the second month. I was terrified when during the first meeting with my health visitor she told me Lukas is such a big baby that I will probably have to use formula regularly to supplement and wondered if he was going to last past 3 months without solids. Now despite our differing attitudes around feeding, I still think my health visitor is a great lady, don't get me wrong.

I still believe that the lack of support is the biggest problem to women's inability to breastfeed in the UK, and the health personnel have a habit of very eagerly telling women that only the most fortunate of mothers are able to breastfeed. I think I've already mentioned the several times the wonderful book I read during my pregnancy, Gabrielle Palmer's Politics of Breastfeeding. I'm not even going to start to summarise it here, but you can probably guess the message of the book. The cultural factors and the support of the society have everything to do with the success in breastfeeding.

Despite the heavy promotion of breastfeeding in the UK, there is a serious lack of follow-on and real support you get from the health professionals. This includes midwifes, doctors, GP's and health visitors. Breastfeeding is pushed on the level of principle, but when women find it difficult and encounter problems during the first weeks and months, the quick solution - formula - is often offered first. Even if other routes are explored (as Aitch mentioned in her post), the seed of failure is planted in the mother's mind.

Midwifes, ante-natal group instructors and even breastfeeding counsellors are so careful not to push their message in case they might offend someone, that "everyone should breastfeed" often becomes "technically we recommend that breastfeeding is best for the baby, but not all mothers can breastfeed, there are so many things that can go wrong, so if it doesn't work for you don't feel bad about it". I have nothing against formula-feeding, if that's the mother's choice, but it shouldn't be a choice the society makes for the mothers.

The results of the discrepancy between the campaigning and deficient support are well reflected in the endless breastfeeding/formula conversations in the Internet parenting forums. Breastfeeding advocates who word their opinions a little less carefully are called breastfeeding 'fascists' and 'terrorists', probably by mothers who been left on their own struggling with breastfeeding and are now having difficulties coping with the "failure". I think most those who support breastfeeding would agree that there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving your baby formula, as long as you're not doing it for selfish reasons. In my opinion, even doing it for selfish reasons is OK, if it's your own conscious decision.

It's been awfully quiet dead here since the first post. I guess the start was surprisingly smooth, and I had nothing to write! We went holidays for nearly a month, I got a big translation project and I've been struggling to keep the main blog running.

However, my BLW enthusiasm is back stronger than ever! While I don't have so much to write about what Lukas is eating every day, I discovered today that I have lots of opinions about BLW… Some of which mightn't interest the readership of our new.browne blog, so I thought I'd resurrect this thing. Meanwhile…

Aitch had written about going BLW on bottle-fed babies in her blog, and of course I can't help commenting. I had so much to say about the lack of breastfeeding support in the UK, that I'll leave post my rant about after this, but first things first.

She took up the subject because on the Dutch BLW guidelines page it says that BLW isn't recommended to formula-fed babies and that you should consult your health visitor before going BLW.

In my experience, when it comes to discussing BLW with your health visitor, they are most likely to advice you against it, regardless whether you breastfeed or not. My health visitor managed to convince me that BLW must've been the reason for my budding post-natal depression - what b*llocks.

It took me a couple of weeks to come to my senses though. Fair enough that giving him more solids helped me to overcome the exhaustion caused by the constant breastfeeding of the toddler-sized baby, but I should've known that the point we are now would've been as easily achieved with finger foods. In fact, Lukas eats more now that he's back to finger food. So much for the health visitor's advice then.

It'd be nice if you could as _someone_ about BLW and formula-feeding, though. Surely babies can learn to control their own feeding at 6 months too? I think the warning is just a precautionary measure more than anything else, but one that shouldn't be overlooked.

The whole idea might seem so revolutionary to some that maybe the note was necessary so that it wouldn't come across as totally irrational and irresponsible. I don't think so, but it's easy to see why someone might. Many people like to stick to “the way it's always been done” and for some new approaches like this are difficult to digest. And by this I don't mean only grannies and mother-in-laws! :)

Mothers who are actively search information about what's best for their babies are often more aware of their babies' wants and needs. Hence whoever is open-minded enough to try BLW, has probably already allowed their child to develop a more independent feeding rhythm.

I can't wait until research results are available and we have some more credible and reliable information about the method that I can back up my arguments with when discussing the topic with people I know.

No-one I talk to has even heard of baby-led weaning before I have brought it up. The only reason I know there are other people BLW is because of the Yahoo B-LW group and the likes. For the moment we just have to rely on peer support from the BLW online gang.