So been doing the BLW with Awen for nearly 5 months now and am loving it. She is just a sheer joy to watch eat and eats me outta house and home. We have just discovered this week she LOVES melon and last week was beetroot! Ive never seen owt like it!

But starting to wonder how t move on. For example when should I start thinking about plates? And anything good to start with? And cutlery? She gets spoonfed porridge at brekkie but otherwise hand feeds herself everything and is actually quite suspicious of anything off a spoon or fork, she tends to spit it back into her hand so she can look at it before eating it. Id start her off with us having a spoon each only its rare to spoonfeed her so guessing id have to do this at brekkie for the time being? Seems I cant remember much about this stage.

and regarding drinks I am fairly sure by this age c used to feed herslef milk from her bottle and juice from her cup. Im not sure if she was advanced or Awens a lazy bugger but she flat refuses to do it. even if i try to get her to put her hands on her cup or bottle she just drops them again and expects me to do it. its not a big deal really as I still get cuddles at milk time though her being able to do her juice would be nice but any idea when the rest of yours started doing this?

I think Jamie would do drinks by now. We just kept leaving them on the floor in non spill cups so he could get used to them. Erm think we'd introduced bowls by now but only for some things. We used them for pasta and things like that and just gave him spoons. He still tends to eat with his hands but he is starting to put the spoon in the bowl and to his mouth. His just not very good at getting food on it. I asked the hv about this when she came to do his check (the day before his first birthday) as I was a bit worried about the fact he couldn't do it and she said its really normal with blw babies for them not to be able to do it yet. We do sometimes feed Jamie now (and have done for a couple of months to get him used to it). Only normally a couple of spoonfulls a meal. Jamie can be quite suspicious of it too and likes to do it himself. If he does manage to get food on a spoon and a fork then he quite often takes it off and puts it in his mouth with his hands.

Sorry that was a bit of a ramble. Erm I guess my summary would be start putting things in a bow (which you may do but we used to put things on his mat) and just give her spoons (Jamie likes one for each hand but even then still picks things up a lot) and don't worry about it.

hmmm elijah was doing drinks right from weaning at 5.5months but he was DESPERATE to be in control (ahh like his mama) we did much more traditional than babyled weaning but i would think with plates and cutlery its much the same - don't expect them to be used properly and leave them lying around all the time.

eli took very well to cutlery at about 8 months, especially spoons etc, he was literally grabbing them off us and not letting us feed him by then so if he was hungry he had to pick the food up or use a spoon - if she sees C and you eating with cutlery she will want to know whats going on soon...i would just have them available (we used soft plastic spoons at first which went right down the throat and moved to metal baby cutlery at about a year, so far he still has 2 eyes).

i would highly highly recommend the tumtum bowls/plates, they are pricey but really practical, dont stain, dont scratch, dont smash, are very deep so easier to capture food and have 'scoop' areas to make it easier for little hands, they are also non-sleep and weighty.

i would just put any of her food on a plate then on her highchair tray, and put a couple of spoons and a cup of water/milk on there too and see what happens

Cheers everyone. Well i found a lightweight beaker with 2 handles at back of cupboard today (not many of our beakers have handles and i dont think she likes holding the body of a cup/bottle) and she groused about it at first til she worked out she could control it then leaned back on sofa and drank 6 oz without stopping!!! So gonna fnd the other one the same and use them for a while. Also gonna have to get some handles for her bottles i guess.

Also gave her soup for lunch today and put the bowl on her tray with a secon spoon. Had to load the spoon for her but then she loved aiming it at her mouth-which if im honest is about the most generous description of her self feeding. But hey she gave it a go

haha that's so cute ahh i remember the days of chucking elijah in the shower after he ate (err by 'days' i mean 'yesterday'). the tommee tippee freeflow cups are still our favourites, often on offer in tescos

That's great. Jamie only really likes ones with handles although we've just got beaker style ones with straws which he loves. Jamie can get it in his mouth but generally not with food on

I think tats the probs with her bottles she tries to hold them with closed fists like they are round handles so she cant grip it-either that or she just likes having a minion do it for her

lol its probably the slave factor. Jamie's a very independent thing but every so often when you offer him food he just opens his mouth and expects you to put it in and his worse with drink

Lol yeah she loves feeding herself but will often just sit there like a baby bird when i offer her some food