Toddler Eating

Baby Led Weaning is messy! Linnaeus covered in yams

I consider myself pretty lucky that I got a couple of kids who took to eating solid food really well & weren't too picky to start with. Baby Led Weaning was great fun & I kind of miss watching my wee ones awkwardly picking up chunks of veggies & smooshing them into their little mouths. I mean, at four & a half & one & a half they both still get food on their faces & clothes every meal & spill drinks all over the table fairly regularly. However, now it's not so much about how they eat, but what or if.

Linnaeus would eat pretty much anything but leafy foods as a baby & toddler. I'm going to assume that it was because he had trouble grinding it up, being new to molars & all. He had some issues with things like apple skins to start with, but I soon quit peeling everything & he figured it out. He's recently started eating salads, though the lettuce has to be accompanied by a lot of other stuff for him to eat it. Works for me, since I love salads full of nuts, fruit, seeds, eggs, bacon, cheese, veggies, croutons, & whatever else I think to throw in.

Baby Bronte's first Cheerios

Bronte was pretty adventurous to start with too, but has recently gone off bread type foods. She will eat whatever is on it, but leave most of the bread. She seems to see toast, a bun, a bagel, or a tortilla as more of a plate than a food item.

Bronte is also very anti fruit skin. The only way she'll eat apple is having bites of mine, off the core, after I've already eaten the skin. If I hand her a peeled slice or chunk of apple, she still won't eat it. Has to be mine.

Temperature is another thing. Bronte will accept a wider range here than Linnaeus--she loves peas straight out of the freezer, never complains at ice cream or smoothies. Linnaeus, on the other hand, won't tolerate anything much hotter than lukewarm & it took him a good year to stop making faces at how cold ice cream was.

The last thing I find weird about their eating habits is that they seem to alternate in terms of quantity. Some days, Bronte will eat twice as much as her brother. Other days he will eat more than I do & she'll have just a few bites & exclaim, "I done!"

Thankfully the pickiness isn't near the point where I worry about them getting scurvy or something. Overall their diet is fairly balanced, so I'm not going to get stressed out about it. I heard some great advice years ago: when it comes to toddler nutrition, focus on the big picture. Aim for a balance of healthy foods over a week, don't worry about getting in all the food groups (or whatever) at every single meal.

You tell me--did your kids go through an only goldfish crackers phase, or refuse to eat any particular type of food for months? Let me know in the comments... 

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Childhood Ain't What It Used To Be

This was our one day of winter in 2014.

When I read the topic for this week's Listicles--Things That Aren't the Same--on NorthwestMommy.com, I immediately thought of childhood. Lots of good things are the same between my childhood & my children's: being read lots of books, having a garden in the back yard & learning where food comes from, having two parents & an extended family they see fairly often, wearing cloth diapers.

However, even though they're both so little, but there are already so many things I've noticed that are different. Some are big & some are small. Some are only difference between me & them, but some are most likely different for you & your children too.

Here are the first ten that came to mind:

1. Cycling as transportation. I biked a lot as a kid, but it was a recreational pastime, not really transportation. My parents rarely biked at all--I'm not sure my dad even had one as an adult.
2. YouTube is our TV. We got rid of our TV when Linnaeus was a year old, right around the time when things switched from analog to digital. Rather than buy a new TV or a digital box for our hand-me-down TV we just ditched it. I don't miss it, because if I want to watch something, I can get pretty much any TV series online. I started subscribing to a lot of different YouTube channels a few years back, so that's what I watch more than TV series anyway.
3. Information on demand. Related to #2, my kids will grow up being able to get the answer to any trivia question within a minute or two. When I want to explain something, I can pull up a video online that shows it within moments. eBooks can be bought, downloaded for free or borrowed from the library in minutes. When I was a kid, real books were the only books. Encyclopedias & librarians were the only way to get the answer to some of the odd questions that come up during childhood.
4. Urban life. I grew up in the suburban areas of various small towns around BC until my teens, when we moved to a quiet suburb of North Vancouver. My kids will grow up in the city, with its at-times-heavy traffic, ethnic diversity, cafes, restaurants, recreation & community centres, & cultural amenities & events right at our doorstep.
5. Baby Led Weaning. My mom did what most people still do when introducing babies to solid food: mush. We're giving our kids actual solid food like steamed broccoli or carrots, roasted yams, pears, banana, etc. It is not only easier (no blending food, no shopping for expensive little jars of puree, no spoon feeding while my dinner gets cold) but it's more fun to watch a six-month-old explore food. If you're about to start giving solids to your child, I highly recommend you look into Baby Led Weaning.
6. Breastfeeding. Like most North American mothers of the 1970s, our moms were more likely to breastfeed than their parents, but a lot less likely than my generation. No shame, no blame--I turned out fine on formula after my mom was unsuccessful at getting breastfeeding to work. But my two kids are breastfed, Linnaeus until he was nearly two & a half, & we'll see when Bronte decides to wean.
7. Living car-free. I spent a good chunk of my little life in cars, driving from one part of town to another, or one side of the province to another. My kids ride in carshare vehicles around once a month. Linnaeus doesn't really understand the concept of car ownership--he used to just think that we could take any car that was parked in front of our house because we'd often use different vehicles in the car coop. Now he knows to look for the Modo logo on the door.
8. Snow-free winters. I don't know if I can blame global warming for this, as I lived the first 11 years of my life in a different climate zone that actually had what most Canadians would consider a winter. Hallowe'en costumes had to be big enough to accomodate snowsuits under them. I grew up making snowmen, snow forts cross country skiing in my back yard & crazy carpeting home from school. Here in Vancouver, there's so little of the stuff around that we don't bother with snow suits or snow boots, we just layer a lot under the rain gear. I have a child who was afraid to walk on snow the two or three days that he saw it during his second winter.
9. Environtmental friendliness. Is that even a term? Greenpeace had only been around for a few years when I was born & being green just wasn't much of a thing when I was little. My three-year-old son knows more about recycling, composting & organic food than I did in high school.
10. Pretend phones. The first time my son pretended to answer the phone with an object, it was a small, rectangular cracker. Because that's the shape & (relative) size of phones nowadays. When I was a kid, the closest object to a phone would have been a banana.

Now I turn it over to you: what are the major difference between your childhood & that of your kids? Do you share some of the differences in my list, or are those things the same for you? Let me know if the comments below!

Join in the fun yourself--enter the link to your list here (click on the Listicles button to the right), or just browse the many other entries on Northwest Mommy.

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What I'd do differently next time

After reading this post on Babble about things the writer would do differently with a second child, I started thinking about what my list might look like. I have to say, I thought about a lot of things carefully before doing them. I think this was because of a couple of things: having two years between trying to conceive, losing our first baby & Sprout's birth probably gave me more time to think about how I wanted to parent. Being older in the first place (nearly 35 when Sprout was born) probably helped too.

Baby bathtub was useful... like, three times.

However, there are still a few things I think I'll do differently this time around. Here's my list so far. Please don't hold me to it in future! ;)

1. Buy lots of gear. We tried to restrain ourselves & got a lot of loans/hand-me-downs, but this time we just don't need much of anything. Also, despite avoiding a lot of gadgets, we still ended up with quite a few things that were unnecessary.
2. Try to toilet train because of other factors than the child's readiness. I thought Sprout was almost there back in February, but the main reasons I was trying to train him is that he was going to daycare & he was getting diaper rashes a lot again. (cloth or disposable--it doesn't seem to matter, they cause problems) It didn't work. After a couple months, we backed off & he wasn't ready until about a month before his third birthday. Then he was really ready & it just happened all within a month: daytime control over pee & poo as well as nighttime dryness.
3. Not going back to work for nearly three years. I started to realize after two years of stay-at-home parenting that it was driving me crazy. When I was younger, I never really wanted to be a stay-at-home mom & after a few years of trying it, I can confirm that it's not really my thing. I think staying home after my daughter's birth for a year, maybe 18 months tops will be enough.
4. Worry so much about everything. I like to think I'm a fairly laid-back parent in a lot of ways, but there are still a lot of things I could relax about & hopefully I will with our daughter. I've already relaxed about what I'm eating & drinking during my pregnancy. Last time around I never had a drop of alcohol, would obsess over every ingredient in herbal teas & I never ate anything that was on the no-no list (deli meats, soft cheeses, hot dogs, etc). I'm still avoiding all these things, but I know that the amount of active ingredients in herbal tisanes is very unlikely to have any effect on my fetus, as is a sip or two of beer.

Baby Led Weaning in action

These are some things that I think worked well, so I want to do them just the same:

1. Baby Led Weaning. This was so much fun & easier than making purees. The book promised a child who is an 'adventurous eater' & Sprout has truly become that. We can feed him pretty much anything & he really loves a lot of healthy foods.
2. Cloth diapering. It is more work than using disposables, but not much. I feel proud that we only contributed a few garbage bins full of disposables to the landfill, rather than the house-sized pile it would have been if we hadn't used cloth. We have the laundry machines in our house & I have the time to wash the diapers, so it just makes sense for us to do it again. Also: with two kids in diapers for five to six years total, using mainly the same set of diapers, I estimate we'll save several thousand dollars.
3. Putting as much effort into breastfeeding as possible. This time around, if I have low supply issues again, I'm not sure I'll be able to do all the pumping, appointments, gear washing/sterilizing, etc that I did last time around. I'm trying to do as much research as I can & get myself prepared with supplements & a plan to get things started off as well as possible from day one.
4. The birth. I guess getting to the hospital a wee bit earlier would be a good idea (I was fighting the urge to push before we even got in the car) but otherwise, BC Women's nurses & my midwife gave us great care & I'd be really happy to have a repeat of the short, drug-free birth that I had with Sprout. I know I haven't got a lot of control over how it all goes, but I'll keep my fingers crossed!

How about you? If you have two or more kids, what did you decide to do (or end up doing) differently with subsequent children? Got any advice for us?

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10 Things You DON'T Need to Buy For Your Baby

Not only was Baby Led Weaning easy, it was FUN!

This week's Listicles topic was '10 Dumbest Purchases', which reminded me of all the things I thought I'd need for Sprout before he was born. The marketing gets pretty intense & unless you've got some practical advice from someone else who's been there, it's hard not to end up with a mountain of unnecessary baby gear. So I thought I'd spin the 10 Dumbest Purchases into 10 Things You DON'T Need To Buy For Your Baby. 

Some of the items are things we bought & didn't need, some we avoided buying due to good advice (generally from my sister--thanks, Wem!). Some of the things we were given as gifts or loaned--we really appreciate the thought behind it! Some of my list is also just things that made me say, "What the..?!?" when I saw them advertised. One further caveat--this list is obviously just my opinion & not meant as judgment of your shopping habits. You may have bought, used & loved many of these things & if they worked for you, that's fabulous! There's no one-size-fits-all baby gear list, of course.

1. Shoes for newborns. They can't walk, sit or even roll over yet. Why in the world would you try to keep shoes on their feet?
2. Jeans for newborns. Unless they are super-stretchy jegging-style jeans, I doubt having a thick denim waistband under a baby's back is all that comfortable. Plus, considering the frequency of diaper blowouts that happen at this stage, the jeans are likely to be on for about five minutes before being tossed in the laundry pile.
3. Bumbo or Jolly Jumper. It's really cute to see babies propped up in these long before they can sit or stand on their own. However, pushing babies into upright postures before they've developed the strength & coordination to do it on their own doesn't seem like a good idea. Also, they're kind of expensive.
4. Food mill or Baby Bullet. I had the former on my baby shower registry & by the time Sprout got to six months old, I'd discovered Baby Led Weaning, which involves absolutely no purees. Most babies are perfectly able to pick up chunks of steamed veggie or fruit or bread & stuff it in their mouth, then gum it & actually swallow some at six months. Sprout fed himself from day one, so we didn't need any of those special long-handled spoons, either.
5. Baby bathtub. We were loaned one of these & used it about three times. I found it a lot easier just to use the sink or the bathtub or just have Sprout in the bath with me.
6. Baby perfume. This one totally baffled me. Why in the world would you need to spray a baby with artificial scent?!? Babies naturally smell awesome already!
7. Padded car seat head support. We were loaned one of these too & the thing was too low for Sprout, so we just used rolled up blankets instead. Cheaper, much easier to customize & a the time that he needed it, he couldn't really move enough to dislodge them anyway.
8. Scratch mittens. I bought some of these in one of my prenatal mini shopping sprees. We used them a few times but Sprout got them off every time. Socks stay on better if needed--I didn't find Sprout scratched himself all that much anyway.
9. A big expensive high chair. My sister suggested we get a Fisher Price Healthy Care Booster Seat, which is a portable seat & tray that straps to practically any chair. It was under $40 & is adjustable enough to use for years. No cumbersome wide-legged high chair taking up a quarter of our kitchen--it's just strapped to one of our four kitchen chairs. We've also used it as restaurants & when travelling.
10. A change table. Considering how long you really use a change table--maybe two years, max, if you have a compliant child that will lie down for diaper changes?--it doesn't seem worth it to invest in one. With a relatively small bedroom for Sprout, we just didn't have room for it either. We just got him a low, wide dresser & put a change pad on top of it.

Did you buy or receive anything for your child that seemed like a good idea, but ended up collecting dust? Can you think of anything to add to my list?



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Sleep & Weaning

Gradually over the past few months, Sprout has stopped falling asleep while nursing. It used to be the fail proof way to get him down, but these days, unless he's really exhausted, it calms but doesn't knock him out. For a while this meant putting him in his crib awake, where he would alternate playing, babbling & crying for up to two hours. We'd take turns going in to calm him down several times before he finally succumbed to sleep.

Bit by bit the time needed to get Sprout to sleep has decreased. Most nights lately he has been wide awake when I lay him in his crib, but he he's gone to sleep in about 15 minutes with hardly a peep & no crying. Thankfully, his naps have evolved in a similar way, though it usually takes a little longer for him to fall asleep during the day than at night.

Food-iversary

Today is the anniversary of Sprout starting to eat solid food. Just like when I think of every other milestone, the time seems to have whipped past. After rejecting his high chair the first time we offered him solid food, probably because we hadn't put him in it ever before, Sprout started chowing down on his steamed broccoli florets when on Mama's lap. He was a lot less adept with the mango spears--probably too slippery.

Since that first day a year ago he's eaten so many things. Nowadays--barring the rare toddler pickyness episode--will eat whatever we're having. With the exceptions of citrus fruit & anything leafy, that is. He loves rice & beans with salsa, curry, sushi rolls, samosas, anything garlicky. One of the reasons we tried introducing solids via the Baby Led Weaning method was that it is supposed to make for a more adventurous eater--seems it was a success for us.

What I've learned about feeding Sprout in the past year:

• Put baby in the high chair a few times at dinner before you ever feed them anything. Getting them used to the seat seems to help them focus on the food later.
• Baby Led Weaning is way less work than spoon feeding purees, even if you don't make them yourself, you still have to shop for them.
• Babies have very sensitive taste buds but that doesn't mean they won't like spicy foods! 
• It was tempting to just throw all kinds of food at Sprout, rather than trying things one at a time & keeping track, but when he had horrible diaper rashes due to his diet, it was tricky to isolate what caused it. (watch for burn-like bum rashes the day after you've fed acidic foods like kiwi, raspberry, tomato--I know quite a few kids who seemed to react to those, at least for the first year or so)
• Special baby or toddler snacks are usually really low on food value--Mum Mums in particular are just sugar & starch, basically. Plus they're super expensive by weight. Oh, & they stick to EVERYTHING like wallpaper paste.
• Look in the 'adult food' aisles of the supermarket for portable snacks. (or better yet, make your own!) Just as convenient as the prepackaged toddler cereal bars or fruit snacks are Larabars, which are very minimally processed & has no unpronounceable ingredients.
• Every kid learns to do things at their own speed. For example, one suggestion in the Baby Led Weaning book was to provide 'dippers' of bread or fruit so baby can eat yogurt, etc on their own. We tried this nearly a year ago, I think, but Sprout only really got into dipping last week. His best friend, on the other hand, who's just a month older, has been dipping for nearly a year.
• No matter how you feed your baby, pieces of food or purees, at some point they are going to gag. It's a good idea to learn the difference between gagging & choking before you start solids. Gagging is a natural reflex that all babies have which helps them move food forward & away from their throat to prevent choking. (It's a safety mechanism & it's the reason why Baby Led Weaning works--the gag reflex is quite far forward in the mouth in six-month-olds, so they are actually less likely to choke on chunks of food than if you wait until nine months to introduce finger foods.) It looks scary, but is painless & not upsetting to babies (unless you freak out about it, which will scare them). Don't whip them out of the highchair & start the baby version of the Heimlich manoeuvre. Choking, I don't need to tell you, is dangerous, but thankfully rare.
• If your baby or toddler is refusing a food, it may not be the taste but the size, shape, texture or temperature that s/he doesn't like. For example, Sprout's gone through stages where he prefers apples whole, or sliced thinly, or in quarters or in little cubes. He also hated anything cold at first & still isn't a huge fan of ice cream or popsicles.

Hope some of this is helpful to some of you out there! Please let me know if you have any Baby-Led Weaning questions. I'm not an expert, but I learned a lot going through it with Sprout.

I put together a slide show of some of Sprout's 'culinary adventures' over the past year on YouTube. Enjoy!

Gear: The Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook

What is it?
The Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook, but Gill Rapely & Tracey Murkitt.
How does it work?
I'm sure you know how a cook book works, so I'll explain what the title means. Baby-led weaning is a way of introducing your child to solid food without purees. At about six months, babies are able to pick up food & feed themselves--there's no need to blend everything into mush & spoon feed them. In fact, starting with finger foods (chunks of steamed veggies, fingers of toast, etc) right away at six months is actually safer than waiting. Because their gag reflex is so far forward at that age, babies will push food out of their mouths before it gets anywhere near their throat if it's too big to swallow easily. By the time the gag reflex has moved further back, they've learned to manage food with their teeth & tongue, making them less likely to choke. 
Besides the safety issues, baby-led weaning is also so much easier: no pureeing, no spoon-feeding while you try no power struggles &  trying to get 'the airplane in the hangar'. The family can eat the same thing (with the usual exceptions like honey, nuts, etc for the first year) at the same time. Children introduced to solid foods this way are often more adventurous with food & less likely to be picky eaters.

Why is it good?

The book's full of information on baby-led weaning & 130 great, simple, nutritious recipes for the first few months (years?) of eating with baby. The food isn't baby food, it's food that everyone will like & babies can easily eat too.

How much does it cost?

Free if you borrow it from the library. $23 at Chapters.

Where can you get it?

The Vancouver Public Library has 14 copies. Amazon & Chapters sell it online.

Baby likes poutine

"Bucket bib"  from Superstore: $5.

Kidopotamus placemat: $15.

Seeing your toddler try to drink the gravy out of the poutine bowl: priceless.

Good to the last drop...

Parenting while sick

Today I woke up at 3:30am with what I now think is mild food poisoning. I won't get into the details, let's just say I've been relatively incapacitated since then. Oliver seems to have developed it too, slightly after I did. Thankfully, Sprouty seems fine & had a really long nap, giving us both time to rest. I feel somewhat better now, but far from well.

Baby-Led Weaning, Stage II: get your own damn snacks.

This is the first time I've been really sick since having Linnaeus. Poor Sprout is having a late lunch of toast & hummus, plus various toddler snacks from the boxes he ransacked while both parents have been too sick to entertain him. He seems a little concerned about us, as we're not acting normal. It's really hard to take care of nearly all of someone else's needs when you're sick. Gah. I can't imagine how hard this would be had I gotten sick in the next few weeks when Oli will be working again. At least there's two of us to deal with diapers, feedings & cuddles. I think the cuddling part is the worst thing. I'm a bit dizzy & it doesn't feel good to have weight on my belly, so I'm avoiding holding Sprout as much as I normally would. Poor little guy.

Besides feeling awful & still having to change stinky diapers, etc., there's the added worry that over-the-counter medications could harm Sprout via my breast milk. I was able to find one seemingly reputable website early this morning that said taking Gravol should be fine. The Gravol is probably the only reason I slept a few more hours after 3:30am. I know Tylenol will be okay too, but I've put it off, as the fever isn't too bad. Over the last few years, since my first pregnancy, I've gotten used to questioning everything that passes my lips & how it could affect my baby.

Another thing I'll add (sorry for the disjointedness... I don't have the energy to write well today) is that I'm not worried that he'll get the virus or bacteria that's making me sick via breastfeeding--there are very few illnesses that would harm him that way. (Any Moms out there who don't know about the Kellymom website? There is a ton of reliable information about breastfeeding, illness, drug safety, etc.)

The good news is, if my 'diagnosis' is correct & we do actually have food poisoning, we'll both be well quite soon.

Have you been in this situation yourself? How did you manage a baby/toddler/child while you were glued to the couch?

Wordless Wednesday

Whole peach = WIN

Wheat-free baking

When I started feeding Sprout solid food, I decided to wait until he was about a year to feed him wheat. Along with all the other things you're advised to wait on, like nuts, strawberries, shellfish, citrus, etc, this makes for a rather limited diet. Kind of annoying when doing baby-led weaning, as the whole point of that is not to have a totally separate set of food for the baby, but to feed the kid more or less what you're eating. These limitations have led me to discover the wonders of quinoa, millet, spelt & kamut. I'll definitely be eating more of those in the future, even when we don't 'have' to.

Today we went to Sprouty's friend Jack's first birthday party & the star of the show (other than little J) was the cake: gluten-free, made with beets & yams, among other ingredients. That may sound a bit odd, but it was a moist, sweet, yummy cake. Better than most birthday cakes I've eaten. Sprout loved it too. This cake inspired me to bake something for Sprout from the millet flour I bought a couple of days ago. So I made us some really simple baking powder biscuits. I added a touch more baking powder, but just substituted millet flour for wheat flour & added a bit of grated cheddar. I didn't add any xanthan gum (apparently that helps with binding, as millet lacks the gluten which helps wheat dough have that elastic quality & makes baked goods fluffier) or anything else to adapt the recipe.

Just a few minutes later, the biscuits were out of oven. They didn't rise at all, but they didn't flatten either. Very crumbly but really light & fluffy texture. Probably wouldn't travel well & they fall apart if you try to slice them in half to butter them. They taste a lot like goldfish crackers & Sprout gobbled them up. Looks like millet biscuits are a win!

Baby-led weaning at its worst?

Add caption

I love the independence Sprout has when he eats. More often than not, we can just sit together & eat a meal without too much intervention on my part. I marvel at the dexterity he's developed & really get a kick out of seeing him taste new things. However, it can be rather messy. Somehow, he got prune spread everywhere in a matter of minutes, including his hair, which usually escapes (mostly) goop-free.

Moments after this photo was taken, Sprout pulled off his too-long baby leggings & covered them with more prune goop too. 

Wordless Wednesday

Mad Skillz

I was thinking about all the things that Sprout has learned to do since starting solid food & came up with a list of them all, broken down into basic components. I wonder if he'd be able to do these things or be as good at them if we were spoon-feeding him purees? (Any mamas out there who are not doing BLW who can report back on that?)

Here's what I came up with:

• Picking up items & putting them into his mouth. (kind of cheating putting this on the list, as it was a prerequisite for starting solids, really)
• Pincer grip (e.g. being able to pick up peas between thumb & forefinger)
• Picking up slippery foods like avocado or mango
• Grabbing smaller chunks in his fist & opening his hand to get them into his mouth (seems like this would be easy, but babies can't open their fists & let go of things intentionally for a long time)
• Putting a spoon in his mouth (initially many spoonfuls went into his nose or ears, but nowadays he's quite accurate. Still mooshes the excess all over his lips & chin though)
• Moving food around in his mouth with his tongue (rather than just bringing it forward by gagging)
• Biting off pieces
• Chewing food into smaller bits (still working on this one, but it's coming along)
• Sucking on food/mushing it against his palate with his tongue to disintegrate it
• Swapping food from hand to hand
• Using a second hand to help get bigger items to his mouth
• Drinking from a cup (when held by a parent)
• Adapting to different textures & figuring out the appropriate 'technique' to use to eat each one

Still working on:

• Holding the cup himself
• Scooping up food himself with the spoon (at the moment we load it & hand it to him)
• Dipping food in sauce (he's starting to get this)
• Dealing with hard or chewy foods (he can manage soft stuff like overcooked broccoli, roasted yams, or crispy stuff that breaks down easily like rice cakes, dense fruit like pear & apple that take a little gnawing)

These days his main limitations are just that we haven't fed him certain foods yet, so he can't just eat what we're eating. We're waiting to introduce wheat, so far he's eating rice, millet, quinoa & barley. Oats are next. He's eating cheese & yogurt, but nothing unpasteurized. Nuts, shellfish, egg, citrus & other acidic fruits can wait until he's a year at least. Honey is also a no-no for a few months more, as is anything with added salt or sugar. So we're still not quite at the point where we just hand him chunks off our plate, but we'll be there in three or four months.

Breakfast!

Today we introduced a morning meal into the solid food  schedule. I started with dinner at six months, added lunch at seven months & breakfast at eight. We're going to have to really be on top of things with three meals a day to feed him, on top of five to six breastfeeds plus a bottle or two top-up. I kinda feel like all I do is feed him--I suspect it's going to add up to about four or five hours a day with breakfast in there. Just feeding this kid is a part-time job, to say nothing of preparing meals & cleaning him up afterward.

Food, glorious food!

I've been a bit negligent about updating this blog lately. Sorry, my dear readers! My excuse is that I've spent a whole lot of the last month feeding Sprout. We started him on solids a day or two after he was six months old. Despite adding one meal, then two into his daily breastfeeding 'routine', I'm not feeding him any less, in fact, I think he's breastfeeding more often, some days.

I can't remember where I heard about Baby Led Weaning, but it really sounded like a good idea to me. Once I read Gill Rapley & Tracey Murkett's book, I was convinced of the benefits. BLW is basically a fancy new term for how people used to introduce solid foods, before blenders & baby food mills, before pablum. We just give our child appropriate finger food & let him feed himself. No purees, no straining, no jars of baby food. He will eat as much as he needs to, just like he breastfeeds as much as he needs to. He'll also learn how to pick up the food with his fingers, manipulate it with one or both hands, then how to chew, bite & move it around in his mouth with his tongue. BLW follows the natural development of the child: when he was able to sit up straight on his own in a chair (& thus avoid things falling back into his throat the way they would if he were reclined), able to grab things then put them in his mouth & the tongue-thrust reflex was gone (so he wouldn't automatically push anything out that went in, the way all newborns do) he was ready to start eating.

When I mentioned appropriate foods, I meant pieces sized so that he can grab half & eat the other half, no really small things until later on & nothing so hard that it requires teeth to crunch up. So far we've fed Sprout:

• steamed broccoli spears
• mango slices
• steak
• steamed yams
• steamed carrot
• rice cereal
• mashed chickpeas
• rice cake chunks
• steamed cauliflower
• roasted potato wedges
• pear, both cooked & raw
• steamed sweet potatoes
• sauteed chicken breast
• Mum-mums
• apple, both cooked & raw
• plain yogurt
• banana
• avocado
• curried green pepper

With fruit & potatoes, I leave some of the skin on to make the pieces easier to grip. For softer things like avocado & yam, the easiest way for Sprout to eat it is to load up a spoon for him & then hand him the spoon. He grabs it & stuffs it into his mouth, occasionally taking the scenic route by way of his ear &/or cheek. That said, he actually isn't that messy when he eats. I have been meaning to make him a few sleeved bibs to cover up his clothes, but so far we've been managing by just rolling up his sleeves & putting a 'normal' bib on him.

Another aspect of BLW that I like is the emphasis on exploration & truly experiencing food. Theoretically, because Sprout is eating many different textures during a critical period of development, he'll be a more adventurous eater as an older child & even in adulthood. The fact that he's learning early how to move food around in his mouth will help prevent him from choking later too. I know from babysitting experience & other parents' stories that spoon feeding babies often involves a lot of power struggles & trying to trick the child into eating another mouthful. With BLW this doesn't really happen because the child controls their own food intake. Sprout has only reacted with glee to most food we offer him. His most negative reaction thus far has been indifference. When we gave him steak, he picked it up twice, sucked on it, then left it, preferring to mash up his yams & suck them off his fingers.

The skills he's learned in just a month of eating 'real' food are awesome: he has gotten much better at using his spoon; he can pick up different sizes & shapes of food, he's started to be able to bite pieces off; when he grabs food awkwardly & can't get it into his mouth, he will use his other hand to adjust the piece so he can bite or suck on it; he's actually starting to be able to drink a substantial amount of water out of a cup when I hold it for him. His pincer grip is coming along too: I think he'll be picking up cheerios & blueberries soon!

Leaps & bounds

A week ago, at the Ravensong baby group, I sat Sprout on the mat in front of my leg & he fell over. He was unable to sit up for more than five seconds without needing me to stabilize him. Today he sat up for three minutes on his own! I know this not because I was timing him, but because I filmed it. I'll spare you the "director's cut" & just post the end where he plays with his toy & then does a face plant into some tummy time. (Don't worry: he's on a thick blanket on a foam mat. No head injuries!)

What's really exciting to me is what the next developmental step is: solid food! Now that he can sit up fairly well, is reaching for things & bringing them to his mouth, he's ready to eat. I'm planning to try Baby Led Weaning, which is a fancy new term for a very old concept. He will pick up the food & eat it himself, no "brrrrr... here's the airplane, coming into the hangar" spoon-feeding. No purees, so he'll experience different textures & flavours, learning to manipulate the food in his mouth with his tongue. Theoretically this will encourage him to be more adventurous with food at a young age & when he's older too. Of course we're not going to be giving him granola or carrot sticks just yet, we'll stick to one food at a time & it'll be cooked & 'gummable'.
It'll take a few months before he's really eating significant quantities of food--the first while he'll just be playing & learning how to get it in his mouth, then how to get it to the back of his mouth & swallow it. I have high hopes that he'll basically be eating the same things we do within about six months.