Dear Baby, it’s not you, it’s us, but we want to break up, for good, love Mummy’s Boobs

At the end of May I realised that if I didn’t want to either tandem feed my toddler & newborn or cause lots of sadness to my toddler on baby’s arrival, that I needed to wean her fully off the boob some time before her little brother’s arrival. I have to make it clear that it’s not something I think anyone else shoulddo, I just personally don’t want to be feeding my 21 month old and a newborn because then I have no idea how I would wean the toddler. If I wasn’t pregnant I wouldn’t have minded the occasional comfort feed or night feed. Similarly I have no opinion on people who continue extended feeding, everything his just personal preference. 

Ok, anyway, I had hoped to have a few months, 3 at least before baby boy arrived but it didn’t work out. I was trying to wean her off, she was pretty much only having middle of the night feeds and occasional comforts at times of stress such as teething or if she hurt herself, so there wasn’t a lot to get rid of but those middle of the night ones were tough because when everyone needs to sleep I find I’m pretty happy to do almost anything to get her to sleep, even if I don’t want to be doing it, read breast feed, co sleep (in our bed or her toddler bed 😫), dance a jig whatever! So roll around my husband’s birthday in June and I had organised a weekend away, with Nanny babysitting. This was a final hurrah before we had 3 kids to contend with, a dirty weekend (7 months preggo 😂), and a chance to just hang out the two of us, so it was a big deal to me. I was pretty freaked out because I had only ever spent one night away from my littlest daughter and that was on our wedding night when she was 15 months old, so I didn’t know how I was going to cope with 2 nights, let alone how she would manage. I also had the added stress of not wanting her to be distraught without me (or my boobs) so I had this weekend as my focus for by baby and my boobs to break up! The weekend away was a surprise so I found additional difficulty in going through the mental strain alone, I couldn’t explain to my husband why I was so upset about everything, but that’s just an aside (basically I just made things harder for myself). 

My parenting style is probably best described as gentle attachment with a side order of practical mama, so I generally want to be careful and gentle but I am also realistic, and to coin a phrase, know that to make omelettes you have to break a few eggs. So I didn’t have time for her to simply decide she didn’t need the boob, I needed to steer her that way. I started with in the day time if she went for the boob, to laugh and say ‘no’ playfully and tickle her, telling her she was a big girl and didn’t need mummy milk, she laughed and was fine with that….RESULT! 

At night, after her bedtime or middle of the night bottles, if she went for the boob, I would just cover them with my hand a stroke her hair, cuddle her etc and try to distract her or gently say no. By the time we went away she had been off the boob for 11 days and nights straight and I was feeling super proud. She seemed totally fine. She did asks for it occasionally but showed no stress when she was guided away. That was about 6 weeks ago…. She has been mostly off the boob but there have been a few relapses. There was one morning where I slept in her room, she had a terrible night, she wanted the boob all night, I managed to settle her (eventually) without it but had virtually no sleep. In the morning my husband woke up to her and brought her to me, we cuddled and she went for the boob, I was too tired to argue, she fed and we slept together for about 2 or 3 hours, we needed the sleep more than I needed her to not be on the boob. I felt so conflicted after, I knew I needed to be kind to myself and at 7/8 months pregnant I really needed to sleep, and I was also glad to be able to provide comfort to my daughter as I felt that strange mixture of pride (in my strength) and guilt (in my refusal) at not providing what she was asking for, but I also felt like ultimately I wasn’t helping her because the baby is going to arrive soon and he will be the only one with access to the boobie bar and my biggest fear is causing her undue stress or making her resent her brother because he can have the boob and she can’t. Mother’s guilt seriously sucks! 
Since then she has probably has what I would call 2 or 3 “feeds” and then a couple of sneak attacks where she has snuck on (I’ll explain how that’s possible in a minute) but together we have gently ended it within a minute. The latest sneak attack was just a couple of days ago with baby due in a week. She tried to get them last night, but this time I anticipated it, so I was able to redirect rather than having to remove, but needless to say with 4 days until due date I am nervous about the impact his breastfeeding will have on her.

So how does a baby sneak on to your boob you might be wondering? Since we ended the boobie relationship, she developed a new habit of playing with my nipples as she drinks her milk or goes to sleep (for her daytime nap she has a story and a cuddle but no milk), or wants comfort – yes at the supermarket the hand goes down the top – lovely. I really don’t enjoy this nipple twiddling, especially with pregnant highly sensitive boobs, but I felt that I could go one step at a time and didn’t want to cut her off entirely – now I’m thinking cold turkey would have been better but hindsight is a wonderful thing! So in the night / early morning if she is in bed with me, which usually happens around 2-4 am, she will sometimes go to sleep no problem with the bottle but sometimes needs to fondle my to get to sleep, this is when the sneak attaches happen (and why I always sleep in a top now) but sometimes if it’s a vest / singlet or looser fit t-shirt she can still sneak a boob out and suddenly the unpleasant pinching rolling is a little mouth suckling and I’ve been snuck up on! 

So this is where I’m at, baby is going to be here any day now (hopefully) and my big girl is still desperately attached to my boobs. I feel like a total failure that I haven’t been able to wean her and at the same time that I am not just giving her the comfort that she is asking for. I am so nervous about the potential upset this is going to cause her, being denied the boob while watching her little brother on there (constantly if I remember rightly). It’s so late now that there isn’t much more I can do but continue what I have been doing which has been working, sort of, but not completely. And I also need a strategy to end the nipple twiddling which seriously is the worst! 

Feeling Insecure

I feel insecure all the time, it is one of my most annoying traits, but could it be one of my best too (?) as it might just push me to be better. I am frequently anxious that I should be doing more, differently, or better in pretty much all aspects of life including parenting. I worry that my food isn’t healthy enough, exciting enough and that it doesn’t have enough variety. I look at other instamums and instadads and think “wow that food looks delicious / interesting / beautifully arranged / creative / well lit (!) / on gorgeous plates / in stunning homes……” The list goes on. Then I look at my own food and think, “wow the light it TERRIBLE in my house, my food looks so bland, argh my child is eating the same 5 meals on rotation (!), why can’t I make elaborate dinosaur / under the sea / fairy tale pictures with toast?! Etc” basically I do myself a disservice by comparing myself to other people (who really I know nothing about), when really I should just compare myself to myself. Am I doing the best I can, with what I have? And I think that most of the time the answer is Yes. 

   
 Sometimes a Babybel, a rice cake and half a banana is a totally valid meal choice! But sometimes a made from scratch lasagna or maybe a fully organic, ancient grains recipe is on the table. Some days my breast fed baby really isn’t interested in food at all and will barely eat, managing on a few snacks and plenty of mummy feeds – this can lead to guilt and anxiousness too – but I try to tell myself she usually eats normally and sometimes I have days where I am more or less hungry than others, and My Food Baby is a person too, even if she is a very small one! 

  
I do wish that I was a little more adventurous, and sometimes I put this lack of adventure down to Mr My Food Baby having a bit of a bland palette – he will argue black is white that he doesn’t but he does – and so I avoid making too many things that I know he won’t enjoy. He works very hard and him coming home to a yummy dinner is as important to me as it is to him. 

How I try to combat the feeling of insecurity and anxiousness is to do something about it. Sounds easy, and it is – sort of. So I know that I am not a master creator, I will not be creating pieces that could be in the museum of modern art or in a Disney film, but I can make meals hat look inviting….to me at least. I can’t buy every single cool and awesome plate I want – actually sometimes I try (I really really tried to buy some of the ezpzfun mats – they are awesome!) but I can pick up things that are within my budget or physical location and work with those – I have a stack of multi coloured round plates from IKEA which were cheap, durable and actually look pretty great in pictures 👍🏻 I don’t have the time – or the inclination – with two little monsters / cuties (depending on the day) running around to make every single morsel from scratch, but I can make pancakes, my own pasta sauce, salad dressings, muffins etc, and I take a lot of pride in these things when I do. I am no Martha Stuart, I’m more of a Mumma S’trying. 

   
 I love nothing more than putting down plates of yummy, healthy, filling food in front of the people I love. And when I see them gobble up the food, or even throw it on the floor, I feel happy and proud. I don’t feel insecure or anxious because I know I have done a good job. So to all the ladies and gents out there feeding your little ones, try not to be anxious, sad, insecure or jealous of other peoples’ talents – you have your own talents and the fact that you are putting a meal down in front of a hungry little face proves that, whatever it may look like 😉 And sometimes it’s totally ok to take pictures on the floor because there’s just not enough clean bench space…

  
CJ x

My Food Baby is still being fed…. I promise

Wow so much food has been consumed, and thrown on the floor, since my last post, I feel a bit sheepish! We have had a crazy time at home with lots of completely un-food-related things going on coupled with a severely over-full iPhone which often point blank refuses to take pictures because it’s too full but also won’t let me upload and then delete them either (*pulls hair out!) As a result I have not been as conscientious as I have wanted to be with uploading pictures to Instagram, and I have really struggled to find time to write my blog. I have spent plenty of time thinking about it, and what I would write, but with a sick and teething baby thrown into the mix, who goes to sleep no problem but refuses to stay asleep, everything has been a little off-track. I have found a moment – right now she is watching Waybuloo (thank you cBeebies) and I am getting my blog on.

As I have finished filling you full of excuses and apologies I’ll get into what’s been filling My Food Baby.  Over the last four weeks I have been doing some experimental cooking with varying degrees of success;

– Sugar free apple and raisin muffins. I was pretty happy with these and I will post the recipe in the recipes section of the blog. They were quick and easy to make, they were healthy for the girls, easy to carry around and quite nutritious – the only downside was I did find them a little dry.

Ready for Miss Toddler

– Pizza making (the cheat version). I bought some yummy fresh pizza bases from our local Italian grocer; I covered them with layer of tinned tomato (I would usually use a homemade tomato sauce but this was an “I need a meal STAT” moment) and then handed them over to Miss Toddler. I gave her bowls filled with the topping, grated cheese, sliced red onion, sliced mushrooms, red pepper / capsicum, tinned sweet corn and turkey breast slices torn up. I let her cover both pizzas herself, just adding a little extra toppings around the edges once she had finished as she tended to keep everything pretty central. This was such a fun and easy task for a 27 month old, she really enjoyed it and it was clear that she felt a great sense of achievement, happily telling Daddy about how she made the pizzas, and that she ate all the cheese hahahaha!

Eating all the cheese!

This is a great way to do pizza as you can get lots of sneaky veggies in there through the sauce and the toppings too. It was extremely quick, particularly using the premade base – you could also use Lebanese flat breads or pitta breads. Miss Toddler and My Food Baby loved the pizza, and so did Mummy and Daddy so it was an all round win.

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Decorating with sweetcorn

The finished product

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– Chunky vegetable soup / stew. This was a successful almost-bare cupboard/fridge meal that My Food Baby and Mummy really enjoyed, Daddy was happy when I added chicken. The soup was made without any salt or stock (just water) but was still really tasty as I used plenty of onion, garlic and herbs. The soup had leeks, courgette / zucchini, sweet potato and mixed beans and everything was nice and chunky for baby to get a good hold on – and to give the vegetation food the feeling of substance.

– Pizza (again), mini pizzas for My Food Baby. The base was a cut out from the middle of a wholemeal tortilla, the sauce was homemade pasta sauce, and the toppings were a little grated cheese, some pear slices and some rocket. She liked this a lot, I think I should have made the pizza bigger. I think this is a great way to introduce interesting flavour combinations, such as the pear and rocket, with the safety of cheese and tomato!

Pancake Face

– I have also been experimenting with pancakes – these have all been very tasty, but for some reason I really struggle to get consistently attractive looking pancakes. I have used the basic 1 egg, 1 cup milk, 1 cup flour recipe and then added mashed ripe banana and sultanas for really yummy pancakes. When I make plain ones I add fruit after – I have found frozen fruit works quite well as if you get it out of the freezer when you start making the batter then it is partially defrosted in time to mash on to the warm pancakes – yum yum – and great for shopping day or if you haven’t got any soft fruits.

All of my cooking for baby is without the use of salt or sugar, and if I feel the food requires salt for us, I add it after I have taken out the girls’ portions or on mummy and daddy’s plates.

Here is a quick round up of what else have we been eating a lot of this last month….EGGS – (hard) boiled, scrambled and in omelettes, SWEET CORN – tinned and on the cob, RICE CAKES – with vegemite, peanut butter, avocado and cream cheese and SPAGHETTI ‘BOLOGNAISE’ – I make the sauce between once a week and once a fortnight, and I make plenty so it does at least three meals. Everybody loves mummy’s pasta sauce, except mummy when she’s trying to get it out of clothes!! This sauce is such a great meal base as I can add meat for the carnivores, Quorn mince or extra veggies for me, and it can also be used for making a yummy pizza topping (and any other dish which requires a tomato base).

This week I managed to buy a set of pretty shaped fondant cutters which I am enjoying playing with. These were $5 for a set of about 20 cutters from Aldi. I am very happy with them, and although they are not as good as the metal bento vegetable cutters, they were significantly cheaper, and just as fun, I think! I can’t cut very hard things, such as carrots, with much success but I have had fun with strawberries, kiwis, cheese, turkey slices and mushrooms already. Keep an eye on Instagram @myfoodbabyblog for some more creative food photos.

Do you regularly go to a few old, or new, favourites and sprinkle other foods in, or do you have a constantly changing repertoire? Do you have any super easy, yummy, healthy meals that I am missing in my routine? I would love to hear from you.

CJ x

Email: myfoodbabyblog@gmail.com

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Doing My Best

My Food Baby with her Boon divided plate full of fruit, natural yoghurt and chia seeds.

I am doing my best – this is my mantra. Like most parents I feel the daily dose of guilt – am I playing with My Food Baby enough, is she stimulated enough, having enough fun, cuddles, love, is she warm enough, is she too warm, is she tired, should I leave her to cry, should I comfort her? Argh! It seems like a day with a baby is chockfull of opportunities for parental guilt, and meal times are no exception. One of the wonderful things we can give our children is a healthy start in life and a balanced nutritious diet is vital. I know that when it comes to food, what is healthy is certainly debatable. Whether you are a carnivore, omnivore, vegetarian, vegan, fruitarian or anything in between, people have a wide range of views and I don’t know enough about them, or have the inclination, to debate their various merits.

In our house Mr. Food Baby is your true blue meat and three veg Aussie, I eat everything except meat (so I do eat fish/seafood), and Miss Toddler and My Food Baby eat everything. I like to think I eat (and cook) relatively healthy food, I don’t like to eat too much unhealthy stuff myself as it leaves me feeling crappy, but that’s not to say that I don’t love pizza, (hot) chips and chocolate, and not necessarily in moderation! I just prefer to eat them cooked in a particular way or from certain places. Mr. Food Baby would happily eat pizza 8 nights a week – haha! So it is down to me to make sure we don’t……

Zucchini & mushroom muffins

I have my own views on the type of food I prefer to buy, and this is where I get into my “I’m doing my best” mantra – we are a family of 4 on a single income, and so all organic is, for us, not a practical reality. If I had unlimited time (inclination) and money I would buy all organic and cook every single thing from scratch – but I don’t have or do either. I do the majority of my shopping at Aldi, I find that I can buy the most fresh food, and do the best cooking by spending my dollars there. Where there are organic options I buy them, where there aren’t I try not to panic.

Deadly Strawberry (marmite sandwich)

I say I try not to panic, but it doesn’t stop me worrying, agonising over whether I am doing my daughter serious harm in giving her non-organic strawberries. She LOVES strawberries, if you follow @myfoodbabyblog on Instagram, you will see she regularly has a strawberry in one hand with whatever else she is eating in the other. I have read that strawberries are one of the deadly dozen – ok so in all fairness I think it is actually dirty dozen but my guilty mummy brain reads, thinks, remember, agonizes over deadly! The dirty dozen are 12 fruits and veggies that have the largest amount of pesticides and chemical associated with their production. So this is my predicament – I currently don’t have access to organic strawberries – I feed My Food Baby lots of strawberries – am I a terrible person? Am I doing serious damage to my daughter? Or will she be completely fine? I am sure that there are people that will tell me that I am doing as much damage as putting bleach in her sippy cup and this scares me a little, but then I never had organic strawberries and I have all the right numbers of eyes, fingers, toes etc, and am a relatively healthy person, so for now I will continue with my deadly strawberries, and live with the gut twisting guilt when it washes over me.

When it comes to buying chicken and eggs I would never buy a product that wasn’t free range and when I buy something that contains egg, such a mayonnaise, I make sure the ingredients state free-range egg. I know that people will say that free range is not good enough, or it can be manipulated etc, but this is the best I can do, and I am strict on it. If “farm fresh” is the only option, then they don’t get into the trolley (or more usually, underneath the pram) and we go without. When it comes to meat, I buy the best available option, outdoor reared, free range, organic, that is within my budget. I am a big one for buying when things are on special offer, or when they are reduced and I will change that night’s meal to fit that in if it doesn’t affect whatever else is due to be cooked or go out of date at home.

My Food Baby eating turkey breast slices, fresh tomatoes and covered in bolognaise sauce

I try to avoid processed meats, but then I do waver on this as I have started buying turkey breast slices for My Food Baby and her daddy’s lunches. I am torn on these. On the one hand they are probably not very high welfare, so this concerns me, and they are processed so they are somewhat unnatural, but on the other hand, they are a lean protein so they fall into the healthy (depending on your stand) category, they are easy and affordable and together these three positives override my doubt, but don’t assuage my guilt. Again, argh!

I buy, what I consider to be, very little processed food, but my condiment shelf would probably disagree. I take the point of view that for example tomato sauce / ketchup is fine, you know what you’re getting and you use it accordingly, but with jars of sauces like pasta sauce, all the hidden salt, sugar and whatever other crap goes into it can be a bit of a trick – you see the picture on the front with lovely tomatoes and other nice veggies and you think it’s lovely and healthy, but sometimes you’d be better of mixing a snickers bar into your spaghetti. However that is not to say that in a pinch I would never ever buy a jar of pasta sauce – it’s unlikely, but it is conceivable. Baked beans is another contentious one for me, I am a big fan – must be the British in me! But I worry about all the salt and sugar in them for baby, I know they have the salt/sugar reduced ones but the levels were still significantly high for me to feel that the ridiculous price of them was not worth the miniscule benefit….I plan to make my own, apparently it’s really easy, but as with so many things I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Last weekend I gave My Food Baby a teaspoon’s worth of regular full salt, full sugar Heinz baked beans when we had a yummy Sunday breakfast with eggs and mushrooms and hash browns. I’m not sure if she actually ate any, or if they went on her clothes, the floor, or in the dog, but I gave them to her. I felt bad, and guilty and ok about it at all at the same time. I don’t put any salt in my cooking, I avoid anything that could have a high salt content, like soy or fish sauce, and so I think, and hope that the odd time she gets something like a small amount of regular baked beans she will survive and her kidneys won’t shrivel up like raisins.

Mummy is still in pyjamas but My Food Baby is clean, fed and dressed – winning!

I think feeding My Food Baby is an excellent metaphor for how I feel about bringing her up in general. I am naturally a highly anxious person who is regularly engulfed by guilt, for real or imagined mothering transgressions. I am very lucky that Mr. Food Baby regularly tells me that he thinks I am a wonderful mother, which means the world to me, and helps soothe my anxious mind. I try to do the very best I can to be a giving, warm, engaging and loving mother, I want to ensure my daughter is safe, happy and learning. I do my very best, most of the time, with the resources I have available – sometimes, most of the time this means good fresh food, cooked from scratch sourced from the best possible origin, and sometimes toast is a perfectly acceptable meal. To all of the mummies and daddies out there, raising babies, doing the best you can, trying not to drown in a sea of self-doubt and guilt, remember you are doing a wonderful job and you’re not alone!

My Food Baby watching Charlie & Lola while mummy chats to her friend on the phone – Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do

Hello world!

Hello world! Welcome to our blog to accompany the @myfoodbabyblog Instagram account.  I hope to give a little more insight – in case you’re interested – into how and why we do what we do, what works, what doesn’t and anything else you might like to know about our baby led weaning adventure.

I am Mummy to My Food Baby who is (almost) 9 months old and step-mummy to Miss Toddler who is 2 years old.  Miss Toddler was weaned the traditional way by her mummy and Daddy and I got to be a part of that exciting adventure.  However when My Food Baby came along, the reading I had done left me keen to try the baby led weaning route.  I believe it is slightly more common in the UK, where I am originally from, than Australia where we live, and so maybe that had something to do with it, or maybe I just (really really) liked the idea of not having to prepare and travel around with everything necessary for feeding purees! But in all honesty there were a variety of reasons which really piqued my interest the main ones were;

1. Baby led weaning helps develop / improve baby’s fine motor skills and is said to be a benefit when it comes to developing their speech.
2. It is easier for mummy (or daddy) – no preparation and storage of purees – and enables baby to be a part of family meal times from the get go.
3. It is said to encourage a wider range of foods, tastes and textures, and can lead to a more varied palate (I must say here that Miss Toddler was traditionally weaned and has a varied palate so it is not to say puree fed babies automatically equals children with a bland tastes!)
4. Did I mention it would be easier for me?!

I was also of the opinion that if it didn’t seem to be working in any way that it wasn’t a decision that I was unable to back out of, and I could just start pureeing / mashing food so it seemed that there were no obvious disadvantages to going ahead.  When I explained to My Food Baby’s Daddy however, I came up against a bit of opposition to my wonderful, can’t fault it, plan.  He was against it, and not just a little, but quite resolutely.  His objections included;

1. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
2. She might choke.
3. He worried that I was just trying to be different.

But he is a good (smart) man, and as with many things he said that although he wasn’t really onboard, ultimately he would go with what I wanted.

I did, of course, take his concerns into consideration and this is what I thought – I totally disagreed with the ‘just go with the norm’ argument, just because something is, doesn’t mean it is the best.  I too worried that she might choke, but I had read that breast fed babies may find baby led weaning easier than bottle fed babies as they are used to working their mouths a little harder for their food and might be better able to work the food backwards with their tongue.  I also felt fairly confident that the first foods wouldn’t provide too much of a risk due to being so completely soft, and finally I read A LOT of blogs, forums etc and they all seemed to say the same thing, yes the baby will gag but as long as they are making a noise they are not choking, because choking is silent – and then they get used to and better at eating and they stop gagging so much.  If everyone was saying it, I tended to believe it was probably true.

And so….at about a week before she was 6 months old I was cooking and I thought  today is the day, I am going to give her a bit of avocado.  Her Daddy and I watched with baited breath as she tasted her first taste of food, and then gag on it, and then throw it up.  Ok that’s not exactly how it happened she ate a little, seemed to be enjoying it, ate a little more and then gagged and coughed a bit and it made her regurgitate a bit, but once she did she carried on eating, she was completely unfazed by it and I felt like it was a complete success.  Her Daddy thought that he had won the argument, baby led weaning was a bust, she had choked and vomited and it was categorically not safe.  I disagreed.  I carried on.

The next day I got an unexpected gift, the most disgusting nasally offensive poo that ever graced the earth.  Ok, I might be exaggerating a little, but it was gross, and unexpected.  Breast fed baby poos are generally pretty inoffensive, there is little waste and so they aren’t very stinky – or at least that has been my experience.  And boy, one tiny nibble of avocado goes through her system and YUK!  It was almost enough to make me consider exclusively breast feeding for the next 10 or so years, or until she is fully potty trained at least….

Over the next month we gave her different things to try, not every day at first, and definitely not in any type of meal regime.  I was under the impression that it was an introduction to food and so I wasn’t concerned about enforcing a feeding structure yet.  We found that she LOVED cucumber and this also coincided with a period of teething so a bit of cold cucumber was a great distraction and soother in one.  At about 7 months she had progressed to having breakfast and dinner every day, and by 8 months she was having lunch as well.  There was no reason for this other than with her feeding and napping, lunch just seemed to get missed.  At this point I should point out that My Food Baby is a breast fed baby, and she is demand fed.  She does have a regular structure to her feeds, but they are not set in stone and if she seems hungry she is offered the boob….. Or now she is offered a snack or the boob depending on what she has had last, and the time of day etc.

For the sake of clarity I should point out a couple of issues that I have found with baby led weaning.  For me personally, they have not been significantly negative to put me off, but I know that for some people they are, and I completely understand that.

1. Baby led weaning should be called ‘extremely messy baby throws all the food on the floor’ weaning.  Food goes everywhere, in their lap, in their hair, in their eyes, in the dog(!), in their clothes and very occasionally in their mouth.  For anyone with a mess aversion, this is not for you, and I mean that sincerely and kindly.
2. It is very wasteful because of point 1.  It can be demoralising, upsetting, frustrating to see your $10 raspberries squashed in the high-chair, on the floor, in the dog….
3. You worry that your baby is not getting food because of…. well point 1.  Sometimes it can be hard to tell how much they have really eaten and whether they have only eaten rice cakes at every meal for the last two weeks and maybe they aren’t getting any potassium, iron, protein etc etc…. I think this is one of the big ones that really gets to lots of parents as with purees you know each mouthful is ‘balanced’ and you know exactly how much they have eaten.
4. Choking.  My Food Baby has never choked on anything, she has however gagged may times.  The gagging was more prevalent early on as she was learning how to effectively move food around her mouth, and as she tried new textures.  I was expecting it, and after a couple of times of seeing her gag and be completely fine and happy I became quite relaxed with the gagging.  I always keep in mind if she is making a noise she is fine, if she is silent then she is choking and I need to (panic) jump into action!  But as I said, she has never choked, yet.

For me the mess and the waste do bother me but not enough to go to purees.  I also worry whether she is eating enough of the different types of food, but they do get better at getting the food in their mouth quite quickly (it’s surprising really how effective she is) and as she is still breast fed, and still feeds regularly, I feel confident that she should be getting everything she needs nutritionally anyway (I think this would be the same with a formula fed baby).

And so here we are, she is almost 9 months old, she loves eating, she is pretty good at it, and I feel very comfortable with my choice to go down the blw route.  I love that we can all eat together as a family, if we go out and I am stuck without snacks or meals I can relatively easily get food for baby, and My Food Baby and Miss Toddler can share snacks, so basically life is easier, if a little (a lot) messier.

CJ x

Email: myfoodbabyblog@gmail.com

Twitter: @myfoodbabyblog
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