The end of our food diary

So finally we reach the last day of our food diary and it's a pretty uneventful one to be honest!

Breakfast - 1 segment of onion bagel, 3 cherry tomatoes and 1 piece of satsuma
Lunch - a small piece of ham, 1 cube of cheese, several multigrain hearts, a few blueberries and some bits of cake
Dinner - 2 spoonfuls of rice, 2 chewed bits of beef and 3 prawn crackers

So, what have I learnt? That not every day can be a good food day, but that Baby Bean does eat. Therefore, when she doesn't eat, it must be because she's not hungry enough to.

Sounds kinda obvious doesn't it! :-)

And yet, in the moment, when faced with a baby who won't eat the food in front of them, it's INCREDIBLY hard to believe. Unbelievably hard in fact. It's been a little easier since doing this diary, but there are still plenty of times when I find myself cajoling for just "one more mouthful" as if my baby isn't sensible enough to know she's still hungry.

Come on, silly Mummy! If Bean wanted to eat she would still be doing this:

5 days down...

So we're nearly at the end of the week and I'm starting to feel a bit better about Baby Bean's food intake. I know everything is in tiny quantities, but she's getting a lot of variety and it actually looks like quite a bit of food when you see it written down. So day 5 started fairly well:

Breakfast - half a lemon and raisin pancake, some grapes and about 5 multigrain cereal shapes.
Mid morning snack - multigrain hearts
Lunch - Ooops! Bean had kind of a looooooong nap :-) And sleep is WAY too precious to disturb for anything, even the chance to get some food down her. Besides, my baby eats worst when she's tired so there really is no point waking her up for a meal!

So the afternoon was spent with breastmilk being much in demand (I'd forgotten how often babies feed when on a liquid diet!).

Dinner - back on track with two of the best recipes in the BLW cookbook: lemon and tarragon chicken with pasta (plus peas, sweetcorn and cherry tomatoes), and quarter of an apple cooked in butter and cinnamon.

If you haven't come across the BLW cookbook, this is it. It has become my bible! And it has some great information in the front about why BLW is so good, just in case you need to convince any family members or childcare providers. :-)

On the 4th day...

....the baby ate quite well!

Breakfast was a fairly impressive quarter of an onion bagel with cream cheese, a handful of grapes and 2oz of fruit smoothie.

Lunch wasn't likely to be big as it was another day where she ate in a childcare situation, so she was far too preoccupied to eat. However, she still managed a quarter of a ham sandwich and a large handful of blueberries.

And despite this mountain of food, Bean still managed 3 potato wedges, two tablespoons of peas, carrots and sweetcorn, a tiny bit of pizza and half a pear!

It was enough food to be something of a "wtf?" moment. Perhaps, at 13months, we'd turned a corner and Bean's intake of food and my expectations had finally reached a happy consensus? What a lovely thought!

So today's internal discussion didn't centre so much around "was she eating enough" as "was a fruit smoothie a suitable food"? On the one hand, it's generally recommended that pure fruit juices should be watered down for kids; but on the other, fruit purees are considered ideal. And as a smoothie is literally just blended fruit, what is the difference between that and a puree? I decided there was no difference, and ever since Bean figured out how to do this:

...smoothies have been a great way to get fruit and liquid into her! (And yes, I know that's pure orange juice, but she stole it from me so it's baby-led!)

It's been brilliant actually. We haven't had a single hard poo since Bean discovered straws because her fluid intake has shot through the roof. It meant we've had to invest in a load more straw beakers as we only had one (bought along with a thousand other types when trying to find something she'd drink from), but it's also made things simpler when out and about if we've forgotten a cup for her.

This is the large Nuby one we've got, which is great as it has a cover for the straw. But we also have the smaller versions as they're easier to handle, as well as Tesco own-label insulated ones.

Day Three in the Food Diary Household...

So, we've had a good day and a mixed day, so I was pleased when breakfast suggested that Day Three would be another good day. But before I reveal what Baby Bean ate, she and I have a little confession to make - Bean's favourite breakfast food is Rice Krispies.

:o

I was so determined to steer clear of added sugars, and I managed it for the first 6months. But since Bean turned 1 year old I seem to have relaxed my rule a little and so, when she pointed and reached for my bowl of cereal, I let her try them. And in my joy at seeing her actually really WANT to eat something, and eat a significant amount of it, I've found myself allowing her this as a regular thing. On the downside, it has allowed refined sugar into her diet. But on the plus-side, it's not very much added sugar (it's just there for crisping the rice); it's made her much more interested in breakfast, and it sticks well to a spoon when wet so she's come on in leaps with using cutlery.

So that's our guilty secret, and I'm sharing it just in case some of you also feel like you break the BLW "rules." Hopefully I'm not the only one!

So, back to the diary....

Breakfast - several spoons of Rice Krispies, 1 slice of malt loaf with butter, 1 mini gingerbread man

Lunch (and this is where the day started to go downhill) - 2 pieces of pasta in a tomato sauce

2 pieces!!!! That was it!!! And tomato pasta is Bean's all-time absolute favourite food! No idea what happened there but Bean made it clear that she wasn't interested in anything more; so that was that. Mid-afternoon she therefore had a snack of some multigrain hearts and another gingerbread man.

Dinner - 2 more pieces of pasta (!) and then 5 strawberries and cream.

Clearly my cooking wasn't on a par with Kelloggs' that day! But it was still a day to note in our BLW journey because it was the very first time I used a food processor! I have owned it for over 10years but have never chopped, grated or blended a single thing in it until this day. So to mark this momentous occasion, here is the photographic evidence:

I was making a meal from Jamie Oliver's 30min recipe book - Pregnant Jools' Pasta. It took longer than 30min!

Food Diary (cont)

So Day One had gone well - Baby Bean had eaten a noticeable amount of food and I was feeling positive.

Then Day Two dawned.....

Breakfast (at home) - some blueberries and grapes, a quarter cup of milky cereal..... then the shrieking began so we stopped and went to play.

Mid-morning, because breakfast had been small, she had a few multigrain hearts as a snack. Perhaps a mistake, as lunch was all of a nibble on a tuna sandwich! Oh, plus LOTS of breastmilk!!

Dinner (at home) - 2 strips of chicken, a couple of green beans, 2 heaped dessert spoons of rice and red thai coconut curry sauce, and a bit of banana.

So something of a Mixed Food Day, although we do have another factor at play at lunchtime - I have started the SureStart Family Nurturing course and so Bean goes to the centre's crèche for a couple of hours. That was where she "ate" her lunch and I think, on the weighing scales of "Eating" vs "Exploring", the latter may just have won out. :-)

Still, at least dinner went well! I don't have any photos from that day to share I'm afraid, but instead I will plug a product - Organix "Cook with" red and green thai paste pots. They are really quick and easy and are basically like stir in sauces that are suitable for babies! We make ours with creamed coconut and they are so yummy I intend to keep using them long after Bean has grown up. I may need to borrow a baby to keep shopping in that aisle though......

Check out the paste pots here, as well as the other ones they do
http://www.organix.com/node/236909

Food Diary, part 1

Well, it's been a busy few weeks! I've not been blogging for a bit while I thought about some changes to the blog and in that time quite a bit has happened! We've hit some development milestones, got 4 more teeth, had aversions to favourite foods, eaten well, eaten poorly, and generally given me enough blog topics to keep this thing going for months!

But the thing that has been occupying me most has been whether Baby Bean (that's one of the changes, I shall now be referring to my LO by her nickname) is moving forwards in weaning; does she really eat as little as it seems, or is it actually not that bad.

So, to put my mind at rest and to give me and anyone reading this some kind of benchmark, I started a food diary. I kept it for 6 days and shall publish one day at a time.

So.....

Day One (the day of the BBQ)

Breakfast (at home) - a few grapes & blueberries, half an adult yoghurt pot, half a slice of malt loaf, a few sucks on some sesame bagel pieces.

Lunch (in a restaurant) - a few multigrain 'hearts', 4 potato skins, several penne with Bolognese, 2 small squares of pizza, half a slice of cucumber and some grated carrot, quarter of a scoop of ice cream.

Dinner (the BBQ) - 1 boiled potato, 2 cherry tomatoes, some pieces of beef burger and sausage, quarter of a corn on the cob.

Day One shall henceforth be known as A Good Food Day! :-)