Sack the chef!

On the whole, Baby Led Weaning has resulted in some good meals in our house. I've been cooking properly; we've had fewer ready meals or jarred sauces, and the fruit and veg content of our diets has shot up.

But this week we had an unmitigated disaster!
Saag Paneer, a supposedly mild curry from the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook.

I don't blame the cookbook by the way - we've had some fantastic meals from that. I think it's more likely to be because I substituted some spices for others as I didn't have everything and I didn't actually properly measure out quantities; but I still maintain that anything which looks like this is never going to be top of my favourite foods list:

Mmmmmm, yummy!!!
I haven't seen anything that green and runny since a newborn Bean had a tummy bug! (TMI? Sorry! :-))

To be fair, Baby Bean didn't bat an eyelid! While me and my other half eyed our plates with trepidation and a fast retreating appetite, she picked up handfuls of green slime and rice and started eating. Well, she picked up 3 handfuls, and then stopped. And looked disappointed. After all, normally green things are yummy in Bean's book - peas, green beans, broccoli and cucumber have been favourites from day 1. But this really, really wasn't!! It was grainy, bland (yet with a sort-of-spicy kick), and generally just a bit odd.

She picked at it a bit, looked around, asked for water, picked at it again. Then realised it wasn't going to get tasty and started throwing it on the floor! Couldn't blame her really - I would have done the same given half the chance! And it wasn't because she didn't want to eat because when I replaced it with plain rice she ate loads more, and demolished the blueberries in yoghurt that came afterwards.

So the moral of the story? Sometimes you might want to be Popeye and eat spinach because it's good for you. But if you think a meal might be a risky one, always have a back up ready, just in case you're right!

These times are sent to try us

The last few days feel like a bit of a set back.

On Sunday we had a brilliant food day with Sunday lunch at my Mum's (Baby Bean ate a bit of sausage, loads of veg and massive handfuls of buttery mash) and then a mild green Thai curry for tea. She ate really well then too and SLEPT ALL NIGHT! I know the two may not have been connected but they still added up to a Very Good Day. :-)

However, it would appear that Bean ate most of her week's food in one day, because since then she's just picked at her food.......and then thrown it.

This is Bean with tomato pasta - her all-time favourite. There are about 10 baby pasta shells on the tray. She's eaten maybe that many already. Usually she would eat a whole (baby) bowl of standard penne or fusilli, let alone mini shells. This week, none of what is on her tray here went into her mouth. The open mouth that you think is for her to put food into? That's actually the beginning of an almighty shriek!

Because this is how we've spent mealtimes over the last two days:
Put Bean into her chair and put her bib on.
Give Bean her food.
Bean picks it up quickly and eagerly and stuffs it into her mouth.
Bean chews.....stops.....SHRIEKS.......SHRIEKS again....eats a bit more.....SHRIEKS......throws stuff.....eats a bit.....SHRIEKS.....

You get the picture?

I'd think it was a get-me-down noise, but she keeps eating.
Maybe a my-teeth-hurt noise, but if I start singing/dancing/reading to her she's all smiles.
Maybe she's after attention, so I pay attention.
Maybe she thinks it's a game if I pay attention, so I applaud when she's quiet and studiously empty the dishwasher if she shrieks.

Ultimately it feels like mealtimes are becoming a battle so I clear it away and give her some fruit and yoghurt (which she eats happily, although in smaller quantities than normal) and then let her play while I tidy up.

So I'm not really sure what's going on at the moment! I'm thinking she's just not really that hungry at the moment and that, quite possibly, a couple of really good meals have quite genuinely given her enough calories for a few days (with some little top ups). But it's trying and confidence-shaking. And I have to admit to having spoon fed her dessert today (well half of it - the other half she licked off her fingers and tried to drink from the tub!!).

So my plan? Very small meals tomorrow. And when (if) the shrieking starts we will abandon ship and let her play. If she wants more food she'll let me know and if we achieve a happy mealtime we can count it as a successful plan.

Watch this space....

A trip down crockery lane

A few months ago we started giving Baby Bean her food in a bowl, suction-glued to her tray, and it seemed to work really well. She had all her food in front of her to choose from and she ate her way through whatever of it she wanted with minimal interference from us. It went so well we invested in loads of the bowls for the Tommee Tippee magic mat (having found the Tesco suction bowl failed to stick).

Bean aged 9months having devoured spaghetti bolognese

Then Baby Bean discovered said magic mat.......and thought it more interesting than the food!
At first it was quite funny - once all the food was gone we'd remove the bowl and she'd happily tug at the release flap. But soon she discovered the mat could be peeled off the tray and from that moment on meals were only in the bowl for a matter of minutes before either I tipped it out onto her tray and quickly removed everything, or she flung it out as the bowl AND mat got waved around!

So we abandoned crockery! Until recently.

Bean has just learnt to sort, so now I give her dried fruits and snacks in a tub and she gleefully sticks her hand in to pull them out. The art of doing that is perhaps even more important than the fact she goes on to eat the food! But at least when she gets bored of it and flings the tub the contents just bounce and roll (rather than splatter and stain)!

Main meals are still, generally, served in small amounts onto her tray (from her bowl :-) ). But now I give her the bowl once there's just a little bit left, and her little face lights up at the chance to hold the bowl and scoop things out. Yesterday I gave her her whole dessert (blueberries and yoghurt) in her bowl and the first thing she did was tip it up to let it all slither out onto her tray, just like I have normally done! Then she realised she got to keep the bowl and started putting it all back in.

She ate the lot. And we had one pleased-with-herself little girl.

 

BLW away from home

Letting my baby feed herself can be a challenge at home, even when surrounded with a good highchair, her favourite foods, clothes she can mess up and lots of water, cleaning cloths & antibac spray! But leave the sanctity of home ground and things can get very, very complicated...

We've just spent the weekend with the mother-in-law.

And we forgot the highchair.......

To be fair, my MIL did her best - she has a wooden highchair but it has no tray or straps, so she put it against the table with a scarf as a makeshift seatbelt, put a plastic apron on the table and got out her melamine tableware for Baby Bean. Who LOVED it - it was a proper Big Girl setting:

Unfortunately the novelty only lasted til halfway through dinner, when the fact that the plate could be lifted up and turned upside down became more fun. And then she discovered that there were effectively 3 tablecloths to be pulled off. And then all of a sudden there was food on every piece of (very old) furniture and all the trinkets that bedecked the kitchen.

And we had 12 of these meals to get through, each one lasting less and less time before Lucy decided to play with the crockery rather than eat what was in it.

So one day we decided to escape to the sanctuary of a family-friendly cafe/restaurant with a proper baby-friendly highchair. One where we could put her food within easy reach on a tray that couldn't be thrown around.

Could we find one? Nope! All of them had those wooden stacking ones without trays!!! Great for toddlers or spoon-fed babies. Rubbish beyond all rubbish-ness for a baby led weaned baby. And they look at you like you're a bit weird when you say that their highchair isn't any use for your baby. It certainly never occurred to me before we starting BLW that a highchair without a tray was such a useless thing. But they really are! When Bean first started weaning they weren't even safe for her - she wasn't high enough up to not hit her head on the edge of the table. But more than 50% of places use these chairs - someone needs to invent a travel tray that clips on. I've added it to my list of baby inventions already :-)

So, exhausted by our inability to find somewhere suitable to feed our baby, we gave up, bought an array of different foods - sandwiches, baby food (just in the hope she'd eat from a spoon), pasta, chips & peas - wiped a table down with an anti-bac wipe, pushed the annoyingly common highchair against the table, and let her make another mess.

She loved that too. :-)

 

Before

 



 

After!

 

 

 

Happy birthday! One year old

So it's been a little while since the last entry, and yet we don't actually seem to have come very far!! That in itself is probably one of the biggest challenges with BLW (for me, anyway).
All around us babies of the same age are dropping milk feeds and eating apparently vast quantities of food, while Baby Bean's breakfast this morning consisted of both boobs (guessing around 6-8oz) and 2 chewed slices of banana malt loaf.

Notice I say "chewed", not just 2 slices.

That would be because Bean still has this interesting/infuriating (delete as per my mood that day) habit of putting food in, chewing and making "mmmm this is yummy" noises, before pulling a face and pushing it back out again. Sometimes she puts it straight back in. Sometimes she puts an identical thing in. Sometimes she drops it over the edge. And sometimes she ejects the contents of her mouth because she's so eager to get the next handful in she doesn't have the time to swallow?!

To be fair, her first set of molars are making huge lumps in her gums so for the past 2 days she's been more about the milk than anything. Even her all-time favourite (tomato pasta) went more on the floor than in her mouth. But even the best of days see her consuming far more than the 500ml (18oz) of milk that is "recommended" for her age, and which apparently drops to 300ml as of yesterday. Because obviously the clock hitting midnight sparks a magic chain reaction within my baby's digestive system and brain development that goes "bing - less milk now please!"

To be honest, I don't mind. At 11 months her food intake doubled and she seems to have got the idea that food is food, as well as fun. The only people who seem to mind are EVERYONE ELSE! It's a bit of a pain in that she doesn't sleep as well as other babies who take less milk and more food (more because Bean's favourites are low-calorie fruits and veg) but I'm quite happy for her to move away from milk a few months later than traditionally weaned babies. But in the eyes of so many other people, this slower transition is just proof that BLW doesn't work.

They couldn't have it more wrong.

This slower transition proves the exact opposite - that Bean is moving onto solids at her own pace; at the pace her body is setting, and therefore at a pace that she is controlling.

So when I am the Mummy with the only baby who will eat coconut curry, Brussel sprouts and chooses grapes over chocolate, that is when I will smile smugly to myself and know I did the right thing.

Baby Bean, demonstrating how to hide food in her seat, the day before her first birthday:

 

PS. Rant over :-)