Adventures in Baby-Led Weaning Part 5

I haven't posted about BLW in quite awhile, mainly because there's not much to talk about. But tonight I'm going to.

Back around Christmas, I stopped directly breastfeeding. Between Charlie biting me constantly and his poor latch causing open sores on my nipples, I had just had enough. I couldn't relax, and I wasn't enjoying it anymore. So, I started pumping and mixing what I pumped with whole milk and giving him that in addition to his food.

In the past couple of months, because I'm getting ready to go back to work, we've actually gotten him onto a type of schedule and it works out really well for us.

When he wakes up early in the morning (usually between 6-7 a.m.) he has about 5-6 oz of milk and goes back to bed. We get up for the day around 8-8:30 and at that time he has a couple more ounces of milk, half a banana and a cup of Minigo yogurt.

Lunch is usually between 11:30 and 12:30 (depending on his morning nap) and consists of about 4-6 oz of milk followed by sharing whatever I'm eating for lunch that day. Admittedly, our lunches aren't usually that great (but I try). It's usually things like hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, soup, macaroni and cheese (not KD, although he has had that too) or if I'm really lucky, something left over from supper the night before.

His afternoon snack is usually around 3-3:30 p.m. (again, depending on naps) and is usually another 4 or so ounces of milk along with a dish of applesauce or some canned fruit (such as peaches...he loves peaches...). If his nap is late and his snack ends up being late, I just give him the milk.

We all sit down for supper around 6:30ish every night. Charlie drinks another 4-6 oz of milk, and shares whatever we're having for supper. A typical supper meal for him will be about 5-10 bites of mashed potato or rice, some vegetables (we usually have either carrots or green/yellow beans...he will eat 5-10 bites) and 5-10 bites of whatever meat we're having. I never really count how many bites he eats. His favorites are pork and chicken. Pretty much immediately after supper is bedtime for Charlie...it's usually around 7 p.m. If he wakes in the evening (which he's been doing a lot of lately), sometimes I'll give him a couple ounces of milk, sometimes I won't.

He's not afraid of spicy stuff, either. He loves the Mexican and curry recipes on this blog. He might make a face the first time he tries something like that, but he has never turned down more.

He's been getting really, really good at feeding himself. I cut everything up into bite-sized pieces and let him feed it to himself. However, we learned the hard way that if we want him to eat (which we do) we can't put more than one piece of anything on his tray at one time, or 99% of it ends up on the floor. If we give him one piece at a time, he will eat most, if not all, of his meal. We also know when he's done: he starts playing with it and smushing it into his clothes. What a kid.

There are some things that I spoon-feed him: yogurt, mashed potatoes, soup, and applesauce. He likes to grab the spoon and help me do it, and I let him sometimes, but not all (depends on what it is he's eating and how much of a mess I have time to clean up). For instance, he fed himself his mashed potatoes last night, but I generally won't let him feed himself soup unless I know we have time for a bath (because he'll need it, especially if it's tomato or vegetable soup...it gets EVERYWHERE...).

I'm really, really happy that we went the BLW route for introducing solids to him, instead of going the pureed, jarred baby food route. I have a child that will eat pretty much anything (he doesn't like plain pasta, but if it's got cheese on it, he'll eat it) and who is a total foodie just like his parents. I also know that when I got back to work in a few short days (yikes!) and he starts spending most of his time with Nannie and Grampie, they won't (or shouldn't) run into any issues feeding him.

And that's pretty awesome.

Adventures in Baby-Led Weaning Part 4

So Charlie is now 7 months old. We've been doing baby-led weaning for about 5 weeks, and it's pretty cool how he definitely loves some things, definitely does not love others, and is on the fence about even more, ha ha.

We can honestly say he's our kid. Both Alex and I are huge meat eaters, and so is Charlie. He devours every piece of meat we give him. He's had the following:

Chicken
Pork (both ground pork in spaghetti sauce and pork chops)
Ham
Bacon
Beef (ground beef and steak/roast/stew)
Haddock
Scallops
Partridge

So far his favorite vegetable is carrots. He's tried peas, green beans, turnip and broccoli as well. He wasn't a fan of the green beans or peas, but he did eat some turnip and broccoli without spitting it all out, so I guess he likes them. He also will eat potatoes, but he makes faces whenever I give him some. LOL. He'd prefer them in the form of french fries, but he can't eat those all the time, ha ha!

He didn't like bananas when I had him try them, but he does love banana muffins, so I'll try him on banana again when I get groceries next. He also likes peaches, which makes him more like Alex than me (I hate peaches, I have always hated peaches...Mom even wrote it in my baby book). Soon we'll be trying apple, pineapple and maybe pears.

We gave him a bit of chocolate ice cream the other night. I wish I had been able to get his reaction on camera. It was hilarious. He's never had anything cold before, so the ice cream was a shock. He made this really "OMG BRAIN FREEZE!" face, but once he got used to it, he loved it. He also had a little bit of white cake and frosting last night and of course loved both.

I don't know if I'm going about it the wrong way or not, but when it comes to meat, I actually break off really small pieces and put them in his mouth myself right now. If I don't, he will put the entire thing in his mouth and I don't like that. I know he needs to learn how much he can fit in his mouth, but I figure we'll get there as he gets older, and we have lots of time. We're definitely in no rush, as I want him to still get most of his nutrients from breast milk.

It's definitely awesome watching him try new things and see the faces he makes when he tries them. He pretty much makes the same face for everything, but the only things he's really spit back out are the banana, the green beans and the peas. LOL.

Guess we must be doing something right. :)

Adventures in Baby-Led Weaning Part 3

I've been slack on the updates regarding the baby-led weaning, but we've been having fun with it. I try not to give him too much, just giving small tastes of different things every once in awhile. We've discovered that he loves arrowroot cookies, ham and bacon and bread (toasted or otherwise) provided it doesn't have crust. He'll eat carrot and mashed potato as well. He does not like tomato or banana. And of course, he loves chocolate pudding.

After eating some mashed potato at my parents' house last night:

Enjoying his very first taste of chocolate pudding, courtesy of Nannie, who thought it would be fun to let him try it. He *loved* it. We gave it to him on a regular spoon first, and when I took the spoon from him so we could give him the rest on his baby spoon, he actually cried.

Eating some ham tonight in his seat while Daddy and I ate supper. I love this seat so much. It straps onto a kitchen chair, is stable and secure and allows me to eat without having him in my lap. He loves the seat too, and was perfectly content to be sitting in it at the table with us while we ate.

Even though he doesn't like banana, I'm going to try giving him a bit of banana bread tomorrow morning and see if he likes it that way.

He's pretty good at coughing if food gets too far back in his throat. I will be happy when he learns to not put so much in his mouth at once though...when does that happen?

And that's it for this update. So far, the baby-led weaning is going well, and very enjoyable.

Adventures in Baby-Led Weaning Part 2

I decided, since Charlie is going to be six months old on Sunday, that a few days wasn't going to make any difference. So tonight, at supper time, we officially started baby-led weaning.

This was Charlie sitting in his bumbo on the kitchen table at my parents' house, just before supper tonight. He loves sitting with everybody at the table and gets quite upset if we don't let him.

I gave him a carrot and it took him awhile to decide to put it in his mouth (because he was watching Grampie eat the fish we were having and I think he wanted that instead!) but he eventually did, and actually took a bite off it. Dad tried to get a picture of him with the carrot in his mouth but this was the best he could do.

 Grampie decided to let him try some mashed potatoes too. I didn't mind, and Charlie ate some (he took it off Dad's fingers and put it in his mouth). He got more of it on him than he did in his mouth, but that's what this is all about, right?

After supper, I let him try a little bit of my raspberry jello as well. No pictures of that since it wasn't really much to talk about. All in all, with the faces he made, we're not sure he liked anything he tried, but I know he ate some, and the main thing is he's trying it and getting a feel for the textures and tastes of different foods. After all, food before one is just for fun, and he's still getting everything he needs from my breastmilk.

Adventures in Baby-Led Weaning Part 1

So I'm technically not starting the baby-led weaning until after September 18 when Charlie is 6 months old.

However, I couldn't resist a couple of things.

About a month ago, after watching him watch me eat orange jello more than once, I put a tiny bit of it on his lip to see what he'd do. He made SUCH a funny face when he tasted it, as if to say "Hey that didn't taste anything like I thought it would, Mama!"

And the other day, just to see what he would do, after I fed him, I gave him a single Ritz cracker. He held onto it and started sucking on it. You should have heard the happy squeals that were coming out of him! He loved it! I said "It's salty, isn't it?" and he laughed and laughed! I only let him suck on it for a couple of minutes, though, because I didn't want to get too carried away before the six-month mark.

But I'm thinking this baby-led weaning thing is going to be a breeze!

Baby-Led Weaning

Taking a break in the recipes briefly (I'm still trying to get caught up in posting them here) to talk about feeding my son.

Anybody who knows me, knows I'm exclusively breastfeeding my son. Meaning whatever I eat, he gets through my breast milk later on (anybody know how long it takes for the taste of what I eat to go into my milk?). I'm planning on breastfeeding exclusively (as in it's the only thing he's going to eat) until at least 6 months of age.

I am *not* planning on doing any type of cereals or purees or any of that, because I like the idea of baby-led weaning.

What is baby-led weaning? Well, in short it's where you give baby pieces of whatever you're eating and let them play around with it and try it. Is it messy? Sure. But so is feeding purees and cereals. Heck, so is breastfeeding, from time to time!

http://www.babyledweaning.com has some information if you'd like to know more.

I have a feeling that we're going to start pretty close to the six-month mark though. I'd like to wait longer, but I don't think he'll let me. The other night, I had him sitting on my lap while I was eating orange jello. He watched that spoon of jello go from the bowl to my mouth every single time. He was absolutely interested! For fun, I put the spoon towards his mouth to see what he'd do and he opened his mouth as if he expected me to put the spoon in and give him the jello!

I admit I was pretty tempted to give him a tiny bit, just to see what he thought of it, but I'm adamant that he not get any "real" food until he's officially six months old (and that won't be until September 18). I mean I freaked out on Alex when he put a bit of chocolate ice cream on Charlie's lip a few weeks ago. I don't want to be a hypocrite, ha ha!

Because this blog is about food, I'll probably include posts of our adventures in baby-led weaning when it happens as well.