Wake Up Millie, I Think I’ve Got Some Food to Give to You

We are now well into weaning and its so great to see Millie’s enthusiasm for trying new foods. Dare you try have something that she’s not allowed and she looks most perturbed at your cheek!

One of the problems I am finding though, and I think I remember this with Callum too, is trying to provide the opportunities for Millie to try things. I get so excited when I buy a food ingredient or make something Millie hasn’t tried yet – I’m being brave and looking for foods I wouldn’t normally buy. Its a great opportunity for us all to try something new, including Callum. So I’ll plan a meal or keep it waiting for the right time to try.

To increase the chances of BLW being successful your baby should eat when you are eating or at least with someone else other than them eating. In this day and age, its not always easy to eat dinners as a family and Stuart and I do like to eat together in the evening so I like Millie to eat when Callum eats for her ‘evening’ meal. Then during the day, I usually eat my breakfast and lunch at the same time as Callum and Millie.

However, it is typical that as we approach lunch or evening meal time for Callum, it will coincide with Millie’s nap time. Millie doesn’t have a routine for napping, it suits us better that she wakes when she wants and then naps when she wants and where-ever is convenient. Millie wakes at a different time each day and her naps last different amounts of times. She will wake between 6.30 and 7.30am. She is awake for between 1.5-2 hours and then will sleep from anywhere between 45minutes to 2.5 hours. Because her nap routine is unpredictable, it isn’t easy for me to plan a dinner time. I try to keep Callum’s dinner time the same time each evening (between 4.30 and 5) and hope that Millie is able to join in at some point. He takes so long to eat that sometimes it works for Callum to start dinner & Millie to join when she wakes up.

Then  on Thursdays and Fridays, Callum has dinner at nursery so she often doesn’t get a dinner on those days.

At the moment, as far as Millie is concerned, she is just playing and not actually consuming food. She does not yet know that real food can satisfy her hunger and milk is the main source of food for her. Therefore, it doesn’t matter in the early days if she misses meals. But, to give her the most opportunities to learn about food and how to eat, the more she joins us when eating the better. As I’ve said before, Millie is much more interested in the food when it is on my plate rather than presented to her.

Despite all this, we’ve tried lots more new foods this past week.

Strawberries – liked
Raspberries – didn’t like and I amazing managed to salvage her top & trousers which I thought were destroyed with juice stains. Vanish soap I love you!
Parsnip – liked
Beef – liked
Smoked Salmon – tried a couple of times but pulled disgusted face & discarded
Avocado – liked
Lasagne – I preloaded the spoon for her but let her play with her hands too. She was keen to start with but then was more interested in the bowl
Spaghetti Bolognese – played with but didn’t get much to her mouth
Pitta bread – liked
Apple rice cakes – liked
Cabbage – liked
Asparagus – loved
Carrot Stick crisp – liked
Bread dipped in tomato & basil soup – didn’t like

We had tried mash before but without much luck. Millie seems to prefer the solid food to the mush. Its probably nicer on her teething gums. However, I tried mash again and she showed more interest this time…until she just wanted her spoon back minus the mash and did this to dispatch of the mash.

In terms of progress, nappy watch is still on and there are still flecks of toast and wheatabix and evidence of the odd thing getting through…like asparagus – that was a pleasant nappy!!!

But the majority of food still gets gagged and coughed out of her mouth. Even the stuff she likes above she still loses interest in pretty quickly so she’ll suck on a rice cake until about a quarter of it has dissolved then will discard it.

She will often prefer the hard plastic lids, bowls, spoons to the actual food if they are within reach.

                

She is getting better at getting food and even loaded spoons to her mouth but there is still a lot of room for improvement. She will often study what is on a spoon and grab at the contents with her fingers. We’re in no hurry, she’ll get there in the end and in the meantime we are having fun with it! Which is the important thing!

BLW: Trust Your Baby, Gag vs Choke

Its been over 2 weeks now since we started BLW and progress is slow but there definitely is progress.

One of the things it is difficult to get used to in the early days of BLW is trusting your child & your child’s body to do what’s right. By this, I’m talking about the risk of choking. They say as long as your baby is sitting upright and their necks are strong enough, their gag reflex should do all the work and the risk of choking is, theoretically, lower than spoon-feeding.

Being as this is my second child, it is much easier this time, reassured by the fact that Callum never choked. It was frightening the first day I gave Callum toast for breakfast. It was one of his first introductions to food and he really gagged on it and threw up an entire bottle of milk with milk coming through his nose. I fought the urge to run to him and pick him up etc, I just put on a smile said “oh dear” and…..er….took a photo! (Only after I knew he was ok! You’re saved, I’ve not got the photo which came after on this computer but below is the one just before!!)

                     
     Callum eating toast                                                                                 Millie eating toast

I was a little hesitant to offer Millie toast at first, but she gagged and puked on banana and other stuff so I plucked up the courage to offer it to her and she was absolutely fine, no puke! In fact, its one of her favourite foods that she’ll happily gum for ages. There is even evidence in that fabulous game we now play “Identify that Food in the Poop” (yes, we know how to have fun in this house!) that she has swallowed some of the toast – tell tale black/brown flecks.

If you do trust your little ones and they are safely positioned, it is highly probable that they will gag in the first few days/weeks. Their gag reflexes are so sensitive and they also have a tongue-thrust reflex which pushes objects to the front of their mouth. Amazing what our human bodies do and that babies are born with these reflexes to protect them from choking. As babies learn to have more control over their tongue, the tongue-thrust reflex will relax, soften, whatever the correct terminology is. I’m already witnessing an improvement with Millie’s tongue control skills. She wont always just let the food fall out of her mouth or her tongue doesn’t always push it out, sometimes she manages to purposefully control her tongue to push the food back and swallow. There may be a bit of a tongue-food tussle first but, occasionally, Millie will win.

It really helped to be told that gagging is a natural reflex action to having food in their mouth….and therefore it is also natural for them to be sick. Also that if they are coughing, they are breathing and therefore they are NOT choking. If they are coughing or gagging, do not pick them up and hit them on the back, let their mouths and bodies clear the food on its own. If you are unsure, Google the difference between gagging and choking. There are some YouTube vids of babies gagging to show you what’s ok. This site was also quite helpful.

This all said, I would also advise any parent, when they are approaching the weaning stage, to do a child’s First Aid course or to remind themselves of what action to take if you’ve already done one, just for peace of mind, whether you are puréeing or doing BLW. Saying they are unlikely to choke is different to saying they wont choke and it is better to be safe and to know what to do just in case. It will also help you to relax about it and just trust them to get on with it.

Now back to Millie – strangely, she does seem to be a bit slower to grasp feeding/weaning/eating than Callum. Callum was able to use his doidy cup a lot earlier than Millie – Millie’s hand control is still a bit erratic so she just throws the water over herself. Same with a shot glass (so wrong but works….don’t worry, it only contains water!!). Even in her TommieTippee Cup she picks it up sideways and bites the edge. She does love water though. The first few times she was offered water, it cascaded out of her mouth in a waterfall affect but she’d grab for more and more. Now she manages to swallow.

This week, new stuff I’ve tried:

Butternut Squash Risotto – great fun to play with but not much consuming
Houmous – not really a fan and doesn’t understand dipping yet
Chips – I know, naughty, but once in a while wont hurt. Unsurprisingly she liked it!
Celery – had a really good suck on that
Prawn – ignored
Roast carrot (may have tried that last week) – not fussed
Roast onion – thought she liked it at first but then couldn’t get it out of her mouth quick enough
Yorkshire Pud – liked

A firm favourite which she had previously tried is definitely red pepper.

One thing I’m really enjoying is my renewed enthusiasm to cook real homemade meals again for Callum (and Millie). I had got a bit lazy with my having to cook 2 meals a day firstly for Callum and then for Stuart and I later. But now I’m making homemade versions of the favourites like chicken nuggets (and homemade chips) and also things like vegetable croquettes, the butternut squash risotto, beef casseroles. I’ve a fish pie pack in the freezer at the ready and looking forward to making fish fingers and/or fish cakes again. So easy to make but haven’t really done it since Callum was little (well, a baby/toddler, he is still little).

I did make lots of dinners from scratch and we did eat fresh food regularly but where I’d sometimes reach for the premade frozen fish fingers or nuggets, I’m now making my own and trying new recipes again.

This has stretched to when we have guests come and stay too, I’m wanting to cook new things rather than stick to the old faithfuls, shop bought or take-away.

Now to finish on a couple more photos of Millie for you:

1. Pear; 2a. Bite; 2b. Spit out; 2c. Bite

3. Enjoying a Red Pepper from a prawn salad

4. Mmmm like this asparagus in my roast dinner

BLW–And We’re Off!

If you read my previous post, Why I Can’t Wait for Weaning, you’d know how excited I was for Millie to turn 6 months so we could start Baby-Led Weaning. We did Baby-Led Weaning with Callum and I couldn’t wait to try it again with Millie. The date she turned 6 months was Wednesday, 20 February. I thought it couldn’t hurt to go by 6 months in weeks (24 weeks) and I assumed that would be sooner than the Wednesday, so started ‘officially’ on the Saturday before.

For the previous couple of weeks Millie had been really honing in on whatever we were eating and if we made the mistake of passing our hands holding an item of food within the reach of Millie, she’d be on it! Dragging it to her mouth!

So, when we popped out for a pub lunch and Millie, while sat on my lap, reached out to my (undressed) salad, I let her. Red and yellow peppers, cherry tomatoes (halved), lambs lettuce and cucumber. She tried it all, enthusiastically. Of course, just gumming it some and not consuming, but she gave it all a good go.

Since then, as is normal with BLW, its been a bit here and there. I’m keen to keep what she tries as healthy as possible and our diet hasn’t always been that healthy or its just been unsuitable. That said, I think there has only been one day where she hasn’t been offered anything at all.

Her interest in the food once she has it is very changeable. Sometimes gumming it with gusto, often biting bits off then coughing or gagging them out or sometimes showing no interest at all after an initial investigation with her hands.

I will say, she is much more inclined to go for the food if it is from a plate in front of me and she is sat on my lap. She looks really put out if I’m eating something and she isn’t allowed to try any.

Things we have offered her in the past week (aside from those always mentioned):

Apple on a core – loves
Toast fingers – loves
Cheese omlette – no interest
Roast chicken – bit of interest but not much past first gum
Cheddar & Babybel Cheese – likes
Brie – no real interest
Banana – liked but didn’t like it in her mouth
Sausage – tasted but no real interest
Butternut squash & potato mash on a pre-loaded spoon – appeared most perturbed that her play spoon had some mush on it
Wheatabix on a pre-loaded spoon – pulled a funny face at first but wasn’t too disgusted
Roast potato, roast sweet potato and roast carrot – tasted but not much interest after initial taste
Grapes (halved) – liked
Peas – not expecting her to get any to her mouth, was more just to play with while Callum had his dinner
Rice krispies – as above but substitute dinner for breakfast
Cheesey pasta – played with her hands but didn’t taste

I keep making food for Callum but his meal time will coincide with her nap time so she doesn’t get to try anything.

Mostly, anything that she gets in her mouth is either just gummed or spat back out but there was a tiny shred of evidence in her nappy this morning (the joys of studying baby poo!!!!) in the form of tiny black wormlike fibres (they didn’t wiggle!), most likely to be the banana.

Along with the food, I’ve tried to introduce water in a shot glass. I still hold it for her at the moment as her co-ordination is still quite wild but she asks for it and I let her control her head and mouth towards the glass, just tipped enough so she can get to the water. I’ve Callum’s old doidy cup at the ready. As soon as I see she her dexterity improving, I’ll be giving her free reign with the doidy cup.

On the verge

In 5 days time, Millie is going to be 6 months old.

She is changing so quickly. Its hard to believe that it wasn’t only yesterday that she was a real babe in arms with her head supported in the cradle position.

Now she is sitting up…although still toppling a little bit. She can sometimes stay sitting up playing for a good 5 minutes unsupported. She loves sitting up too – fighting it if you lay her down or put her in her bouncy chair.

Despite showing early signs in both rolling and sleeping through the night…neither have been regular occurrences. She has still only rolled front to back and only a handful of times. She swings her legs and arches her back so that she nearly rolls over, she looks like a contortionist.

Sleepwise, she ‘usually’ doesn’t need feeding after a dreamfeed at around 10pm but that doesn’t mean she sleeps through. She has taken to waking up around 3am every night. Sometimes just needing a dummy or a cuddle, but more often she struggles to settle back to sleep with the dummy, falls off to sleep with a cuddle but wakes again when placed back in the cot. I eventually end up feeding her but not before I’ve already been awake for an hour and I’m not convinced she is waking for the feed. She cries differently.

We are going to try without the dreamfeed tonight to see what happens. I’m happy to feed her when she wakes but I remember the dreamfeed not working for Callum and I know she has been able to go for long stretches before now without the dreamfeed so it might work. The thing with Millie (and I’m sure many a baby) is that everything seems to work for the first couple of times then her sleep pattern gets all messed up again, whether due to teething, a new development stage, stuffy nose or just because.

Speaking of development stages, her latest trick is the bashing movement. As its new (this week) I’m quite excited by this. She hasn’t got enough strength to be too loud or damaging yet but I imagine as her confidence grows the loudness will come with it.

She is really into faces and wanting to explore them with her hands and she likes playing with my hair…when she is meant to be trying to get back to sleep at 3am!!

She has good hand to mouth co-ordination now which is great in light of starting to wean her next week. I’ve been giving her a spoon to play with at meal times and she loves a good chomp on that. She has a great expression when we’re eating as if to say “OK, so where’s mine?”, looking at the food, looking at me, then looking at the food again. I know this is curiosity and she has no awareness of what ‘eating’ actually is but its a positive sign that she will enjoy exploring this funny food stuff next week. She ‘may’ already have sucked on a banana and an apple core…oops!

You know, I think development phase may actually be the key to her unsettled nights! She is on the verge of so many things – very nearly rolling, just learnt to sit up, about to start weaning, having more control of her arms etc. She is also looking like she is going to change her nap cycle too as her first nap of the day can just be 10 minutes sometimes.

I think there are exciting times just around the corner…and may be even a little bit of sleep!

Hoping!