BLW and breastfeeding.

When I started thinking about weaning I was interested to know how quickly Indigo's milk intake would change. With Baby Led Weaning Indigo should naturally start taking less milk when she is eating more 'real' food, so no need to try and control how much milk she gets and when.

So, we are about a month into our weaning experience and so far I don't think Indigo is taking any less milk. I am still feeding on demand, and although the amount of feeds she takes hasn't changed much, the spacing of them seem to have. She has generally slept long nights and fed frequently during the days, she was feeding every 2 hours during the day untill we started weaning. Now she seems to cluster feed in the morning and evenings and then have one long stretch between feeds in the middle of the day. She goes up to 4 hours, sometimes even 5, between feeds in the middle of the day.

I should mention that she normally joins us for meals 3 times a day (unless she happens to be sleeping), and although alot of food ends up on the floor, some does get through - the proof is in the nappy (need I say more...?). So I assume that this new feeding pattern is a result of her taking in more solids.

I will try and update on breastfeeding every month or so to see how things change. At the moment I am definitely her main source of nutrition.

Eating out

We have eaten out a handful of times since we started baby led weaning with Indigo, and it has gone really well. The first time we took her out we ordered tapas, Indigo chose falafel, lettuce and the tomato dipping sauce that came with the falafel - what a mess, but she had a wonderful time with it and we got to eat our dinner whilst it was warm.

The practicalities of eating out:

For the seating there are three options: highchair, buggy or lap. When we have tried the provided highchairs we have encountered the same beast of a chair every time (pictured below), which is obviously not made for a 6 month old as it is quite big and hasn't got much back support in particular. We have handled this by putting a rolled up blanket or jacket behind her, and this has worked really well. The buggy is comfortable to sit in and can most of the time be pulled up to the table, but it does get smeared with food, and If all else fails, there is always mum or dad's lap - but since daddy doesn't share his food it's typically mum's lap;-)

Out of the 3 options we prefer the highchair, if suitable, this way we don't get the buggy or my trousers smeared with whatever's on offer at the dinner table.

The infamous highchair (left) with rolled up jacket and a blanket for back support. Oscar and Indigo (right) having lunch in their buggy's, on this particular occasion they had some fish pate... nice and smelly.

At home we use the long sleeved bibs, which work great, but I have only got around to buying two so I haven't got a spare one for the changing bag yet, so when we have eaten out I have used a muslin square as a bib. I just tie it around her neck and because it's so long it covers her legs as well; It has actually worked surprisingly well, so much so that I am not going to buy any more long sleeved bibs for the changing bag.

Indigo featuring her muslin bib.

Then of course there is the gagging, but I will cover that properly in another post. It has pretty much been a joy all around taking Indigo out to eat; no need to pack spoons and jars of mush or waiting for baby to eat whilst my plate of food goes cold, we just enjoy our food together.

Roast dinner.

So Indigo had her first roast dinner last night, and like a true Yorkshire lass, she absolutely loved it. And what made the dinner extra special was that the potatoes and green beans were home grown by dad himself down the allotment.

The dinner: Roast chicken, homemade yorkshire puddings, green beans and carrots, and minted new potatoes (the mint was from the allotment too).

This was Indigo's first try with chicken and what a winner, easy to hold, nice and soft to chew on and probably quite easy to swallow as well! The yorkshire pudding was a hit too, we cut it in half as the whole one would have been almost the size of her head; she loved playing with/eating the yorkshire pudding the most, but it did cause some gagging, as once chewed on a bit it went quite doughy in her mouth. I should imagine that a doughy mouthful of yorkshire pudding, however perfectly made (by mommy), would be hard to swallow for a 6 month old, so maybe not that surprising that it caused some gagging.

We steamed the veg to make it easer to chew, although some of the french bean were hard to get in the mouth in the first place; they had been left to grow a bit too big, so they were like long wiggely worms that she managed to poke herself in the cheek, eye and nose with, but couldn't quite get it where it was suppose to go... she had a lot of fun trying though. Maybe we will cut our super long beans in half next time so they are not so bendy.

The roast dinner was a hit, she is half English after all so no big surprise there, and she will no doubt be enjoying many of those in the years to come.

Indigo enjoying a yorkshire pudding.

Teeth and BLW

Don't they need teeth to chew?

Indigo got her first two teeth early; first one popped through at 18 weeks and the second one came exactly a week after at 19 weeks... 'Yikes!!' was my first thought, as I am still breastfeeding and plan to continue for a while longer. I have got nipped a few times, but that is another post in a different blog... As for the chewing; at first she was pretty much just sucking on everything we gave her and maybe gumming it a bit if she got some in her mouth, but recently she has started putting those two teeth to better use.

She doesn't so much use her teeth for chewing, but she has discovered that she can use them to take bites with. She manages some rather large bites out of pears, cucumber and whatever else she's given and then just keeps it in her mouth to suck on, she will use the gums at the back of her mouth to chew with (her teeth are front bottom). I keep telling Simon to stop stuffing his face, as it seems she is picking up this habit from him :-)

She has also started scraping the flesh of soft fruits from the skin with her teeth.

So, although she is putting her little (and might I say adorable) teeth to some use, she still uses her gums to chew with, and therefore the answer to my first question is 'No, no teeth nescessary'.

Here is a picture of those little teeth, it isn't that super easy to see them, but try and get a baby to smile so their teeth are showing... and the just hold the pose for long enough to snap a shot of it too... enough said.

Favourites so far.

Although Indigo has happily tried anything we've put in front of her up till now, I have identified two foods she seems to particularly enjoy: Tomato and natural yoghurt. Not sure she could have quite picked anything more messy. Tomatoes can have any shape, so far we have tried quatered cherry tomatoes, sliced beef tomatoes, tomatoes roasted  in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, tomato soup and homemade tomato pasta sauce - she loves them all. She can suck the seeds out of raw tomatoes and slurp the more runny tomato dishes of a pre-loaded spoon. I often have natural yoghurt for breakfast with muesli and some fruit, so I just dipped her spoon (one of them soft tipped weaning spoons) in my yoghurt and passed it to her. Granted, most of the yoghurt gets used as face paint, but some is getting in and as she is getting better at handling the spoon I have been able to put a bit more yoghurt on it. Beware though, yoghurt burps smell really bad!

Indigo after eating pasta with tomato sauce (left, obviously), and enjoying some yoghurt.

 

Note about pre-loaded spoons: I have found that it is best to make sure she doesn't hold the spoon too far down the handle, or she ends up accidently shoving it quite far down her throat. Although it doesn't seem to hurt her when this happens, it's a sure trigger for some 'quality' gagging. I also always make sure to have two spoons at the ready when offering foods on the spoon, as it saves me constantly having to pick it up off the floor... call me lazy if you want!

Risotto and noodles???

It's been a little while since I had a chance to post, things are busy in our household as we are planning a move back to my home-country Denmark. A lot has happened on the weaning front - for one, we have been a bit more experimental with which foods we have offered, as the title suggests. To stay true to the BLW approach, Indigo eats what we eat; I was a little apprehensive with both the noodles and the risotto (two separate meals might I add), but I thought 'oh well, we can only try....' and true to her nature, she surprised us again with very inventive eating skills.

She took handfuls of the risotto, and although I didn't see how she was actually going to get it in her mouth, she managed somehow because I could see rice grains in there when she was chewing with her mouth open (we will work on table manners later). She also, at one point, put her face to the table and seemingly scraped the rice in; this seems to be the approach she has when picking things up apparently gets a bit tedious.

The noodles; we were making ourselves a stir fry, and I fished a few plain noodles and stir fried veggies out of the dish before adding the sauces. Oyster and soya sauce are way too salty for little babies bellies. And boy did she have fun with those noodles. They were actually surprisingly easy for her to hold as they were a bit sticky, and the long bits that were hanging out of her fists were easy to get in her mouth.


Here is Indigo eating fist fulls of risotto (left) and having fun with her noodles (right). I have to say that we are very impressed with how quickly her skills are developing.