One of my favorite things about breastfeeding is how simple it is. Nothing to think about. My babies are getting perfect nutrition every time. No prep, no clean up. Done.
But now we're in the solid food phase, and life has gotten trickier. What to make? When? How much? The MESS! The PREP! The DIAPERS! All those bibs and spoons...highchairs...
TIME. My time is already pretty dang limited, and now I have to somehow fit in all this! WHY CAN'T THEY JUST EXCLUSIVELY BF UNTIL THEY CAN FEND FOR THEMSELVES?!?!
But I try not to waste time wishing away things I can't change... the fact is - they've gotta eat! And even though they'd probably be ok just breastfeeding (some days during the move, that's all they did, since everything was packed), I'm a by-the-book girl. I basically follow standard accepted best practice... the AAP says to start around the half -year mark... so that's what we did. One food at a time. So tedious and time consuming. I know - I have such a bad attitude about the whole thing. With my first child, I thought this was so FUN! I loved making up baby food concoctions, and thought the whole blender-to-ice cube trays homemade baby food system was genius. Now... just another thing on my to-do list! BBBLLLLAAAAHHHH... I should probably do my blogging AFTER I exercise... then I'm in a better mood.
And I've been questioning the whole point of blogging now, since I tried making a Blurb blog book and it was an awful program, so I'm guessing now that I won't end up printing this. It will just stay on the www forever.
Annnyyyywaayyyss.... back to the mush.
Courtney loves it. Can't shovel it into her mouth fast enough. She wears her bib nicely (I LOVE the over-the-head bibs - the homemade type, that are basically just a dish towel with a stretchy head hole - NOT the velcro-attaching-behind-the-neck type. They can rip those off). Courtney lets me know she's done by simply keeping her mouth closed. She likes everything I've given her - even pureed meat concoctions, which just seems so very disgusting. She's making up for not being a great nursling - she's never had a perfect latch or done a full feeding without a serious amount of effort on my part. I've always blamed her lower weight on that, though I could be wrong.
And then there's Mr. Bennett. Totally a perfect nursling, but...HE HATES SOLID FOOD! He acts like everything on a spoon is poison! It's slowly getting better... he's stopped GAGGING up everything I manage to get in his mouth... but he doesn't enjoy this one bit. I'm trying not to force it.... don't wanna traumatize the poor kid... but I have this fear of him developing his father's eating preferences. If Brian had his way, he'd the same four "foods" everyday. Pizza, burgers, fries, candy. One of my daily to-do tasks goes something like, "prevent Brian's arteries from occluding." My son will STARVE before I let him grow up
malnutritioned. So he's going to experience lots of different tastes and textures over and over and over until he learns to squeal with joy at the sight of leafy greens. MmmHmm.
For the most part, my philosophy on baby feeding is
here.
My favorite baby food recipe book is
this. And
this is a great one. Although most of the time, I just take some produce from my Bountiful Basket and stick them in my vitamix, with a protein source sometimes. Whatever's handy, basically.
I've also started getting in the habit of sanitizing my floor everyday, since with the way these two are scooting themselves around... they'll probably be eating off the floor soon. Lovely. MORE on my to-do list!
8 comments:
I'm so glad to hear I'm not the only one who's baby HATES baby food. She is almost a year and still wont let me spoon feed her. Anything blended or smooth enough to coat the inside of her mouth was like you said "POISON". Thankfully she is awesome at getting the food in her mouth now, but seriously such a battle.
She has only recently started eating fruit. Before that she only wanted steamed veggies put on her tray, bread bits, and warmed frozen peas and corn. I love handing her a banana, strawberries, watermelon, not much PREP work!!
Good luck to you and me in the battle of textures and tastes.
-Julie Dillenbeck
I'll have to get some pointers from you in about 10 months :)
Oh so fun! Everyone keeps telling me blog2print is the way to go if you are going to print your blog. I've been scared to try any after hearing what you and Monica went through!
yeah, the slurp program on blurb isn't good because it makes it all out of order. Looks like you'll have to do it manually.--but for the pages and quality its a great deal. we love ours that we made.
I didn't mind this stage as much as the learning to feed themselves stage. I knew they needed those skills...but it was more time consuming to clean up after them and bath them after each meal.
I am not a huge germophobe...so I fed my twins from the same spoon, I do have to say its easier to feed twins at the same time because you don't have to wait for them to swallow before shoveling more food into them, by the time you fed one, the other was ready for a spoonful.
Well Chelsea...as always..this stage won't last forever either.
Good luck!
check out blog2print. SOooooo much easier and faster than blurb. I just printed mine.
Love this post! I always was annoyed by the idea of nursing and the struggle it took to get them started, and the mess, etc. But then I would get so used to it that I'd hate to give it up because then I actually had to worry about carrying around bottles, formula, food, etc. Good times.
Your babies are getting SO big!! Look at all their cute hair and chubby cheeks! I can't wait to see them again!
Well, I always like to agree with the statement, "Watch the baby, not the clock!"
Our little Zadok wasn't interested in eating solids til he was 11 months old, but we didn't worry because breastmilk is THE perfect food for babies. He was really chubby, and healthy! Now Jonah is almost 8 months and we tried solids once and he spit it right out! I say, breastfeed for as long as you can--it's easier and so good for them!
Post a Comment