5 May , 20164 May , 2016 - Sarah 5 Comments

Weaning: the story so far

The lovely Hannah is on holiday in Italy this week so she has asked me to host My Wild Ones which is very exciting! I’ve got a slightly different post this week – instead of just sharing a day out as I often do I’m going to shift the focus to Gabe and share some photos of his weaning adventures so far.

We started weaning with Gabe when he turned six months old so we have been going for about two and half months now. Just like with Toby we launched right in with a mixture of finger foods and spoon feeding. We’re not doing full on babyled weaning but equally I have never pureed anything either.

Gabe took to solid food straight away. The first thing he actually ate was some cinnamon and raisin bagel – perhaps not the textbook first food but it happened to be what Toby was having for lunch so I just gave him a bit!

He tried some melon that day too, although I don’t think he actually ate very much of it.

Since then Gabe has had all sorts of bread products – breadsticks are still a firm favourite, as well as lots of different fruits and vegetables and things like yoghurt, Weetabix and porridge too. Most mornings he has his practice at picking up Cheerios too – not only a tasty breakfast but also a fantastic way of developing fine motor skills!

What we have found though is that although Gabe is happy to feed himself he still doesn’t manage to eat an awful lot that way, but he really likes his food and seems hungry. He also started waking for night feeds again, having not had them since he was about three or four months. So in an effort to get more food into him during the day, and hopefully fill him up, he has been having half of one of the seven month plus pouches for lunch and dinner, alongside some finger foods at every meal too. He is still perfectly happy to be spoon fed too – and loves to play with the spoon after he’s finished. I’ve not been brave enough to let him try and eat off the spoon himself yet though!

We are now starting to try and move on a bit from the pouches (which have lumps but are still soft) and introduce more textured food to he can just eat what we eat. He’s got six teeth now so biting shouldn’t be too much of a problem! Last week we were having Swedish meatballs with pasta and broccoli and he had a really good go at that so I think he’s getting ready to move on to the next stage of weaning.

Although he’s always been pretty good at picking things up and getting them in his mouth he’s definitely getting more accurate and generally better at it now – even when it’s slippery banana.

I’m also very excited that we are going to be working with Babymoov on their Stress-less Weaning project over the coming months. We’ll be trying out some of their products and working with a nutritionist too answer all our weaning questions too. You can see Gabe’s snazzy new Babymoov highchair in some of the more recent pictures and you’ll be seeing some of the other goodies we’ve been sent very soon.

So now it’s over to you – I’d love you to link up your posts for My Wild Ones here while Hannah is away.

A few guidelines for linking up:

Link up one post per week with the theme of My Wild Ones. It could be a post about your child/children exploring inside or out; the idea is that it’s a photo project of candid childhood photography.
The post can be a one photo, a series of photos, or a combination of text and photos.
Comment on at least one other blog.
Please pop the badge at the bottom of your blog post
Don’t forget to tag me on Twitter – @tobygoesbananas – and I’ll retweet your posts as many times as you share them! You could also use #MyWildOnes to share, if you fancy.
Linky opens every Thursday and closes the following Monday.

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.makedoandpush.co.uk" title="MyWildOnes" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.makedoandpush.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IMG_4195.jpg" width="250" height="250" alt="MyWildOnes" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

An InLinkz Link-up

3 May , 2016 - Sarah 3 Comments

Living Arrows 18/52 (2016)

I’m a bit late with this week’s post after a busy weekend away at Blog On in Manchester. Toby had a sickness bug at the end of last week but he seems mostly recovered now. Luckily Gabe seems to have mostly avoided it, but Barry is currently in bed feeling awful – I’m just hoping I’m not next in line!

These photos were taken last week before the bug struck…

Gabe is mostly loving his food (when he’s not feeling a bit poorly) and I think you can see how much he had enjoyed his spaghetti bolognese.

And although Toby perhaps spends a bit too much time on the tablet some days I love how much he focuses and concentrates on it. I think he was reading a Clangers story on the CBeebies Storytime app here.

8 April , 20167 October , 2020 - Sarah Leave a comment

Your questions answered with #SMAnutrition

You may have read my post a few weeks ago in which I shared some information from SMA nutrition about the importance of getting the right nutrition for your baby in their first 1,000 days – from conception to two years old. It’s especially important that your baby gets the right amount of protein – their protein needs decrease as they grow – as this can help to ensure that they grow at a steady rate.

We are now well into our first few weeks of weaning with Gabe and he’s really enjoying trying lots of different foods – even though he’s not actually managing to eat very much yet! I know though that he is still getting all the nutrition he needs from his milk at the moment. There’s a saying that ‘food is for fun until they’re one’ – for now weaning is all about trying new tastes and textures and just getting used to the mechanics of eating. I’m trying to make sure that Gabe gets plenty of chance to try different things and I’m sure it won’t be long until he really gets the hang of it!

In my last post I asked if you had any questions for medic and weekly health columnist Dr Ellie Cannon and below you can find the answers to some of the questions that were asked by some of the other bloggers who wrote about the first 1,000 days too…

I am 5 months pregnant and would love some must have information of how to make sure my baby gets the best start in life.

From the moment of conception, your baby starts growing fast. At this first stage of your 1,000-day journey, make sure your pregnancy diet provides the energy and nutrients you need, by eating a variety of different foods every day, including plenty of protein, dairy products, oily fish, fruit and vegetables. This all helps your baby to get the best start. For the first 6 months of your baby’s life, breast milk is the only food they need. The nutrients and protein in milk your baby drinks are the foundation for their cells, muscles, bones and brain as they develop and grow. At around 6 months you’ll start introducing complementary foods to provide additional nutrients. At this stage, your little one needs the right amount of protein and nutrients to maintain a steady growth and good health.

Have you any tips on how I can factor in bottles of expressed milk too? Do I need to stick to my pregnancy diet during breastfeeding months (no soft cheese etc.)?

Bottles of expressed milk are a popular choice for mums who are breastfeeding. It is also good to have the convenience of both bottle and breastfeeding, for those unexpected mummy absences! A nice time to give a bottle of expressed milk is a dream feed, (a dream feed is a calm, quiet feed around 10.30/11pm. It is called the dream feed as your baby is usually fast asleep and will probably take the feed with her eyes closed), or an evening when dad is at home to join in. Once you have banked up enough breast milk, you could make that a part of your regular routine.

When you are breastfeeding, your diet is really important for nourishing yourself and your little one. A healthy diet includes eating at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables a day, starchy foods, plenty of fibre, protein, dairy foods and drinking plenty of fluids. Eating fish while breastfeeding is good for your health and your baby’s, but while you’re breastfeeding you should have no more than two portions of oily fish a week. Also, caffeine can reach your baby through your breast milk and may keep them awake. It’s advised that pregnant and breastfeeding women restrict their caffeine intake to less than 300mg a day (just over two mugs of filter coffee). While breastfeeding, it’s recommended you take supplements containing 10 micrograms (mcg) of vitamin D each day. You can get all the other vitamins and minerals you need by eating a varied and balanced diet.

My question would be: if mothers do not breastfeed their child does formula contain the same amount of protein as breast milk? Breast milk protein is unique and adapts to your baby’s growth and relative requirements, this means the level of protein can increase or decrease based on the baby’s needs, unlike in baby formula where the level will stay the same.

Feeding your baby, from the early newborn days until they are toddlers telling you what they do and don’t like (and beyond) can seem like such a minefield sometimes but I think as long as you follow your instincts and make sure your child is eating a healthy, balanced diet then you can’t go too far wrong. And if there is anything you aren’t sure about then there is plenty of help and information available from your health visitor and on line in places like the SMA nutrition website.

*This post is in association with SMA nutrition

4 April , 2016 - Sarah 6 Comments

Living Arrows 14/52 (2016)

We’ve actually had a couple of days of nice weather this week (although as I write this it’s raining again) and on Wednesday we managed to get out in the garden to take March’s Me & Mine photos. When we were done with the family pictures Toby had a good run around. He’s just discovered shadows so was having a lot of fun chasing his round the garden!

In the second half of this week Gabe has been ill again – another cold, another temperature, gunky eyes again. I feel so sorry for him, but for us too because there have been quite a lot of sleepless nights lately. Anyway, I did take this photo last weekend of Gabe enjoying some homemade pancake for the first time. I know this is a very similar picture to last week’s Living Arrows but when he’s in his high chair enjoying some food Gabe is often at his happiest, and easiest to photograph as he can’t go anywhere!

25 February , 201625 February , 2016 - Sarah 2 Comments

My Wild Ones // Swings and bagels

My last few posts in this My Wild Ones series have all been about Toby really, with Gabe just along for the ride, so this week I thought I would switch the focus to my little wild one.

This linky is supposed to be all about exploring, and a lot of my posts so far have been about exploring outdoors but for Gabe everything he does is an exploration of something new. For a six month old, everything he does is a new experience. Gabe is so inquisitive, he always looks like he’s totally taking in everything that his going on around him.

Anyway, this week I thought I’d share some pictures of the new things that Gabe has been experiencing lately…

The last week has mostly been about food for Gabe – he’s really enjoying his first tastes, even if he’s not really managed to eat that much yet! He likes to have a good look at things before they go in his mouth…

And he’s been figuring out where a spoon should go…

It’s not all about food though. He had his first go on a swing yesterday – I think he liked it although he doesn’t look convinced on this picture!

He’s really enjoying his toys too now and this activity tray on his Mamas & Papas snug seat can keep him occupied for quite a while.

I thought I’d show you this last photo too – it’s not all smiles with a six month old. He can turn from enjoying himself to full on tears in the blink of an eye!

18 February , 2016 - Sarah 6 Comments

Gabriel is six months old

Jeezy peeps! Six months old already. I’m sure with Toby it took a lot longer to get to this point but it seems like with Gabe that I blinked and suddenly my tiny newborn baby is sitting in a high chair sucking on a bagel!

This last month has been a bit of a tough one for Gabe; he’s really been suffering with teething (we do now have a tiny corner of tooth poking through so hopefully the rest will follow soon) and he’s had a horrible cold for the last few days including a nasty croupy cough at the weekend. He does seem to be on the mend now at least so fingers crossed he recovers fully soon.

With teething and his cold he has been off his milk a bit too which has probably made him even more grumpy. I had him weighed last week though and he’s still just under the 50th centile for weight at 16lb 15oz. He’s still very long too and has almost grown out of his 6-9 month sleepsuits already!

As well as the hint of a first tooth there have been a couple of other firsts this month too. Gabe has started sitting up by himself, although he’s still pretty wobbly. He’s managing to stay upright for longer and longer every day though and I’m sure he’ll be sitting properly by himself soon enough.

I think when he can sit up a bit better Toby will enjoy interacting with him more too. Gabe can roll both ways as well now but he doesn’t really seem that bothered about doing it very much at the moment!

The other first this month has just been happening in the last few days and that is Gabe’s first food. I remember being very eager to start weaning with Toby but this time I not that excited about the prospect if I’m honest! Gabe hasn’t really shown that much interest in food but we decided to just put him in the high chair, put a few things in front of him and see what happened. Actually, I gave him a bit of bread stick to try last week – he sucked on it and did swallow a bit but threw it back up a few minutes later so I wasn’t entirely sure how things were going to go.

Yesterday Toby was having a cinnamon raisin bagel for lunch so I gave Gabe a bit to try. Probably not top of the list of first weaning foods but it’s much easier to just give Gabe whatever Toby is having! I also gave him a little bit of melon too. He certainly got the idea of what he was supposed to do with it much quicker than Toby did. It was weeks before Toby would pick anything up and put it in his mouth by himself but within a few minutes Gabe was giving that bagel a good old suck! I’m not sure how much of it he ate (if any) but there seemed to be less by the end than what he started with. He had a good go on the melon too, and today tried some toast, a bit more melon and some cucumber.

I’m sure with Gabe we’ll end up following the same combination of baby led weaning and spoon feeding. Toby never had purée, he always just ate what we did but if it was something messy that needed a spoon then I would feed him. Perhaps Gabe will have other ideas about spoon feeding but that’s the general plan anyway.

Speaking of feeding, Gabe is still having Gaviscon in his milk and ranitidine for his reflux. I actually thought last month that he was getting a lot better but then teething and a cold seems to have brought his symptoms back with a vengeance. He isn’t sick as much now although we still have the odd day with lots of sick but he was definitely showing symptoms of more silent reflux in the last few weeks. He’s had his ranitidine dose increased now and that seems to be keeping things under control again for the moment.

As I mentioned earlier Gabe has had a cold for the last week or so too. I actually ended up taking him to the out of hours GP at the weekend because he was so congested and seemed to be struggling for breath. He had what sounded like croup but the doctor gave him a good check over and decided he didn’t need any treatment, and thankfully we only had one really sleepless night and he’s been getting slowly better since.

And talking of sleepless nights – on the whole Gabe sleeps really well at night. He usually goes to bed about 6:30 pm and sleeps until some time between 4 and 5 am. Sometimes he wakes a bit earlier but I can usually get him back to sleep again by putting his dummy back in and giving him a rub on the back – this is one reason I’m glad he still sleeps in his co-sleeper crib next to me in our room! I do wish he could just manage another hour in bed – getting up at 6 doesn’t seem anywhere near as bad as getting up at 5! It wouldn’t be too bad if he went back to sleep again. Sometimes he does and I manage to get back to bed for a bit but fairly regularly Gabe is just falling back to sleep when Toby is getting up. Naps are still a bit hit and miss – the really bad teething week did mess up his naps a lot but thankfully we seem to be back to a decent morning nap of an hour and a half to two hours which he has in bed unless we’re out in which case he’ll sleep in the car or the buggy. Afternoon naps are a bit more haphazard and tend to happen in the car more often than not. I’m hoping we might crack an afternoon nap at home at some point – Toby is at nursery four afternoons a week so if Gabe would have a decent nap at home I might actually manage to get some things done around the house!

Anyway I think that’s probably about it for this month – I can’t wait to see what the next month brings..

18 February , 20167 October , 2020 - Sarah 1 Comment

The first 1,000 days // The importance of the right nutrition from conception to two years old

Did you know that the first 1,000 days of your child’s life, from conception to two years old, are some of the most significant in terms of their growth and development? Making sure that your baby or toddler is getting the right nutrition is something we have all worried about. I know I have! SMA Nutrition has teamed up with medic and weekly health columnist Dr Ellie Cannon to help parents further understand how important the protein levels and nutrition for your baby is during this time.

If your pregnancy is planned then the chances are that from the moment you conceive you will start thinking about what you are eating (or more likely what you can’t eat – no more runny egg yolks!) and how that might be affecting your growing baby. I took pregnancy vitamins and folic acid, and tried to make sure I ate well during both my pregnancies – although there were probably rather more biscuits in my diet than is strictly healthy!

And then once your baby has arrived, feeding them becomes one of the most important (and sometimes stressful) things in your life. I think most of us probably know that breastmilk is the best thing for our babies. It contains just the right amount of protein along with all the micronutrients that your baby needs to avoid any deficiencies in early life. What is unique about breastmilk is that the protein level changes as your baby grows. It always provides the right quality and quantity of protein to ensure your baby grows at a steady and appropriate rate, which can actually help to stop them becoming overweight later in life. You can read more about the protein in milk and its importance on the SMA nutrition website.

Knowing all of that, I really wanted to breastfeed both my babies. As a lot of you mamas know though, breastfeeding isn’t always easy. I really struggled with Toby due to a combination of things, and you can read all about our breastfeeding experience here. I was proud that I at least managed to partly breastfeed for six weeks, but in the end, particularly with Toby’s reflux, it turned out that bottle feeding was the best option for us.

With Gabe, breastfeeding was more successful, and I breastfed him for 10 weeks. Unfortunately, due to a combination of circumstances, including reflux again, we have ended up bottle feeding Gabe too. Although I know that exclusively breastfeeding for the first six months would have provided both my boys with the best possible nutrition, like a lot of women it just didn’t happen for us and I’m happy that formula exists and can provide my boys with the nutrition that they need.

Of course, after the first six months you’ve then got weaning to think about! We’ve just started weaning with Gabe and he seems to be enjoying his first solid food. I can’t believe he’s six months already though, the time has absolutely flown by!

We’re planning on following the same route we did with Toby, which was a mixture of finger foods and spoon feeding. That was mostly because I couldn’t cope with the extreme mess of pure baby-led weaning! We never gave Toby any purées though, he just had a little bit of what we were having, which made sure he was getting all the different food groups.

From weaning until he was nearly two Toby was a fantastic eater and would eat anything we put in front of him. As a toddler he has become more fussy, but I think that is as much about asserting his independence as anything else! I think his fussiness definitely increased when he started talking and could tell us ‘Toby doesn’t like it,’ which we hear quite regularly! On the whole though he still has a fairly varied and balanced diet, it’s just very frustrating for me when something that he loves one day is completely rejected the next! I hope Gabe doesn’t pick up on his brother’s picky eating habits. Even though we are already past the first 1,000 days of Toby’s life I know how important it is to keep providing him with appropriate nutrition as it is so vital for his healthy growth and development.

There is an awful lot of information out there about baby and toddler nutrition but I know sometimes it’s hard to find out what you really want to know. Everyone seems to have different advice, and this is one area where speaking to friends and relatives doesn’t always get you appropriate information, as the guidelines and recommendations have changed quite a lot over the last few decades. When I was a baby I was started on solids at just 10 weeks old. That’s completely unimaginable now but was the norm at the time!

If you have a question, something you would like to know about protein and nutrition during pregnancy or in the first two years of your child’s life, then leave me a comment below. Some of these questions will be answered by Dr Ellie Cannon and I’ll be publishing the answers in another post in a few weeks time.

Update: You can read the Q & A with Dr Ellie Cannon here.

*This post is in association with SMA nutrition

25 November , 201426 February , 2020 - Sarah 1 Comment

Top 5 toddler travel essentials

We’ve done quite a bit of travelling with Toby since he was born. With both sets of Grandparents living 250 miles away we’ve been to stay with them a a fair few times plus a couple of self-catering holidays in the UK and the two weeks we spent in France at the beginning of the summer. Each time we’ve made another trip we’ve refined our list of ‘must-haves’ to take with us so I thought I’d share my top 5 toddler travel essentials with you.

So, in no particular order…

Gro Anywhere Blind

(RRP £29.99)

I originally bought this so we could use it at home and when we travel. It’s been fantastic, especially for naps while we’re away or when travelling in the summer when it’s still very light at bedtime. The blind fits windows up to 130cm x198cm (we’ve never been anywhere with a window bigger than that yet) but also has clever velcro along the edges so you can adjust it to make it smaller. It attaches to the window with suckers and we’ve never had any problems with them coming unstuck. The other great benefit of the Gro Anywhere Blind is that it folds up nice and small and even comes with its own travel bag.

Munchkin Travel Booster Seat

(RRP £20.99)

Depending on where you are going on holiday you maybe able to hire a high chair, or if you know you’re going to be eating out the whole time the high chairs are usually readily available. In our experience though the highchairs which you get in rented holiday accommodation are not always great, either they’re a bit old and tired or just not a great design. When we go and visit our parents we need to take something with us, we don’t really go often enough for it to be worth them keeping a high chair at their houses. At home we love our IKEA Antilop high chair but it takes up quite a bit of room in the car so a booster seat is the perfect option for us. The Muchkin Travel Booster Seat has loads of great features. It is height adjustable with the four feet that fold out of the bottom. The three straps mean it can be fitted safely and securely to most chairs. There is a three-point harness to keep your little one safe in the chair too. When folded there are velcro flaps to keep everything tucked neatly out of the way and there is also a handy pocket inside the seat so you can keep cups, cutlery or bibs handy, or you could even fit a few nappies and wipes in there and do away with the need for your changing bag if you weren’t going to far. We used this booster seat on our recent trip to Butlins and it worked really well for us. We’ll definitely taking it when we go away again, and I can even see us using it at home in the future once Toby is too big for his highchair but not quite big enough to sit at the table with us.

Waterproof floor mat

At home we use a big piece of wipe clean PVC material, that I originally bought to use as a table cloth when we went camping, to put on the floor underneath Toby’s high chair so it’s easy to clean up any spills or dropped food. I’d definitely recommend taking something similar if you are staying in self-catering accommodation, that way you don’t have to worry about anything making a mess or staining the floor – especially if it’s carpet! We also reviewed the Messy Me mat which is perfect for the job.

Cheerios (and Munchkin Deluxe Snack Catcher)

(RRP £4.99)

Cheerios (or actually Tesco Multi-grain hoops!) have been our saviour on many trips! Toby loves them, I think he would live on dry Cheerios if we let him! We usually give him Cheerios in his Munchkin Snack Catcher whether we’re at home or away. They’re easy for him to get at but it takes enough of his concentration to keep him occupied, whether it’s while we’re unpacking or in the car. Using the snack catcher also means mess is limited, and luckily even dropped Cheerios aren’t too hard to clear up. If you do a lot of travelling with your kids it’s definitely worth finding a snack they love that also doesn’t make too much mess!

Grobags

(prices vary)

Toby has used a sleeping bag since he was about six weeks old. We have had several different brands in the past but always come back to the Grobag as they seem to have a bigger selection of togs and also bigger sizes (Toby has been using the 18-36 month size for a while now as he is so tall). When travelling I would always recommend taking whatever bedding and toys/comforters that your child uses at home. They’re already going to be sleeping in a strange place and a different bed or cot so anything you can do to make it as familiar as possible will help them feel settled – and hopefully sleep better, although this doesn’t always seem to work with Toby! I would also recommend taking a couple of sleeping bags of different thicknesses, or togs, as you never know what the temperature is going to be like where you are staying. There’s been a few times when we’ve been using a 2.5 tog bag at home but then gone to stay somewhere which has lots of heating and we’ve only needed the 1 tog. It’s always handy to have a spare anyway in case of any accidents!

WD40

OK, I know this is the sixth thing on the list but Barry wanted me to add this one! WD40 isn’t actually something we have taken away with us before but after our last trip I’ve bought a small can to keep in the car so we always have some when we’re away. I think every single place we have stayed has had creaky, squeaky bedroom doors, guaranteed to wake Toby when we’re trying to go to bed quietly. One of the wheels on our stroller is prone to squeaking too and we always forget to do anything about it when we’re at home as we don’t tend to use the stroller that much so it’s only when we get away that we remember how annoying it is!

There you go, my top 5 toddler travel essentials. Do you have anything you wouldn’t leave home without when travelling with your toddler?

**Disclosure: We were sent the Munchkin Travel Booster Seat and Deluxe Snack Catcher as a part of my role as a Munchkin Lindam blogger. This post contains affiliate links. All opinions are my own.

15 September , 201427 March , 2015 - Sarah 1 Comment

Living Arrows 37/52

It’s week 37 of the I Heart Snapping Living Arrows project which must mean another week has gone by. I was still off work for most of the week but my police check came through on Thursday so I was back in school on Friday (although happily we only have a half day on a Friday!).

Toby has still been going to nursery although a couple of days I kept him at home until after his morning nap to make sure he got some sleep and to try and help him get over his cold. Naps are a bit hit and miss at nursery – at home he still has two long naps (up to three hours sometimes!) but at nursery we’re lucky if he gets two 45 minute naps. I’m glad he is at least getting some daytime sleep but it really isn’t as much as he needs.

Anyway, his cold does seem to be improving which is a relief – he seems to have had it forever! We’ve had more developments this week too. Toby now waves and says ‘hiya’ when he sees us (which is adorable!) and today he managed to get himself stood up without holding on to anything (which I missed because I was out at rehearsals). Still no walking though, but he will now sometimes walk if we hold his hands which he’s never done before.

And so, to this week’s photos… I’m going to share a little series of pictures this week – when it comes to weaning we’ve done a mixture of baby led and traditional weaning (you can read about it here if you’re interested) but I will admit that for my own sanity we have tended to spoon feed Toby anything he can’t pick up without making tons of mess. At 14 months though I think it’s probably time he starts learning how to use a spoon himself so seeing as he was getting a bath straight after tea tonight I let him have a go with his yoghurt (admittedly I only gave him the pot and spoon once it was nearly empty!). As you can see he didn’t quite get it right straight away but he figured it out pretty quickly. Honestly, I am amazed every day at the moment at how clever Toby is and just how quickly he picks things up. I just can’t wait to see what he gets up to this week…

9 July , 201429 March , 2021 - Sarah 10 Comments

Weaning // Finding our own way

Toby is now almost one and it’s been just over six months since we first introduced him to solid food. Before we started weaning I’d read a couple of books ‘Weaning Made Easy‘ and ‘Baby-Led Weaning‘. Baby-led weaning made total sense to me – by bypassing purées and giving Toby the same things we ate, and letting him feed himself, he would be in control of what he ate and hopefully would develop a healthy appetite and relationship with food.

The reality, however, turned out a little differently…

In the very beginning Toby simply wasn’t interested in putting anything in his mouth. I know I could have left him to figure it out on his own but if I held something to his mouth then he would happily eat it so it seemed like it was more the putting it in his mouth himself than actually eating that was a problem. I wrote about this at the time in a guest post over on Redhead Babyled which you can read here.

Examining a rice cake at six months old

We carried on putting finger foods (veg sticks, toast, breadsticks etc) on Toby’s highchair tray as well as feeding him other bits and pieces off our plates and eventually he did figure out how to pick things up and eat them himself. We also carried on feeding him as well – either with a spoon or just by popping something in his mouth or holding it for him to take a bite.

I really wanted to embrace baby-led weaning and let Toby feed himself but there was one major stumbling block…

I just couldn’t handle the mess! I don’t know if this makes me a terrible person for letting my own feelings get in the way of something which perhaps would have been better for Toby but every meal was getting me so worked up that I couldn’t carry on. I tried loaded spoons a couple of times but so little food got into Toby’s mouth (and so much food got everywhere else) that I went back to feeding him things like porridge and yogurt myself.

Porridge face (before we gave up loaded spoons!) at seven months

If Toby is having something he can pick up himself without making too much mess (things like breadsticks, sandwiches, fruit and veg, dry cereal, chicken) then I put it on his tray and he feeds himself. He did go through a bit of a phase of just squashing anything we gave him but he seems to be getting over that now. Up until recently if I gave Toby more than one thing, or a big piece of something, he would just try and shove the lot in his mouth in one go – which led to our only proper, out of the highchair, choking incident when he shoved a massive broccoli floret in his mouth in one go (he was fine though!). However, in the last week or so I have been trying to get Toby used to choosing what he wants to eat so I put a few different things on his tray so he can choose what he wants and then I just keep adding more. He usually eats everything eventually but at least he is gaining some control over what he eats when. He’s got much better a picking something up, taking a bite out of it, eating that bite and then having some more. I am also trying to introduce taking things off a plate or out of a bowl, which is going OK as long as I keep a hold of the plate or bowl too!

Getting his own Shreddies out of the bowl at twelve months

I do still spoon feed Toby the messy things like yogurt or spaghetti bolognese and for the moment he seems quite happy to eat these things from a spoon. I am definitely not force feeding him – which is the criticism sometimes levelled at this method of feeding. If Toby doesn’t want something then he will let you know, and there’s no chance of getting him to open his mouth to eat it! We don’t do aeroplanes or play games. Mostly Toby will have his mouth wide open for the next spoonful before I’ve got back to the bowl and when he’s done that’s that.

I’ve read quite a lot of blog posts and articles about weaning and there seems to be a misconception from some proponents of baby-led weaning that if you aren’t following baby-led weaning methods to the letter then you must be spoon feeding your baby purées or mashed food and you are somehow doing something detrimental to your baby’s health and well-being. But that simply isn’t the case. We have found our own way with weaning. Toby eats almost exactly what we eat. He has his meals with us and we all have the same things on our plates. The only purées he has ever had are fruit purée in his porridge or Weetabix, or as a snack when we’re out somewhere. Feeding Toby the way we do means we have happily been able to take him to restaurants and cafés knowing he can share our meals and do so without me having a meltdown about the mess.

I’m sure in the next few months Toby will get even better at feeding himself. We’ll start using plates and cutlery more and I’m sure he’ll get the hang of those too. Weaning seems to be such an emotive subject at the moment but to be honest I don’t think it really matters how you choose to feed your child – as long as you are feeding them and they’re happy (and you’re happy) then I’m sure they’ll be just fine. By they time they’re five no-one is going to care whether they were spoon fed or put every morsel they ever ate in their mouth on their own. As with so many things in the last year, we found a way that works for us and I’m happy with that.

I’d love to hear about your weaning experiences, especially if you did a bit of a combination like us – I’m sure we’re not the only ones who have made it up as we went along!

Toby Goes Bananas

A family lifestyle blog

weaning