Last night was rough. Just typical baby stuff though. Waking up, needing things, and then not wanting to sleep. Still, Eric is the most helpful husband and put Malina to sleep when I was too tired and in too much pain (baby girl is a tank and weighs as much as one it seems, and ouch my back).
Luckily, when she did sleep she stayed asleep until 7:40am. So late morning start here, but it was nice. We did our morning ritual and then I started our breakfast.
Today’s menu is pork sausage, fried egg, green beans, cottage cheese, and banana. I know, this is a lot of foods. But BLW says to give baby what you are eating and giving Malina a bit of everything is good texture and motor experience. So I made breakfast and served the three of us at 8:50am.
Sitting Malina down after I put down the plate had worked out better since she is always excited now and tries to grab everything. When she is settled in front of her plate today she still does the same but I don’t have to worry about attaching the plate around waving arms and hands, and the first thing she grabbed was banana.
The way shown above is how it is “generally suggested” to serve banana. Honestly, it seems like a good idea as you provide a handle for baby to hold onto by leaving the peel half on. Malina has big hands, but they were no match for the banana. She had to use both to pick it up and then when she brought it to her face it broke in half. Right where the peel ended.
So she did not get to try the banana an at first as I had to rescue the top half and my husband took the bottom half. I went to fix what was left of her banana into spears as Eric watched Malina continue breakfast.
So faced with the rest of her plate she went for the fried egg. She still likes it too, so Malina is a fried egg baby. At least for now.
She ate a couple small nibbles of egg before it ended up on the floor and sides of her chair. Next, Malina reached for the pork sausage. I had to find sausages with minimal ingredients, seasonings, and salt. This one hit all the marks and after pan cooking it I squeezed it between palate towels to soak up the extra fat and grease. I also cut it in half lengthwise before serving it. (Note: Malina got sick later in the afternoon and my husband and mom think it was the sausage from the morning. I’ll probably move forward with making my own breakfast patties for Malina in the future).
Malina chomped on the sausage for a while. She really seemed to like it and when she did finally put it down she tried her green beans.
She put them in her mouth, made a face of disgust, and tossed them as far away as she could. The whole handful. Guess someone doesn’t like steamed green beans.
We were able to get her to pick up the new banana spears next and she did a lot better with them. I was worried about how slippery they would get but Malina handled it just fine and even got a little bit off to eat. She seemed to like it so I plan to try and find easier ways to help her eat slippery foods.
Last we gave her a spoon of the cottage cheese. Unlike the sour yogurt, she was not a fan of these sour cheese curds and proceeded to attempt to toss them everywhere. Luckily we were at the end of breakfast and did not make too much of a mess.
With today’s success in the food department we’ve gotten Malina to eat two new foods and try two others. I hope to get her to actually eat the green beans and cottage cheese in the future, but for now I am happy that she tries the foods and does seem to have preferences and like eating.
So whether your baby likes it, hates it, eats it, or throws it, remember that you are doing great and you’ve got this!
-Erica
Malina’s BLW Food Adventures 