So yesterday afternoon Malina was sick. She remained sick for six hours as she did nothing but wake up, vomit, and sleep. Then, just as suddenly, in the late evening she woke up as of from a nap and acted normal. Honestly, I was freaking out and stressed the whole time. Then completely caught off guard when she bounced back.
This morning she woke up and continued to act normal. We went through our routine and then I made breakfast. Today I decided to do something as plain as possible while keeping it interesting to her and hopefully help out with any lingering stomach issues. Toast three ways.
Banana toast, plain toast, and avocado toast.
So you want your toast to be crispy but not hard and thinner than I originally cut it for easy handling. Next, I made mashed banana and mashed avocado and then spread them on the toast. Then we were ready to go and Malina was eager to start.
The first thing she did was fumble with the toasts size. This was when I realized that they were just a bit too thick. So I took them aside and re cut them (though I let her keep the plain ones so she didn’t fuss too much as I took the others).
Thick toast sticks too big for little hands. Thinner toast sticks.
Now that they were more manageable she went at them in earnest. She grabbed the avocado toast stick and chomped on it until she got some avocado off in her mouth. She seemed to like it, though she ate only a bite and a half at most.
“Avocado toast is okay.”
She ended up loosing both avocado toast pieces as she messed with them. One went to the floor and to our dog, then the next found it’s way to the sides of the high chair. (I’m already used to cleaning this thing daily). With only banana toast left she grabbed a stick and started her inspection.
“Interesting, mashed banana on toast.”
The banana toast went over about just as well. She sucked on it and gummed it, getting bits of banana off and that was about it. She soon got agitated and wanted nothing more to do with the toast so we cut breakfast short.
I am just happy she is feeling better this morning and that she had an appetite for both her breastfeeding and breakfast (even if it was a few bites).
So remember, even when baby isn’t feeling well and you are frazzled, you are doing great and you’ve got this!
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.
Big breakfast day
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.
“Fried egg is best egg.”
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).
Pork sausage
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.
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.
Banana spear
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.
Cottage cheese
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!
With today’s main focus being Malina’s reaction to dairy, I decided to repeat foods she had already tried without incident along side the yogurt.
The reaction she had on Thursday appeared several hour later and went away by the same evening. My personal hope was the reaction was from something besides the food, since we are a dairy family and she loved her yogurt. In case it was a skin irritation to the acids in yogurt, I was careful to not let it stay on her face for too long and helped her keep herself a little more clean. We were also more thorough in cleanup, making sure to wash her face and neck with soap when she was done.
So on to today’s foods, Malina had smashed blueberries, breaded avocado, and plain Greek yogurt.
Breakfast this morning.
It was an easy breakfast. I just cut up the avocado and rolled it in bread cry. Defrosted blueberries and smashed them up. Then served up the yogurt again.
She went for the avocado first. Picking it up with some difficulty, as I will have to play around with how I cut it, she got it to her mouth eventually and ate a few small bites. She did not seem to mind the crunchy texture or the squishy insides as she enjoyed it.
“Avocado is good. I like avocado.”
She had some difficulty with the blueberries again. Malina and most babies don’t develop the pincer grasp until closer to 8-10 months and as a result it’s more difficult to eat small foods like blueberries. Exposer to them though helps her practice and develop the ability. She was successful in picking up the blueberries, she just wasn’t able to put them in her mouth. I let her mess with them for a bit before moving on to the yogurt.
Malina was equipped with her spoon and very quickly started eating the yogurt. At least she still liked it.
“Yummy yogurt.”
Despite my best efforts, Malina was more messy with the yogurt today and less helpful in keeping herself clean. She even managed to get yogurt in her hair and on her ear. Spoons. I tell you they make more messes than anything. Still, she enjoyed the yogurt and had a good time.
When she was done, after about four spoons of yogurt, we went to clean up Malina and check for any rash. Initial checks proved inconclusive as nothing was found and we began our day of waiting and watching.
Even when things are stressful and worrying it’s important to remember that you are doing great and you’ve got this!
-Erica
P.S. – I forgot to come back and upload this post last night. We spent all day at home and kept watch of Malina. She never got a rash and was fine all day. We decided to proceed with the dairy allergen introduction for this next week and going back to our meal plan.
So, yesterday we had our first allergic reaction. Malina is fine and it was a mild one. It might not have been food related either, but we are going to be safe here and take the day off from solids before continuing probably tomorrow.
For those wondering, this was the timeline we had.
Malina ate breakfast @8:20am
10:30am- We go out to grocery store and she chews on her wrap that I wear her in, as well as the car seat strap covers, and her car seat toy.
11:45am. We get back home and I notice a red spot on her neck above her shoulder and under the corner of her jaw. It looks like it might be a big bite but I check the rest of her and she seems fine. I also take her temperature and it comes back normal.
Spot on neck
2:30pm Malina wakes up from a nap and I can see that she has broken out with an eczema rash all over her chin, upper lip, and neck.
Eczema rash on mouth
Over the next five hours the rash gets redder and then slowly goes away until it is gone around 8pm.
Checking her this morning showed that she had completely cleared up but we are being cautious and taking a break from solids today.
The chart I keep handy about allergic reactions is as follows. The chart is a guideline and is not medical advice or meant to replace medical advice.
It’s also important to listen to baby and what you feel is right. There were a few moments when the rash first showed up that I considered going to a walk in clinic, but Malina was fine and so I watched and waited. That might not be the case if it happened again and I might do things differently. But I trusted myself and listened to her.
So back to what happened.
If this was a reaction to the food it was super delayed. That does not mean it can’t be the food but there are too many other things to rule it out one way or another. Malina started using a new lotion on Wednesday. I wore a face cream yesterday to help with my eye. There are too many factors, so taking a break will help and when we start again on Saturday we will focus on dairy to see if it happens again.
This type of eczema rash happens a lot in my family to the babies and kids. It is usually a reaction to acidic foods getting on the skin. Yogurt is acidic and it definitely got everywhere that Malina got her rash. So moving forwards I’ll pay extra attention to acidic foods and skin exposure.
Everyday is a learning experience with a baby. There is so much you plan for and do as preventatives but there is nothing all those things can do when you are faced with a problem. Once we figure out what caused her reaction we plan to take that info to her doctor and go from there. Hindsight is always 20/20 and with a baby it stings all the more. Still it’s important to remember that I am doing my best and that I need to trust myself because she trusts me.
So you remember too, you are doing great and you’ve got this!
Things don’t always go according to plan. You’d think that after life in general, my pregnancy, birth, and the last six months this would be something I am familiar with and expect. Nope.
I am a planner. I like lists. BLW is a great way to apply both of those things and this blog helps me get back into the swing of writing everyday (because I am a writer, from before Malina was born). So the plan today was scrambled eggs but guess who got tied up all day yesterday and forgot to go to the store?
<—— ME
So no eggs, no problem. Except I also didn’t have time last night to do meal prep because my eye had swollen almost shut and I needed to hold a compress on it for half an hour before I was too tired to do so. My eye is at lest a lot better this morning. Only about half as swollen.
The next thing that threw a wrench in any plans to do some prep this morning was Malina waking up for the day at 5:20. So I changed her, fed her, and proceeded to convince her that it was still sleepy time and she should go back to sleep. She accepted after an hour and I just let her sleep in my arms because she needed the sleep and I was already up plus it was 7.
So when she got up again, 7:40 ish. She needed another feeding before we could do breakfast. And because I did not want our schedule to be any more disrupted I opted for the easy option.
I reheated the zucchini from yesterday since I had it and the recipe claimed it reheated well (it does not). I pulled out a small sample pouch of baby cereal. Then I grabbed the plain Greek yogurt from the fridge.
Plain because baby. Greek because it supposedly is the sweetest plain yogurt without the actual sugar (more lies). I was told regular plain yogurt is more tart and sour, so now I’m going to make sure I find out if that is true.
Mama had the rest of the yogurt, zucchini smush, and a strong cup of earl grey as we sat down around 8:20.
Zucchini and cereal.
Malina felt about the same as she did yesterday when confronted with the zucchini. Maybe even a little better than yesterday, since it wasn’t as crunchy. She did eat a couple bites either way, so that’s a win.
“This mushy zucchini is better than the crunchy one.”
The cereal was a lot harder for her to deal with. If I’m being honest, I only gave it to her because I didn’t have anything else ready and I knew it might be too hard for her to grab and eat. She got frustrated and i intervened. Then I had the brilliant idea to put it with the yogurt I had waiting for her in a separate bowl.
Cereal with yogurt.
This went over way better. Malina actually liked the yogurt which made me so happy. With everything going wrong it was nice to see her actually enjoy one of the foods we’ve introduced for once.
“Yogurt is good”
I helped her get about four bites of just yogurt and two more with the cereal. She ate most of those bites, with only a bit coming back out of her mouth into her bib. Despite yogurt being a “messy” food, Malina was the cleanliest eater today and did not get food anywhere besides her bib, hands, and tray. Though we did have a scare when both of us found out her bowl does not suction to the tray (because something had to go wrong and now I need a different bowl).
At least the yogurt was not very runny (probably because of the cereal) and did not fall out of the bowl and onto Malina’s lap as she seemed to want.
So we got yogurt down as something she likes, mushy zucchini as a preference, and cereal is okay if mixed in yogurt. Cool.
Maybe having an off day can be a good thing. So remember, you are doing great and you’ve got this!
I did meal prep last night! Yay! I managed to set up everything for this morning and all I had to do was go put the zucchini in the oven when I got up. Easy. I guess I should tell you what I made for today though.
So I’ve heard a bunch of mamas, across several groups that I am in, say they made egg salad without mayonnaise and used avocado as the replacement. Sounded interesting and weird. Two things I can totally get behind if it works out, and did it ever. No one ever seems to provide recipes for this stuff though, so here is what I did in case anyone wants to give it a shot.
1/2 avocado, nice and ripe and diced up
2 hard boiled eggs, diced how you like it
1/2 tsp of dill
1/2 tsp of granulated garlic
You just mix everything together with a fork and you get a nice chunky consistency that tastes divine.
I will have to make this for me next time and put it on some buttered toast. Avocado toast has a new challenger in the arena of topping combinations. It would probably do amazing with some salt or lemon mixed in as well, but that is neither here or now since this is for Malina.
So the oven would have preheated when the timer for it went off (but we got up early) so I went out to toss my pan of breaded zucchini from the fridge into the oven and started it up.
Malina did her morning ritual and then we were sitting down and eating by 8 am.
So we have breaded baked zucchini, avocado egg salad, and I tossed a could slices of regular avocado on the plate just to see how she handled it. I was ready for today to be messy, but today is also bath day so I figured what ever.
Mama’s and Malina’s plates.
So the first thing Malina reaches for is the avocado. I think I actually cut the slice a little too thick for her to handle but the other slice was too thin and became insta mush. She was not impressed by the avocado unfortunately, which I’m starting to think is a texture thing as she hasn’t really been into anything ‘slimy’. Will have to consider than in the future.
Eating avocado.
The next thing she tried to mess with was the avocado egg salad. It ended up everywhere but her mouth so I brought in our trusty friend, the spoon.
With BLW they don’t seem to like utensils until Baby is older. This stems from an idea that spoon feeding is part of traditional weaning and has no place in BLW. I get the problem stemming from possible ‘over feeding’ when someone spoon feeds the baby, but I think it’s easy to avoid doing that. Something that does occasionally seem acceptable is offering a pre-loaded spoon of food. But even this method expects the spoon to just be laid on the table for baby to pick up on their own. This seems problematic to me because baby doesn’t know how to use a spoon first off, then it’s more of a weapon (dart) or mess maker (trebuchet) offered in this way, and finally I don’t want her to get frustrated while she’s eating anymore than necessary.
So I load up the spoon with our avocado mixture and hand it to her. Also, I want everyone to know that Malina has been practicing with spoons without food for almost a month now. We’ve also encouraged her to hold it and put it in her mouth a certain way. So, this was not her first time using a spoon.
Using the spoon.
I also want to take a moment to add a video clip of Malina gagging. I was already recording when this happened and between me knowing she was okay and being right there incase things turned out badly I kept recording. -At no point did Malina go into distress or was in any danger – That being said, it is important to know the difference between chocking and gagging no matter how you feed baby. It is also important to know how to properly handle both. In this case I encouraged her (because getting involved can have mixed results) and she worked it out by herself without intervention.
Malina gagged a bit on the avocado egg.
The video cuts out like that because I saved the spoon. Malina quickly went back to eating and ended up wanting the spoon again too.
The last thing she tried was the baked breaded zucchini.
A note on breading: be sure to check that whatever you are using does not have honey in it for children under 1 year of age. Honey hides in all types of things and it’s better to be safe than sorry.
So I made the Baked breaded zucchini sticks from one of my BLW cookbooks. This specific recipe was from “Baby-Led Feeding” by Jenna Helwig. It turned out pretty good, the only thing I’d do to modify it, if I make it again, would be to try and squeeze out some of the moisture from the zucchini before breading to avoid soggy sticks. Malina was not a fan of the breading however so I might not get to try that modification any time soon.
“Maybe one bite.”“One bite might be too much.”
Or maybe she ate the breading off and didn’t like the zucchini. It’s hard to know for sure since Malina isn’t talking about it.
So I can add avocado to our list of successes and I know that Malina will eat hard boiled eggs when mixed with something. I’m going to add zucchini too since she did eat some of it, but I’m going to add a note to try it another way to see how she does.
Finally, I wanted to add that Malina is usually a very happy little girl and she only makes these upset sour faces when eating and only sometimes then as well. So here are a couple smiles from today’s mess.
“Oops, did I make a mess?”
“Come here, mama. I have avocado fingers for you!”
Oh and it was messy. There was avocado EVERYWHERE. Me and the dog got scheduled for baths after avocado-geddon. That spoon came at me and pegged me in the head. And the dog got avocado dropped on him soon after.
Also, remember what I said about her practicing with the spoon? Same is true for the sippy cup. She practiced for a month to get to where she is at and it was only with encouragement and an occasional helping hand that she is able to do as well as she does.
Using the sippy cup
At the end of the day, every baby is different and capable of different things. Malina can’t roll from stomach to back for example and crawls by pushing her head around on the floor. so don’t be hard on yourself or on baby. They will get there when they get there. So remember, that you are doing great and you’ve got this!
Meal prep is one of those things that when you do consistently it becomes easier to remember to do it. If I did it consistently I’d probably feel like it got easier and faster too. Guess who didn’t do meal prep for today?
Me.
And it would have been easy. I just needed hard boiled eggs and cut up sweet potato. On that note, how many different sweet potatoes are there? I grew up with the orange kind, later fell in love with the purple Japanese kind, and now I’ve discovered this flaky white flesh kind. For a second though, I was worried I’d grabbed something completely different. Like maybe this was a yam or other strange tuber. Nope, just a white sweet potato.
Luckily, I woke up before Malina and was able to get everything done while she slept some more.
By the way, today was my first day doing breakfast without any help or assistance from Eric. Today he got up to go in to work at 5am and as a result was gone before either of us woke up. It’s nice to have him around for help with the cooking, prepping, and just having an extra set of eyes, ears, and hands for Malina. Plus, I kinda really love the guy ❤
So, hard boiled eggs were done. Baked sweet potatoes wedges were done. All I had to do was smash some frozen blueberries after I let them defrost. which I set up and then went to wake up Malina and start her morning.
By the time we got back to our food, the sweet potatoes were just a bit warm and the eggs were now cold from the fridge. I peeled one up for us to share and split everything between our plates.
Malina has large hands and needs slightly longer sticks of food, but here are our plates.
If anyone knows how to hard boil an egg that makes it easy to peel I’d be eternally grateful. I’ve tried vinegar in the water, tried baking soda in the water, and I’ve tried using cold water with the eggs sitting in it as it heats up to boiling. Either I’m doing something completely wrong or there is no such thing as an easy to peel egg.
Malina has already gotten used to breakfast being a part of our routine in the morning. She gets excited and starts reaching for the plate before I can suction it down on her tray.
So it is no surprise that once the food is in reach she snatched up a handful. Grabbing the sweet potato sticks first. However, she did not seem thrilled with the texture once it made its way to her mouth.
Malina was not impressed by this tuber.
She did keep trying with the sweet potato and inevitably ate a few small bites of it.
“Sweet potatoes might be okay. But just okay.” – Malina
She went for the eggs next, probably because the blueberries are on the small side and harder to put in her mouth. Malina got a good amount of yolk in her mouth right away and had mixed feelings about it. The worst for her was probably when it melted into a paste in her mouth.
“Why are the eggs capable of so many different forms?” – Malina
She hated the egg white though and did not eat it after feeling the texture in her mouth.
“This is rubber. You tried to feed me rubber.” -Malina
Towards the end of our 20 minutes, Malina finally got a good grab of the blue berries and was able to get one in her mouth. I was so excited for her. The frozen blueberries were sweet and juicy now that they had defrosted.
Instead, Malina’s reaction was disgust. She definitely had to swallow some of the blueberries juices but the berry itself found itself on her smock.
“How dare you give me the blueberry!” -Malina
So for day four we’ve had Malina successfully eat sweet potato as a new food. I’ll have to try blueberries again sometime since she did not swallow any of it. As for the eggs, I’m planning on making avocado egg salad for breakfast tomorrow, but I’ll probably go back to the fried egg since that did the best for the rest of her egg introduction this week.
Even when things don’t go according to plan just remember that you are doing great and you’ve got this!
– Erica
Side note: pictures for today were also done by me since Eric wasn’t home and they were also done on my phone instead of our nice camera. Mama did not have time to deal with that. It’s also why this post is up so early. Eric takes a lot of pictures and weeds through them before sending them to me. Then I pick only a few from what he gives me. I don’t take as many pictures, this can be a bad thing or a good thing depending on the situation, and as a result I just use what I think is best from what I have. So sorry if the quality is not up to par.
Today we had a doctors appointment, so I had to start the oven and do prep before waking Malina up. It wasn’t too bad. I peeled and sliced an apple (cosmic crisp) before tossing it in olive oil and cinnamon. I did half the apples with cinnamon and the other with just oil. The recipe I was using actually calls for a mixture of ground cinnamon and cardamom, but I only have whole green cardamom so that was out. I also cut a few slices of onion and tossed all of this in the oven for 30 minutes.
Waking up Malina was easy. I turned off her sound machine and turned on the lights, both of which start making her stir. Then I went and picked her up. We went through the normal morning ritual and I asked Eric to take charge of finishing up breakfast.
Eric did a great job replicating the flat egg omelet and plated everything up for easy feeding by the time we came out of the room.
So today’s menu was slices of egg omelet, baked cinnamon apples, baked apples, and onion.
Malina’s plate before.
We set Malina’s plate down so she’d have access to the apples and onion first and she did two things right away.
First, she grabbed an onion slice.
Second, she face planted into the apples.
“Look, Mama! I can eat this like the dog!”
Today Malina had a more difficult time with the slippery foods and she also seemed less interested in it all, preferring her sippy cup of water.
Still, she did eventually suck on the onion and even broke off a bit. Baking it brings out the sweetness and softens the skin nicely, though I had no intention of her actually being able to gnaw off a bite and eat any of it.
“Onion is life”
The apples were different. Baking the cosmic crisp brought out the sourness of the apple and that with the cinnamon seemed to be unpleasant for Malina.
“Cinnamon is not delinnamon”
She did however have a much better time with the plain apple pieces.
The regular apple has not betrayed me, yet.
Lesson learned: definitely want to use a baking apple and preferably one that is sweeter the next time we do apples.
Today Malina did not really do much eating of her eggs as a majority of it was tossed around or thrown to the dog. I am uncertain if that was due to her original reaction to the omelet egg from Saturday or just because of how she was behaving this morning.
Either way, she might develop a acceptance or even a preference for it later. And the only thing I can do it keep offering it.
Today she did really good with her food and did not gag at all. My husband wanted me to add however that when I say she ate or did good we’re talking about a few bites of food, not all of the food. I definitely offer more food than Malina eats. Neither if us want anyone getting the wrong impression.
Malina’s tray after eating.
On a side note: our doctors appointment went really well and Malina is an Amazonian baby. Hopefully for her, she keeps being really tall and strong because I don’t care for being short personally 😛
As always, remember that you are doing great and you’ve got this!
Malina sometimes wakes up before my silent alarm on my watch. When she does this she sometimes tries to be quiet. I hear her moving and cooing in her crib. Scratching at the elephants and whales on her bedding or smacking at the space between the bars.
Because my vision without my glasses is limited to only a few feet of clarity of detail, I will sometimes reach for my cellphone and check the video monitor. I watch her do these things and as she occasionally looks over to where we are sleeping. If only she did that when she woke up at night or even all the time. She just as often wakes me with cries and screams. She is still adorable either way, but I am biased and sure most parents feel that way about their baby especially when they are being good.
So we went through our morning routine and feeding before going out to the kitchen to make her second breakfast. I had my pan with water and a steamer basket ready on the stove, so I turned on the burner and went to grab the asparagus I’d cut up the night before from the fridge.
See, I learned from the mistakes of yesterday and have actually accomplished some meal prep for the first time in months 😛 it probably saved me at least 10 minutes, but that’s still a win.
Once the asparagus was in the basket I put the lid on and forgot about it for 15 minutes as I went on to the main ingredient. Eggs.
Yes we are doing eggs again, but we’re frying them because it’s important to offer different textures. Plus, everyone has a favorite way to eat eggs. Malina is still figuring that part out and probably will for a long time.
Anecdote time – Personally, I loved fried eggs as a kid, poached as a teen, and Benedict when I was in college and started living on my own. All three are still good eggs to me, but a nice soft boiled egg is my favorite now a days. The egg thing reminds me of that scene in Runaway Bride, a Julia Roberts and Richard Gere movie from the late 90’s. Yeah, I watched a lot of those types of romances back then, and Richard Gere was a favorite actor of mine. Still is if we’re being honest. But in the movie Julia’s character gets accused of saying her favorite eggs are always the same as the fiancés, and she ends up with quite a few of those. This accusation however makes her go and try a bunch of different eggs all at once just to find her actual favorite. Cue egg montage.
That’s like 11 different eggs and you can only see 7 clearly.
Anyways, the character comes to the conclusion that eggs Benedict are her favorite (good choice in my opinion). It was a very eye opening scene for me though. The original message the character offered was she changed her mind over time (cool, I get that) but then the message is challenged as being a follower and not having a mind of her own, a kind of toxic codependency (holy moly did that expand my mind as a young girl). It was because of this movie that I spent a year trying different eggs, much to my parents chagrin, but I found a new favorite outside of the normal and stuck with it for a long time. The hidden message under the eggs however is you don’t have to like what the people around you like or whatever makes it easier, and that is sometimes the harder thing to remember. Okay, we’re going back to Malina and away from 90’s nostalgia.
So fried eggs. Nothing is better than frying an egg in butter. If this wasn’t for Malina I’d use salted butter, but we’re limiting/omitting salt. So sweet butter it is. She can’t have runny yolk either, so I cook it extra long on low heat before flipping it to cook the other side (this hurt me in ways only fellow runny yolk lovers can understand). When done, I cut her eggs into pieces, plated up the asparagus with a pinch of salt, and pulled the quartered grapes out of the fridge.
Malina was eager when she saw her plate, honestly that made me so happy with how yesterday went, and I was so excited for her I forgot to take a picture of her plate before she dove into it. Going straight for the eggs again.
She liked the egg whites.
So because of how fried eggs are shaped, she got to try the egg white and yolk separately. Malina was not a fan of the yolk but she liked the egg whites and ended up eating a good amount of it.
Next, we moved the asparagus closer to her by flipping the plate around and let her go for it. She snatched up a spear easy enough and proceeded to shove it in her mouth. Much to my surprise, she really liked it. She chewed and sucked on the asparagus spears one after another, leaving behind the fibrous outsides.
Eating asparagus as she mushes her grapes. “This is fine.”
The grapes were a different story. I knew she’d have a hard time with them, but practice and exposure will make her better at doing it. Plus I gave her a lot of grapes, so she was able to grab them and toss them around. In the end, she was more interested in my bowl of grapes and helped herself to the collection of juice at the bottom of the bowl and one small slice of grape from it.
“Mama’s grapes are different and better than mine. I know it.” – Malina
I was so proud of her today. She ate well and only gaged once during her meal, which was an impressively upset face.
“Why does the food betray me like this?”
She also has gotten a lot better with positioning her sippy cup of water and needs our help with it less and less too. Probably because she finds herself reaching for it often now that there is food involved. Especially foods she doesn’t like or care for.
“I drink and I know things.”
I call breakfast for day two a success. Malina liked the eggs better, enjoyed her asparagus, and kinda tried grapes. There was also still no sign of a reaction so we are probably good with the eggs, though we’ll keep an eye on it until she’s eaten them for the entire week.
My husband wanted me to add that we take so many pictures while she eats and get way more bad ones an good. That I also do help Malina with her foods and placements more than BLW suggests, but I can’t help myself. I want Malina to be able to pick her food up and that is easier when it is on the plate and not on her shoulder or under her chin (two common places now).
At the end of the day, I’m going to do what I feel is best while still trying to adhere to the ‘rules’ but I trust myself. And now day 2 is done and day 3 looms, but there are more successes now and my confidence is at a high point going on from here. It can only get easier, right?
So, as always, remember that you are doing great and you’ve got this!
I woke up just shy of 7:30 am excited for Malina’s first meal. I was ready for this. I had Eric for backup if I needed any help or assistance with taking care of her or cooking and so I felt calm as I left the room, passing Malina as she slept in her crib, and went to the kitchen to preheat the oven.
Something I’d do different to save myself time in the future will probably be doing as much food prep as possible the night before. That and setting a delay start on the oven.
Malina was awake when I came back in the room and so we started our morning ritual. I said good morning, asked her how she slept, and then picked her up to give her a hug and kiss and told her we were going to go and change her before she could eat. I breast feed, so that can lead to longer or shorter feedings depending on baby. This morning it was a 10 minute feeding, so when she was done at 7:45 I knew I had until 8:30 to have her food ready and still be inside the feeding window.
Everything seems to say offer food after milk, within 30-60 minutes, so baby is not too hungry or tired. The other thing is you want it a decent bit away from the next feeding as well so it doesn’t interrupt it. Malina can usually go two hours first thing in the morning, so 8:30 was a perfect time to have her sit and eat her first breakfast.
The menu I planned and ended up giving her included egg omelet strips cooked in plain butter, baked carrots three ways (olive oil only, rosemary with oil, and pepper with oil), and mandarin orange slices.
I cut the carrots really quickly and tossed them in the oven first, then made the egg omelet. I ended up making one large egg omelet and dividing it between the three of us. Something I learned by the way is that butter is lactose free and thus not an allergy food. So I was happy to be able to add that flavor to our eggs still. Cooking was quick and while I dealt with the eggs, Malina danced and sang with her papa as he peeled the mandarins for us.
Food was ready just before 8:20 and we got ready to sit down together and eat. As per the BLW suggestion, we ate what she ate showing her how to pick up the foods and eat them. Though Malina only had eyes for her papa and how he ate the food, so that’s a thing now.
All of our plates ready to go for our first meal
With everything cooled for Malina we put on her food smock and loaded her into her high chair. She was really excited when she saw her own plate of food being put down.
It can be hard to tell, but this is her excited face. I mean she’s already grabbed a handful of egg too.
Of course she went for the eggs first. It was the closest thing and she picked it up right away and shoved it in her mouth. She went through all the stages of enjoyment, grief, and disgust before she shoveled more in her mouth and went through it all again. At one point she gagged and it freaked me out inside while on the outside I tried to act calm and talk her through spitting out or swallowing the food. She ended up swallowing it and then reading for her water. She pulverized the rest of the eggs, but probably only actually ate a few bites of it all together.
“Why do you people eat eggs? This is not pleasant.” Malina asked with just a look.
I had to move the carrots closer to get her to go for it next. She started with the plain one which she definitely hated more than the eggs and gagged for the second time. Once she got the offensive orange stick out of her mouth she tossed it to the dog and reached for her water again.
That look of disgust though really says it all. “Carrots are worse than egg!”
Malina is adventurous though and was quick to try another of the carrots. This time it was the rosemary one. The look of enjoyment she had as she sucked on this one was a complete 180 from the disgust of the plain olive oil carrot. I have to admit, the rosemary brings out the sweetness of the carrots and that probably helped the most, but when she was done eating all the rosemary off she had eaten most of the accompanying carrot as well.
“No orange yet, I’m still eating the carrot, mama. This carrot is definitely different from the first one. It’s way better.”
This is where Malina called it quits. She was a bit under twenty minutes into her meal and she just didn’t want anything else to do with the rest of it. When I started to take the plate, she half heartedly picked up a mandarin slice I had tried to offer her before and sucked on it a second before tossing it aside (our dog might need to go on a diet in the future). I asked her if she was done now and she reached for me to pick her up. So I took the food away as her papa kept an eye on her and then I came back to take off the smock and clean her up as Eric cleaned up the high chair.
All in all I consider this a great first day and first meal. Malina ate egg, carrots, and rosemary. Three new things and flavors. I will have to offer mandarins and pepper again, but I was so impressed with her and how she dealt with food for the first time.
As always, you are doing great and you’ve got this!
– Erica
Side note: Egg whites are an allergy food. There is no history of food allergies in either mine or my husbands family and Malina has had no eczema since she was born, both are possible precursors to possible food allergies. However, I am not a doctor and so I’d suggest getting your doctors opinion before introducing allergy foods. Our personal plan here is to do one allergy food a week for the next 8 weeks, working through the top 8 allergy foods, and document any signs of reaction. As of this evening posting Malina has had no reaction to the eggs.
Malina’s BLW Food Adventures 