On to our third week of our BLW adventure and we are doing the soy introduction. Soy is an interesting ingredient as it’s in the obvious things but also in a lot of surprising things. For example, the whole wheat bread I routinely buy has soy in it. the things you learn when you look for specific ingredients in your foods, but I digress.
Today’s breakfast is chorizo and eggs with tortilla and white cheddar cheese. The chorizo is made with tofu instead of pork and there in is the soy.
I almost forgot to snap a pic of the plate before Malina dove into it, since she was extra eager this morning. Probably because most of our teething is behind us for this tooth.
Soy chorizo and eggs on our new plate and frozen banana in our new feeder.
The first thing she went for though was the flour tortilla strips. She gummed on them and tore them apart, eating a few bites.
“Tortillas are very good.”
She did try to mess with the chorizo egg mixture but she had a hard time getting bites and wasn’t as interested in it as everything else. So the next thing she actually tried was the cheese.
“This still isn’t mozzarella.”
Still a no go on the cheddar though. She took her bite and then rejected it. At least there is still mozzarella.
The last thing she went for was our new silicone feeder with frozen banana.
“Finally, bananas again.”
Of course she loved it when she got the hang of the feeder and ate almost the entire three slices of banana inside. I was super surprised and impressed. Malina really likes banana.
So it was a good morning and Malina ate a good amount. She keeps getting better with the foods she likes and I hope she continues to be open to trying the new things I have planned for her.
Just remember, even if baby eats a little or a lot, that you are doing great and you’ve got this!
We have a tooth! Malina has been teething for almost a week and yesterday we got to see the tooth make its appearance as it cut through the gums. Now that the supposed hard hurting part is over I’m hoping Malina gets to relax and not be in so much pain. In helping with that I made her some easy to mash foods for her to chew on for breakfast today.
We have cauliflower pancakes, meatless breakfast patties, frozen blueberries, and yogurt.
It’s fun eating what she’s eating. Or is it her eating what I’m eating? Eh, same difference.
Malina was not eager again but with some coaxing she grabbed one of the meatless patties first.
“My precious patty.”
And she loved it! She ate about a quarter of a full patty and it broke up easy for her as she ate it. I was happy to have a success and to see some of her appetite coming back.
Note on items being served: I shop at a bunch of different places for our family but one of my favorites is Trader Joe’s. The reason why is the portioning of their products. I can buy something that is intended to feed two people easy without worrying about leftover or reheating things. The same is true for individual portions. Plus, I’ve ran into way more things I like that they sell than things I dislike, so I always feel confident buying something new. So both the meatless patties and cauliflower pancakes come from there. I checked the sodium and sugar levels before I bought them too and was happy I could share them with Malina.
Malina enjoyed her meatless patty so much that she got excited and tossed the other one while hitting her tray. Pluto was the victor of that half, it was gone by the time I bent to look.
Continuing on, she grabbed for the cauliflower pancake and before I could decipher her reaction she’d tossed it with a yell and grabbed the second one to do the same. I can’t say I blame her, they weren’t all that great.
Mid toss of patty two, because why fight her about her dislikes.
I guess we’re at the tossing phase now. At least I have a dog for cleaning the mess. A dog that is going to get fat and then need to go on a diet, I remind myself. Or maybe Malina will start crawling and that will give him his exercise. Lol.
So the next thing I tried to get her to eat was the frozen blueberries. She tried it too, but apparently she dislikes blueberries more than she likes the cold.
“I rather have a banana.”
I wish I could say that she ate the yogurt again, but she was irritated and threw the first and second spoon before I gave up on that endeavor.
So I cleaned Malina up and called breakfast as being over. Meatless patties were a win, everything else not so much. It will probably be a while now before I try blueberries again since she obviously didn’t like them.
So whether baby is picky, has preferences, or hates everything just remember that you are doing great and you’ve got this!
Almost done with week two. Which was supposed to be only the dairy allergen introduction, but has turned into both dairy and wheat. There is no right or wrong way to do this I suppose, since there is no history of food allergies in my or my husbands family and since our doctor okayed everything.
Still. I liked my original plan.
One major allergen of the eight, done for a week each week for the first two months. Nice and simple. I had a meal plan too for all of this, but life happens and things don’t always work out. At least Malina hasn’t had any more reactions beyond that one time (which I’m still curious about since it hasn’t happened again).
So in these two weeks Malina has been exposed to eggs, dairy, wheat, peanuts, and soy in varying amounts. Well there goes five of eight. This does not mean she isn’t intolerant or allergic, since a reaction doesn’t always happen the first or even hundredth time. I’m not going to worry or get into that right now however. Instead, I’m going to give myself some leeway since there are so many combo foods and trying to do individual ingredients is crowding Malina’s plate and my fridge.
So, today we did one of those combo foods as a part of our breakfast: Potato latkes. Also, because I have an inkling that Malina would like the applesauce without cinnamon, I’m offering plain applesauce as well as a side of sour cream to go with the latkes. Finally, I offered Malina her mesh feeder for the first time with frozen bananas to help with her teething.
Malina and mama’s breakfast.
Since this was her first time with the mesh feeder, I helped her grab it correctly and showed her how to use it. It took a couple tries, but she got the relative hang of it.
“I want to teeth on this forever.”
She munched on those bananas for about five minutes and enjoyed it so much. She ate about half of it I found out when I cleaned it and was impressed.
The next thing she went for were the latkes. She didn’t try to pick it up the usual way she reached for things, instead today she picked at it with her fingers and surprised me by getting a piece and bringing it to her mouth.
“Just a small piece.”“This one looks nice and crunchy.”“Potato, I like you.”
She developing her pincer grasp! Now I don’t feel so bad about having her practice with the small pieces over the last two weeks. I’m so proud of her and happy because she keeps developing quickly and surprising me with all she is capable of.
And she loved the latkes. I mean it is potato and potatoes are awesome. She picked at them a while and ate about one slice worth between the three over her entire breakfast time.
I got her to try the sour cream in the middle somewhere hoping to get her to see the flavor combination. Instead, she just wanted to eat the sour cream. I guess I should have expected that.
“This is like my yogurt. I like it.”
Next, I offered her a spoon of the plain applesauce. I had high hopes. I thought I figured out her problem with the apples I’d offered so far. It had to be the cinnamon. Apples taste good. Applesauce is good.
“Why do you keep doing this to me, apples?”
Does that look like the face of a baby enjoying applesauce?
Nope, I didn’t think so either.
She did much better with the cinnamon one. So I’m back to square one. I’ll probably go for green apples next. Find one that’s tart but not sour.
Malina spent the rest of her time eating and taking apart the latkes and putting her fingers in the sour cream. She also munched in the bananas a bit more but they were starting to be less frozen and less pleasing to her. So that was our morning.
Malina likes her mesh feeder and she enjoyed the frozen bananas, the potato latkes, and sour cream. And we had more setbacks with apples, but I’m not giving up.
Despite any setbacks it’s always important to remember that you are doing great and you’ve got this!
Malina is full swing teething and her sleep schedule is changing again. Both are signs that she’s developing and growing, but it is bittersweet as her mama. I’ve enjoyed her as a small newborn baby, then as a rolling infant, and now as a learning to crawl infant who will probably hit toddling before being a toddler. Her food journey is one of those things that show how she is progressing as well. How much food she eats, how she interacts with it, and what she can and can’t do. Everyday she gets closer to being able to pick up the food easier despite its shape or texture. She still has a lot of issues of course, this is only her second week, but I can see her improvements.
One of the things I wanted to do from the begging of our BLW journey was to introduce foods in different ways. Different textures, tastes, and ways of serving. I was able to do that very well with eggs during our egg allergen introduction but with dairy the concept is a little more complex. I don’t think Malina knows that one cheese is different from another or that yogurt and cheese (at least the ones were doing for now) come from cow milk. I’m sure that if I gave her sour cream or whipped cream the concept would still be lost on her. That would be a great thing for teaching a toddler, and is something I’ll probably revisit because that sounds fun.
So my point is that repetition can be important but there are things that don’t benefit from it. So since our dairy allergen introduction is not going to benefit I might as well find other things to repeat.
So today we did two things for a second time with slight alterations: rosemary carrots, this time steamed, and cinnamon applesauce.
The other part of our breakfast was cheddar cheese slices and turkey meat slices (no nitrates, because they told me to avoid them while pregnant and it’s easy to avoid for Malina for now). This is a very European breakfast I realize, it makes me especially remember mornings in Germany and Italy where there were a lot of cheese and meat like this offered in the morning. But I digress. This is Malina’s food adventure, not my reminiscing on travel adventures time.
So once I had the carrots cooked up I served our breakfast and sat Malina down. Today though, because of the teething no doubt, she was not as eager to eat.
Breakfast is just whatever you eat first thing in the morning.
Malina stared at her plate and me for almost five minutes before she finally decided to grab something. It took a lot of prompting, encouragement, and miming with my own food for my part. Also, I’ve noticed she usually goes for what is on the front left side as she grabbed the turkey.
She held it in her hands, pulling it apart before putting a piece to her mouth.
“I wonder what this is.”
She was neither impressed or disgusted with the turkey. She took a little nibble and then pulled it apart more and threw it to the dog.
Pluto (the dog mentioned) is going to get fat at this rate. I can already see that I’m going to have to put him on a diet in the near future as Malina is getting better at tossing the food to the floor. Thankfully she hasn’t noticed Pluto eating it, otherwise she might start to do it on purpose.
The next thing she got around to was the cheddar cheese.
“This doesn’t taste like yesterday’s cheese.”
It probably proves her preference for the mozzarella since she nibbled on the cheddar before spitting it out. I was impressed by her actually biting off a piece to do so with though.
The next thing was the steamed rosemary carrots. Since she likes the baked rosemary carrots I figured this would be an easy one for her to like.
“These carrots are lousy.”
I was wrong. Texture means a lot to Malina. That’s why she only liked one kind of egg. So apparently, baked carrots are superior to steamed. I don’t mind her choice, I agree with it actually. There are only a few vegetables I like steamed, but it’s important to try so here we are.
Finally, I gave her a spoon with the applesauce. She did not eat the applesauce right away though and instead turned the spoon around to chew on it.
Oh, teething.
She did inevitably let me help her turn the spoon and then some of the applesauce made it to her mouth. She seemed pleased with it but she was not as gung-ho as she was with the yogurt. But hey, applesauce was a win.
“Applesauce is okay.”
Since Malina wasn’t very interested in her food and she had interacted everything, I let her have another five minutes before starting to clean her up and calling breakfast as being over.
So far the only dairy Malina likes is yogurt and mozzarella cheese. One is tart and the other very mild. So I think the next things we will try will be like those flavors. I have plenty of ideas. I also think that she would like plain applesauce more than cinnamon, so that is something I’ll play with too in the future. I can only think of two more methods for the carrots so I’ll keep those in mind as well. I
learned a lot from today, even if Malina didn’t eat much of anything. So this was a good way to remind myself that BLW is a journey and everyday doesn’t have to be measured by how much baby eats but what the experience has shown.
So remember, even if it’s hard to feel successful, you are doing great and you’ve got this!
Have you noticed I stopped including the times? I decided that it didn’t really matter for the blog when Malina was eating, though I do keep track in case of allergic reactions, and decided to drop it. Plus, our schedule is all over the place, especially recently. Malina used to sleep until 7:30 or 8. Now she wakes up closer to 6. That can impact the whole morning and, if I let it, the whole day. I like schedules. She likes schedules. Messed up schedules make both of us cranky.
Today was an off schedule day but we still did our morning ritual and then started Malina’s breakfast.
Broccolini with nutritional yeast, orange slices, and mozzarella cheese sticks (commonly referred to as “strong cheese”).
Eager as always.
Protein is great, I’m a big meat eater, but every meal does not have to have protein in it. That being said, every meal also doesn’t need carbs or fruits, or vegetables. I personally try to have one vegetable or fruit with every meal and then build from there. Since I’m focusing on dairy this week I wanted to do cheese at least once and so went for mozzarella.
Now, back to breakfast.
Malina, as you can see in the above picture, went for the broccolini right away. I’d steamed it and then brushed the florets in olive oil and then nutritional yeast. I got the recipe from one of my BLW cookbooks and was pleasantly surprised by the flavor of the nutritional yeast and what it added to the broccolini. Malina was equally impressed as she ate most of it off the broccolini and then continued to eat the florets off the stocks. Someone likes broccolini, I hope that translates to broccoli as well.
“I eat the trees.”
When she was done with the broccolini, Malina moved on to the mozzarella. She gummed on it for a while, mostly because she’s teething, and seemed to like it.
“Look, I have cheese teeth.”
I don’t think she actually bit off any of the cheese, but she did enjoy chewing on it. So I say she liked it at least. I’ll have to try introducing it again some time.
Next and last was the orange slices. I’m not sure on the etiquette for slicing an orange for BLW, but I figured we wanted less pulp and less of the fibers that hold the slices together. so I peeled the orange, separated the slices, cut off the inner firm piece, and then cut off the outer pulpy flesh. All that work was worth it for peace of mind. Too bad Malina did not like the orange.
“Why would you do this to me?”
Yeah, probably not doing oranges again for a few weeks. She did not like it at all. Bright side was our dog loves oranges and was happy to take her discarded slices.
So, at the end of the day Malina likes the broccolini, mozzarella, and nutritional yeast. She did not like the oranges, but that just means I’ll have to try offering them again later and probably find another way of presenting them. Like muffins. Muffins are good.
So as always, you are doing great and you’ve got this!
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.
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!
Malina’s BLW Food Adventures 