Mucky Mucky stuff

Letting your baby feed themselves is very very mucky.

Though I think I may have made it muckier today.

I'd made vegetable stew and dumplings.  This is one of my favourite meals and when I like something I make sure the bowl is totally emptied I've finished.  I think this is a very northern working class thing but at the end of my meal I licked my plate!

If you haven't done it before you really should try it, especially if you've had chips and gravy!

Anyway, as I finished licking the plate I turned around to see Anya doing exactly the same thing.  She was covered in stew but she had a huge smile on her face.  Oh well, food is fun.

P.S. I must add, after looking at my previous posts, that Anya is still breastfed and we managed to overcome the little blip that she went through a while ago.  She had a morning and evening feed and two daytime feeds just before she has a nap if she wants.  If we're out she sometimes skips the daytime feeds but she doesn't seem fazed by it.  And since she's been in her own room she sleeps through (mainly, touch wood!) which is GREAT.  I still don't want to stop feeding her yet so I'm very happy with how things are going.  Let's hope the weaning process can be a joint decision.

Does blw work?

Sometimes I wonder if babyled weaning works.

I didn't do it with my eldest daughter and she eats well, though she is going through a fussy stage.

As for my youngest daughter who was babyled weaned - she eats anything and everything!  She knows her dislikes and likes but if she sees anyone else eating she wants it.

Perhaps it's just a phase where she wants to copy everyone but boy does she have an appetite.

I'll see what she's like when she gets to 3 so I can compare her to her older sister, but for now...

YES IT WORKS.

Fast Food Baby

Did anyone see the fast food baby programme on BBC 3 last night?

It was very interesting although quite unbelievable in parts.  Like the 19 year old who only ever gave her son junk food as that's all she ate.  She smoked, ate junk food and drank and had recently suffered a heart attack.  Er, do people think they're invincible?

But it was good to see her attempting to cook healthy meals at home.

It's interesting to see that we sometimes still hold old fashioned values when it comes to feeding.  Don't play with your food, be quiet and eat up, use a knife and fork.

Tonight we had veggie stew and dumplings with new potatoes.  Anya loves it and so does Mia but I think she was tired by 5pm and a bit bored with it, so I bet her that she couldn't eat all her tea using only her hands!  Very messy but a challenge.  The dumplings were great to eat with hands, as were the new potatoes, but the veg stew was definitely trickier.  She did a really good job and in the end her plate had a lot less food on it than if I'd have made her eat it with a knife and fork.

Food really should be enjoyable.  It should be healthy (not all of the times, don't forget the treats!) and excite all our senses.

I love halloumi cheese, especially as you can grill and fry it, but mainly for the texture.  I love the fact that you can have a good old chew.  My mum doesn't like the squeak but it doesn't bother me.  I once had veggie fish and chips in a restaurant and the 'veggie fish' was deep fried halloumi - it was absolutely gorgeous. So much so that it we go back to that restaurant, I know exactly what I'm having.

There's no denying I love my grub but food to me is a pleasure.  Yes there are times when I get fed up of cooking and we may resort to a chippy tea but healthy food doesn't have to be boring.  As a veggie I'm often getting asked if I only eat salad (still can't believe people as me this in 2011) but the thing is I really don't like salad.  Unless it's got loads of olives, cheese, dressing etc otherwise I think salad's really boring.  But I can still eat healthily without eating salad all the time!

Let's just relax at meal times, remember that fresh, home cooked food tastes so much better than convenient food and is a dam sight cheaper, and let's lead by example to our kids.

But also let's lead by example to other adults.

Hurray - my book has arrived

I got a text off the library today to say my book has arrived.  You know, the one I reserved months ago, over 6 months in fact.

The one by Gill Ripley - baby led weaning.

Thank goodness it has arrived otherwise I wouldn't have a clue what I'm doing!!!

Oh wait a minute - she might be back on the breast feeding

Perhaps my hard work is paying off.

Anya is feeding during the night and waking up to a morning feed and she even fed during the day twice this week.

And for the first time in about a week she had a feed before bedtime.

I'm loving it so I'll make the most of it while I can.  Let's hope she continues.

Breast no more (I think)

Boo hoo.

Anya is definitely giving up breast feeding.  I had a bad bug last week and was very dehydrated but I continued to feed as much as I could.  Luckily Anya didn't get it but Mia did.

However, at the end of the week I noticed that Anya would bite me while feeding. Now I'm not talking a little gummy bite, or even a playful bite, it was a massive full-on bite. And it bloody hurt.

I also noticed that my let down was taking longer to happen and she would get very frustrated.  We had a lot of screaming on her part.  She wanted the milk but it wasn't happening quick enough and when it did happen she would often bite.  So she spent a lot of time playing and doing her best not to feed.  A couple of times I just let it go, but when she started to miss her bedtime feeds, that's when I started to get concerned.

Mia had a nursing strike at 9 months and it was awful.  The worst thing was that I really didn't want to give her formula but at 9 months either I expressed or I gave her formula, she couldn't have cows milk.  In the end I expressed for two months until I had made the decision to go easy on myself and give her formula.  But I still wasn't really happy with it.  After being used to breastmilk for so long Mia hated formula (and it stunk) so luckily she wasn't on it too long before we put her on cows milk.

Luckily Anya is already used to cows milk on her cereal so if I need to she can have that.

She has still been waking up for a night feed and she had a night feed last night.  I remember thinking to cherish every moment as that might have been our last feed together.

I've done everything I can to get her back onto breast feeding, expressed frequently to increase milk supply, tried distraction attempts so she wouldn't bite, put up with the biting (sometimes nearly crying with pain), tried nipple shields (she just wants to play with them and bite them and tried different positions.  She's been to the doctors just to make sure she didn't have an ear infection.  The doctor said she did have a slight ear infection but nothing that wouldn't clear up on it's on and to use calpol 3 times a day.  She's also having something to soothe her throat as I suspected she had a bit of a sore throat.

I really don't think there is anything else I can do apart from accepting my breast feeding days are coming to an end.

I should focus on the joys that I've had as a breastfeeding mother and how lucky I am that things always go smoothly (apart from now).

But I still wish she was feeding, a lovely snuggle at the end of the day for the bedtime feed is wonderful, in fact a snuggle at anytime of the day for a feed is wonderful.

When I started to feed Anya I used to say as long as she feeds past age 1 I'll be happy.  She's 1 on Monday so I suppose I'll let her off the hook.

She didn't feed tonight but we still had a little snuggle.

The only trouble with stopping breastfeeding is your hormones returning to a non-feeding mother.  I know I'll be craving a third baby!

Choking vs Gagging

I posted on twitter a couple of weeks ago that I certainly saw the difference between choking and gagging.

How this came about was totally by mishap and by my oldest daughter being a bit careless.

Normally we make sure that all the small toys aren't on the floor or within grabbing reach of Anya and Mia knows certain toys aren't suitable for a toddler.

However, she had a tube of bubble mixture and in her excitement to play with them she dropped (or probably threw!) the lid on the floor.

We were totally oblivious to this, however Anya wasn't.

I saw Anya sit on the floor and start to gag.  But she was silent and started to go red in the face.  She wasn't eating anything at the time so I wondered what was happening.  I suddenly became aware that she was struggling with something but we had no idea what.  Just as I realised she was actually choking she started to vomit.  This often happens during a particularly bad case of gagging but is often accompanied by noise.

This time we could see her being sick and a few seconds later out popped the lid of the bubble mixture.  To our amazement.

I'm glad I was experienced at watching her gagging otherwise I think I would've rushed and grabbed her without seeing what her body does.  That may have made things worse and perhaps she would've swallowed the cap down further, but thankfully it came up itself.

We didn't even see her eating it so I wasn't sure how far down it had gone, but for her to choke like that it was definitely further down than her gag reflex.  Luckily out it popped.

Mia couldn't be blamed too much but we had to strongly warn her about the dangers of throwing her toys on the floor.  I think seeing Anya choking made her realise how serious it can be.

And how was Anya after the little incident.

Her normal self and looking for something else to eat!

What did I learn from this? To watch first before acting otherwise things could get worse.  And when you feel you need to then step in.