Baby-led Weaning Part 1

*I wrote this as a guest blog for a mommy-advice blog... in case your wondering about the part where I give you all (who know me) a little "background about me"! haha

Ever heard of baby-led weaning??

If, like me, you took one look at the name and stopped reading because you thought it referred to weaning from the breast at 6 months, KEEP READING!

Generally in North America we think of weaning as a quick cessation of breastfeeding (or bottle feeding, if you don’t breastfeed).  But wikipedia defines it as “the process of gradually introducing a mammal infant to what will be its adult diet and withdrawing the supply of its mother's milk.”

It would probably make more sense to call this “baby-led feeding” or “baby-led solids” because it’s about introducing solids.

The basics of baby-led weaning (BLW, which I will refer to it as from this point forward) are these: NO PUREE, NO SPOON, REAL FOOD.

It’s the complete opposite of the standard spoon-feeding introduction of solids that most people do, and the only thing I had ever even heard of.

A little background about me.

I have a 3 year old boy, who I breastfed for about 18 months, and I have an 8 month old girl who I am still breastfeeding.

With my son I started him at 6 months with baby rice cereal. The kid LOVED it!  I probably could have fed him the whole bag in the first sitting.  He didn’t love veggies so much, but he would tolerate them, he loved bananas and applesauce. He had his ups and downs, but generally he eats pretty well (except dinner time, don’t even get me STARTED on dinner time! It is a battle 99% of the time, and has been since he was 6 months old)

When the girl turned 6 months old I did tried to do the same thing.  I started with rice cereal and she HATED it!  She wouldn’t even close her mouth until that stuff was running onto her bib.  She gagged, her eyes watered, and she wouldn’t open her mouth again for the spoon.  I tried it a few times with breastmilk mixed in instead of water and she ate it the first time, but has refused it since then.

Elle eating baby cereal for the first time! Total failure J

Once, I got her to eat some carrots pureed off the spoon, but normally she just gags and it all comes back out.  Same with peas and beans.  She does a lot better with banana.  But what kid doesn’t love bananas?!?!?

This has been going on for 2 months.  I get so discouraged that half the time the entire day goes by, she’s in bed, and I realize I didn’t give her any food, because I just didn’t want to be bothered (having a manic 3 year old to chase after doesn’t help either!)

The epiphany

Then a few days ago I was reading a blog and someone asked this mom if her 9 month old was eating solids yet.  She replied not really.  This intrigued me because I felt like I was the only person whose kid wasn’t really eating yet! Then she went on to give the premise of baby-led weaning without using that term until the very end.  I had heard the term on another blog awhile ago, but never read the post because I thought it had to do with stopping breastfeeding, which I had no intention of doing.

After getting an idea of what the premise was, I started googling and reading about BLW a bit and I was totally intrigued.

Beyond knowing that BLW involved NO puree and NO spoons, I discovered that it was all about giving your baby “real” food.  Basically, you can get to the point that if you are eating healthy, well-balanced meals, you should be able to give your baby anything off of your plate to eat.

The idea is, to start, that your baby probably will ingest little, if any, of the food you give them, but will be exploring the texture, taste, look, and feel of the food.  Also, that they will be in control of what they eat and how much they eat. 

Right off the bat I thought that this would make eating a lot more enjoyable for babies!

So I youtube-d “baby-led weaning” and I got so excited by what I watched that I gave my girl a chunk of apple the next morning!  She loved it… lunch that day I gave her a banana… and since then she has had pear, avocado, broccoli, and potato (which she actually ate, almost ¼ of a potato!)

Elle gnawing on her first apple! Much more enjoyable!

Other than the potato she hasn’t really ingested much, but she is playing with it and having so much fun touching it and tasting it.

I can see just from these few days that this is a much more enjoyable experience for her and us.  No more trying to get her to open her mouth for purees!  It’s quite messy, and they take a long time “eating”… but for me this is not a bad thing.  I can sit her down with her slice of apple while I make my breakfast, eat breakfast, make my boy eat his breakfast, and clean up breakfast and the entire time she is happy as a clam!

Now I did have concerns at the beginning. 

·      Will she choke?

·      How EXACTLY do I “serve” this food to her?

·      Should I be only introducing one food at a time, and giving her a few days with it before introducing another food?

·      What foods should I stay away from?

Tune-in for part two where I talk more about BLW, resources I’ve found, and answers to those questions J

Funny lookin' dude

Finn picks up some interesting sayings from his grandpa, aunts, and uncles.

One time they were talking about some guy in a book who looked funny.

This was a while ago.

Then today after he woke up from his nap he jumped on my lap, grabbed my face in his hands, rubbed our noses together, and then looked me in the eyes and said "are you a funny lookin' dude?!?" while bursting into hysterical laughter.

It was pretty funny, and I didn't take offense to it.

Yesterday when my mom came to pick Finn up to go to her place for the evening he said "bye, I lug (love) you, I miss you"

Sigh.

He's enjoying the sandbox outside :)

Feels like spring!

We have FINALLY had a bit of nice weather!

Yesterday afternoon while Elle was napping Finn and I went outside for a bit and wandered around. Conor's mom has been working on her garden, so Finn wanders around and watches.

Then after dinner we went for a little stroll up the road again. Elle has been pretty cranky the last few days because of her cold, do it was a nice distraction in the evening, especially since it wasn't a bath night :)

Today we were out in the morning and again in the afternoon! Mom picked up Finn to go to her place this evening.

It's choir night so I usually take the kids to moms house until dinner. But since Elle us being cranky and I'm still feeling sick from this cold I told mom we wouldn't be coming, so she said she would come and get Finn!

Hopefully the weather lasts... I haven't looked at the forecast though, so who knows!

Succumbing to the cold!

After everyone else in the house got sick, now Elle and I have it :(

Conor hasn't gotten sick at all yet, and Finn had a stuffy nose for a bit.

Poor Elle has it worse than me though. I just have a stuffy nose, but she has a cough and croaky voice. Poor baby!

A tooth!

Elle was so hard to calm down for her morning nap today. She was crying and crying, and she rarely cries.

After she woke up, her cheeks were bright red, and hot, and she was grumpy on and off.

At some point during lunch Conor saw that her first tooth is right under the gums!

Yay - hopefully it pops out soon. I'm not used to a grumpy crying baby :)

Changing things up

I'm getting so tired of trying to feed Elle and nothing going down her throat, but out her mouth instead!

Last night, reading random blogs, I came across "baby-led weaning". I had come across this before, but never even read about it because I thought it was referring to weaning baby from the breast at 6 months, which I had no intention of doing.

Yesterday though, I read a bit further and realized that the name is very misleading, at least for those of us in North America. It's a British term, and should probably be renamed "baby-led FEEDING".

Basically it says no purée's and no spoons. Instead give baby foods (when they are ready) that they can grab in their fist and gnaw/chew on. Start with fruits and veggies. Raw, if they are soft, or cooked a bit if they are hard. It's all about "real food"... and getting them to eat what you are eating.

We almost always have some sort of steamed vegetables for dinner anyways, so it's not like I have to make a separate meal.

So I'm obviously just starting out on this. The kids just went down for their naps so I'm going to start reading "Baby-led Weaning" by Gill Rapley and Tracey Murckett (I bought it on Kindle). Tonight I'll try to find some blogs to link up to on here in case anyone's interested.

Elle - 8 Months Old

Elle was 8 Months old yesterday - and she really is a bundle of joy!  I don't know how much she weighs exactly, but after she wakes up from her nap I'll just on the scale with her and get a good guess :)

Awesome sleeper. Seriously she is the best. Other than the fact that she still wakes up to eat 2-3 times a night, she rocks. And I really don't mind feeding her, she falls right back to sleep and I fall right back to sleep. I would take a baby who wakes up in the night to eat over a baby who has to be rocked to sleep (both of which Finnian did!) any day. With the time change I even get to sleep until 7 instead of 6... so I really have nothing to complain about here!

She still naps great to.  I put her down anywhere from 10-11 in the morning, depending on when she woke up in the morning, I only let her nap until 1130.  Sometimes she will nap for 30 minutes and sometimes for an hour and 30 minutes!

The afternoon nap is at 130pm and usually goes until 330, sometimes even until 5!

She loves bathtime, especially with Finnian!  He sometimes will pour water in front of her and she giggles as she tries to catch it.

She is seriously such a happy baby.  You can almost always get a smile out of her just by looking at her.  She loves to play peek-a-boo at the dinner table, especially with Grandpa and Grandma at the other end of the table.  If the milk jug or flowers are in her way she will hide behind them and then sneak a peak around them at you and giggle if you are looking at her!

When I'm holding her I like to snuggle into her neck, she thinks it's so funny and will squeal with delight!  It's the best sound ever!

Still not rolling over, but sitting up like a pro. I love this, because I can now plop her down on the floor if I have to go do something and leave her some toys and she will be happy for at least a few minutes.

Still doesn't want to eat much, but will (slowly) eat banana. Anything else and she will gag on it!  I need to get more consistent though!  I usually just forget to feed her at all because she hates it so much.  But I need to start getting into the habit of just trying something for every meal... maybe she will like it more if she gets more exposure to it... hopefully!

Her favorite thing is sitting in the living room with the lego suitcase in front of her and she just goes through all the toys, pulling out some, chewing on others.  I think she really likes how colorful it is.

She still likes her jolly-jumper, which is a great help to me!  Every morning while we are making breakfast she is in there jumping and giggling as people walk by, and then when we sit down to eat I put her in the high chair with some toys.

She doesn't spend much time on her tummy, but if you put her down and prop her knees up a bit she will rock back and forth a few times, gearing up to crawl!  Just like the whole eating thing, I should probably get her on her tummy more so that she can work on those skills, whoops!

Conor had her standing up to the exersaucer the other day and she was holding on and standing without him holding her up!!  I can't believe she is getting so big!

That's all for now... hopefully next months update will involve more foods that she likes, and maybe even crawling!

Immaculate Conception MIS-conception

First, today is Elle's 8 month birthday... but she wouldn't pose for me to get a good pic, so I'll do the proper post tomorrow :)

Second, I was watching a show today and the lady lawyer said something about there being no "immaculate conception" clause.  She was saying it to mean that this man couldn't claim that a child was his without having "been" with the mother.

Ummm, Immaculate Conception does NOT refer to the Virgin Birth of Jesus!  I can't believe so many people get this so wrong.

Actually I can, because before I learned more about Catholicism, that's what I thought it meant.

What it ACTUALLY refers to is the Catholic Dogma that Mary (Mother of God) was born without original sin. That the moment that her mother, Saint Anne, conceived her, she was given the grace that we normally receive at baptism, that frees us from the chains of original sin.

So the "conception" in Immaculate conception does not refer to the conception of Jesus by a virgin, but the conception of Mary herself.

Not complaining

Everyone is (or was, yesterday), complaining that they wanted their hour back. For anyone who doesn't do daylight savings, or didn't change their clocks this weekend, we had our daylight savings kick into effect (or did it kick OUT of effect? Is winter 'daylight a savings' or is summer?). ANYWAYS we put out clocks forward an hour. Which means that your clock goes from 1:59am to 3:00am... Which I was awake for, btw, feeding Elle. So you lose a whole hour.

But I'm totally not complaining because it means that my 8 month old who used to go to bed at 715 (although most of the time I'm sure she would have wanted to be going to bed at 645pm) and wakes up at 6am is now going to bed at 745 and waking up at 7!!!

I'll admit though that losing that hour of sleep did make me feel off yesterday, and our (mine and Elle's) naps were interrupted to meet up with an old friend, so Elle was very cranky! But if we can keep up these new sleep times, then yay for losing an hour!

A wonderful tribute

On Thursday I attended the celebration of life for Melissa. It was a wonderful tribute to who she was. The seats were all full with about a dozen people having to stand in the back!

It was really great to catch up with some old friends too - some that I hadn't seen for probably 10 years!

There was a great testimony of who Melissa was from a lady who had never actually even met her, but saw Melissa walking kids too and from school through the day-care after school program (she ran a daycare from her home). She said she would see her everyday and was amazed to see that she was always so happy, and that she really enjoyed being with those kids. But also that she just knew she must be a Christian, that the joy that she saw in Melissa came from something more. It was really nice that she went up and shared that about so nice she didn't even know.

Melissa's husband Jeremy is collecting stories about Melissa for a memory book - something for their kids to read when they get older so they have a good sense of who their mom was.

I'm writing out these two stories so that I can email him to add to the book.

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The first is just a little story. For about the past 9-10 years Melissa and other friends that used to hang out a lot started kind of separating. I met Conor and didn't see as much of all of them. Then I moved to Australia and Italy, coming back to Canada for a few months here and there. We decided to start doing a monthly girls night with about 8 of us so that we could catch up and not just keep in touch through Facebook!

One time shortly after Finn was born I brought him to our girls night, and Melissa just took him from my arms and gave him cuddles. I loved it! Here she spends all day with her own kids (two kids at that time), not to mention all the kids at her day care. Most moms wouldn't want to then hold another kid on their evening off! But I didn't even have to ask her. She just loved babies and kids so much that she wanted to hold him.

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I sort of knew of Melissa before I ever met her. There used to be a youth worship service every Sunday night called Doxa. One time I was walking in the back foyer when someone I didn't know stopped me and exclaimed that they were so surprised my leg had healed so fast and that I wasn't on crutches anymore. I was very confused because I had never had any injury to my leg! I told them they must have me confused with someone else and they asked if I lived in Mission, which I didn't, and they said that I looked like someone else.

Fast forward a bit and a friend took me to a church in Mission that he had friends at and I met Melissa there. I don't know if I realized right then that it was her this person was probably mistaking me for, but a following time at Doxa the same thing happened again, but to both if us at the same service!

Melissa had had surgery on her leg (her knee or ankle, I can't remember) so she was in crutches recovering and someone stopped me again noticing that I wasn't on crutches anymore and someone stopped her (thinking she was me) and were all curious about what happened to my (her) leg.

It was funny, and we enjoyed having that story, but I never thought we really looked that much alike.

Then one day I was looking through a friends photo album and saw a picture of me. I said that I didn't remember being there, wherever it was, with them. Then someone pointed out that it wasn't me in the picture, but Melissa! If that wasn't enough, I think I did that 2 more times through the years with the same picture!!

So goodbye to my "twin". You leave behind great memories and a beautiful family. You will be missed.

Sleep over

Elle is an only child right now because my mom took Finn for a sleepover last night.

After Elle went to bed, some of us went out and checked out the new Cactus Club in town. I was so stuffed! There was an accident on the freeway and then the restaurant was really busy. So basically I had to leave right after I finished eating, so I could get back to Elle, but I still had fun.

Elle started stirring just as I got home, so I fed her right away. But then she didn't really settle back down for a long time, and I was getting tired of constantly going down to her so I just ready for bed and eventually fed her again at midnight in the hopes that she would fall asleep, which she did!

Then she only woke up once at 530 to eat and then slept until 730 - yay for sleeping in!!

(it's a cruel cruel world when you consider 730 "sleeping in")

Darned if I do, darned if I don't

We are in that stage where Finnian should probably stop napping... but I still believe that he needs naps... and if he sleeps, I'm more guaranteed some quiet time and a nap for myself.

Most days, as in 6 out of 7 or 13 out of 14, Finnian does not nap.  He usually is good about having "quiet time" in his room for usually about an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less.

If he does NOT nap, then bedtime really can't be later than 8:15, because then he usually starts to break down and throw tantrums when you try to change him into his pj's.  But that's fine, we usually have him in bed by 8, because Elle goes to bed so early (usually 715).

But sometimes he naps, sometimes he just falls asleep.  That's when bedtimes get really bad.  We started making sure he didn't sleep past 4... then we started making sure he didn't sleep past 345... 330... yesterday Conor got him out of bed before 3:30.

So far we are 100% for having a bad bedtime if he has ANY nap.  Yesterday he didn't fall asleep until after 10pm, even though we had him in bed by 8pm.  Every 15 minutes (give or take) he would cry and cry, one of us would go in there, he would say "a little bit of mung (milk)", have a small sip, and then say goodnight.

It just went on and on and on!  Finally I tried just letting him cry for awhile, and then all of the sudden his cry was very loud! I thought he was outside my bedroom door, but he was in the bathroom.  I guess that's what he does, if he cries and you don't get him, then he goes into the bathroom and stands in the doorway, and then tells you that he has an owie on his thigh.

Back to bed.  15 minutes later cry, little bit of mung, goodnight.  and on and on and on!

I really want him to nap AND go to bed.  I think I'll try a couple more times encouraging him to nap and then maybe push his bedtime way back, 830 at the earliest, and see if it makes any difference.

If not, then I guess I will resign!

6am

This is Elle's new wake up time.

I wish 6am did not exist. Maybe 6-7am could be some weird time warp in which it was impossible for babies to wake up - that they would always asleep through that hour.

On another note, the Australian Immigration office has received our nomination application... Don't know what that means as far as when they actually look at it and approve it, but we are getting there!

Goodbye

Thank you to everyone who kept Melissa in their prayers.

I am sad to say she passed away today, but I'm glad she isn't suffering anymore.

Please keep her family in your prayers.

800th post (yesterday!)

Well I dropped the ball.  If I had realized yesterday was my 800th post I wouldn't have been so negative!

But actually I was going to title this post "I didn't really mean it".  A lot of people came to my defense when I said that I thought I was a bad mom... but I did say it in jest.  I know I'm not a bad mom, but I know I'm certainly not perfect.  But thank you to all of you who were so nice to me :)

I sat down in starbucks and about 30 seconds later a mom with two young kids sat at the table beside me, the kids started whining and fighting.  I laughed to myself, and almost changed tables (I mean, I didn't want to get away from my kids just to hear OTHER kids being bad!) Instead the mom took them to the bathroom and while she was gone someone else sat at her table so they ended up having to sit on the other side of the cafe from me... so it all worked out!

I wish I could say that I came back to a happy household with a much better level of patience, but that's not the case.  And is certainly not the case this morning!

Usually my goal for lent is to pray the rosary every day.  Last year I added to that by praying the rosary for a different person each day.  I have been praying it a bit this Lent, but I think from here on in my going to try to pray it every day... with a real focus on the different mysteries and adding a special request for patience!

My mom is taking Finn for the whole day tomorrow!!  I love my little boy, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow :)

Slowly going insane

I'm at Starbucks... By myself. Because Finn is driving me insane!

I'm such a bad mom - but sometimes I just feel like I'm literally going to start pulling my hair out.

He's just been so manic the last couple days, and so needy.

Part of it has to do with the fact that Conor's parents and one brother are gone for the week... so finn isn't getting attention from them :)

The rest is just that he's 3!

I feel bad because Conor is always around to help me out (and I utilize that too much!) but other than a few minutes here or there, so that I can go do other things, I don't always feel like I actually get a break where I'm not in the same house as them... Even if they are both sleeping.

So he kicked me out of the house.

And I love him for it :)

Please pray

Last year I wrote about my friend, Melissa, who at 29 was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gerhig's) and Early onset Alzheimer's.

She was diagnosed less than 2 years ago, and it looks like she is declining more rapidly now.

Her breathing is getting harder, and there is fluid building up in her lungs.

Please pray for her in these last days.

For her husband.

For her 3 young kids.

For her parents and sisters.

Please pray.