My Issues with Baby Led Weaning

Having enjoyed some weetabix and banana for breakfast

This post has been rattling around in my head for ages and before I start typing it I would like to make the following disclaimer:

How you wean your baby is your decision and I believe there are pros and cons to all methods and I do think there is a lot to be said for baby led weaning (I use little bits of the concept myself) and I have dear friends who I love dearly who swear by it and I still love them despite anything I am about to say.

Weaning, it's another one of those contentious parenting issues isn't it.  That separates people into "good" parents and "bad" parents depending on what you do.  Do you use purees? Are they home made or do you used shop bought packets of puree? Do you start at four months? Wait till six? Or do you do baby led weaning?

In case you don't know the idea with baby led weaning is that babies eat lots of finger foods/things they can pick up.  They can munch on what they can manage and get all the rest of what they need from milk, as they get older and more proficient at eating they get more of there nutrients and substance from solid food and less from milk, it is so called because the baby sets the pace.

Here are my issues though...

The name!  Baby Led Weaning, and even more so when you think that BLW folks tend to refer to the alternative as spoon led weaning, makes it sound like having decided to spoon feed my children that I am force feeding them!  They still dictate when they have had enough, they are more than capable of communicating when they are done and we don't finish every meal that we start.

The idea that just because we are puree feeding we are chained to the kitchen making special foods for ever more.  In the early days we just pureed some of the veg that we were having in our dinner anyway and very quickly we progressed to just eating whatever the rest of us were having for dinner.  I think that Miriam was 5 months old when she had her first curry (a dinner she loves!) and she continues to just eat whatever the rest of us are having, just pureed to a texture and consistency she could manage.  Now that she is a little older it is normally just mushed up with a fork or increasingly I just put bits down for her to pick up for herself (there's that nod to baby led weaning from me)

My baby (both of them actually, but even more so Miriam) was ravenous, long before she was ready to do baby led weaning, she could hold her head up quite the thing but nowhere near being able to sit up.  And I don't just mean she was waking up more (I am well aware this isn't necessarily a sign that it is time to start weaning), I mean she was grumpy, she was obvious hungry and at meal times when the rest of the family ate she screamed her way through.  I started weaning at four months and if I had waited any longer I would have been subjecting everyone to a very sad two months, everyone was happier (not least of all her) when she starting having some extra food inside her belly.

I frequently hear that BLW is better for avoiding allergies, and I am happy to admit that I have no evidence that it isn't but I would love to see some evidence that it is!  As far as I can tell apart from delaying the age we wean at the only difference between what I feed my child and what a BLWer feeds their child is the form it is served in...  Maybe I am just lucky but both my puree fed children are completely allergy free!

Also, and this is a very minor issue, how do children who are exclusively given meals to pick at learn to use a knife and fork? (I know they must do but for my children it was just natural to start using the spoon when I left it sitting to get a mouthful of my own dinner and then progress from there to a fork...)

Mainly though. I think my issue comes down to the fact that I feel judged.  I feel like if you have chosen BLW that you think I am harming my children or doing it "wrong".  My children are happy, healthy, love fruit and veg, not overweight and don't eat lots of junk food so please can you try and adjust your language? Or maybe I just need one or to of the baby led weaning camp to tell me what beautiful children I have and tell me I must feed them lovely healthy food for them to be doing so well.  Because you know what? I do and they are!

Holidays!

Is it really a week since I posted, I knew it wasn't yesterday but I didn't think it was that long!

Oh well, I am excited, for it is only 4 sleeps (if Naomi sleeps through, which she is currently doing every second night!!) till we go on holiday!  We will be taking the long drive to the frozen North to visit our families in and around Aberdeen.

Travelling with a small child has it share of stresses and complicating factors though!  There is, of course, the sheer amount of "stuff" they need.  I went through all the stuff we took last time and started trying to think of things we could take out so that we could avoid taking the roof box (I can't think what those things do to your fuel economy but I would really rather not do the 800 mile round trip with that attached to the top of my already quite brick-like family car!).  At one point I started telling my husband we could manage with only two dummies rather than six, he quite rightly pointed out that although this was true, it was unlikely to make much difference to the overall capacity of our car!  I likened the process to editing an essay at university, where what you needed to do was take out a whole paragraph, but being unable to decide which one, you would instead go through taking out some "the"s and maybe hyphenating a few words here and there.  In the end I am not sure I downsized the equipment at all, though I did promise to pack less outfits and sleep attire for the child! (Though I also swapped the bouncy chair we took last time for a bumbo, that definitely takes up more space!).  I fear that in a few days, when push comes to shove (quite literally) we will just admit defeat and put the roofbox (or sail) on top of our already quite big car!

The next problem is one of distance.  It is clearly unreasonable to expect Naomi at 6 months old, to sit in her car seat for 8 hours like her Dad and I used to do before she was around (well, we didn't sit in her car seat, we wouldn't fit!) so you have to start thinking about how to break up the journey and you start thinking of various relatives you haven't spoken to in years and phoning them up to ask if you can stop in for a cup of coffee or even to stay the night so the child can chill out for a bit.  Last time we travelled Naomi was only on breastmilk, getting food into her that way didn't take all that long and wasn't all that messy, this time we will need to think about how and when and where we can shovel some mush into her every few hours too!

The car has another issue too, if Naomi starts to cry on the motorway (which is inevitible, she hates the car and we spend a lot of time on the motorway) there is nothing you can do, you can't pick her up, you can't shove my boob in her mouth (I wish I could find a way) and if you have bravely sat in the front you can't even get into the back to tell her it will all be okay.  I feel like motorways are places of stress for me, I am examining every sign to see how far it is to the next service station and then you have to decide whether to gamble on her making it to the next one or do you stop now, thus lengthening the journey even further!

I am very excited for my holiday, it will be great to see family and friends again, but please won't someone invent a teleportation device, I find myself dreading the thought of the drive!

Radio Silence Ending!

So sorry for my radio silence this last week, I was just enjoying having my friend to stay far too much and then we were visiting family and before I knew it I had hardly posted anything in over a week!

So, while "normal" posting about various parenting issues will recommence tomorrow, I thought I would just do a wee post saying that I just cannot believe how much Naomi is progressing and changing just now!

She is discovering her feet at the moment, I love how much entertainment can be got from just lying on your back holding your toes! Tonight she found her right foot for the first time (she had the left one down a few days ago) and I loved the look of surprise on her face "What, you mean I've got one over here too!?"


I also love watching her take *everything* in, she can sit for ages just watching stuff, anything, although her favourite seems to be to watch me cook! But anything will do, a bit of clothing, another baby, a toy, anything!


She is eating well now, she knows what it means when the bib goes on and the pot of food is there, she waits in anticipation of the contents and so far we haven't really found anything she doesn't like, though broccoli is a definite favourite.


She is definitely growing as a result of all that food, I have just done another round of clearing out her clothes to get rid of the things that don't fit, I could swear it was only 5 minutes since I did that last!  I'm going to take her to baby weigh-in clinic in a couple of weeks, though I am expecting her to have put on a fair bit.

Even with her sleep she is learning all the time.  She is much better at settling when we put her down in the evenings now and although she still wakes often in the night it does seem to be getting a little easier to settle her then too.  She is starting to get the hang of napping too, with more and more worthwhile naps taking place in her cot (rather than the pram or the sling)

I already feel like my little girl is growing up to fast and she is only 5 months old! Can you imagine what I'll be like by the time she tries to go to university?!

Top Seven of Naomi's favourite foods

1.  Apple

2.  Sweet Potato

3.  Carrot

4.  Banana

5.  whatever toy she has in her hand at that moment

6.  Her clothes or any bit of material/muslin is lying near her

7.  Breastmilk!

Breastfeeding traumas

I feel incredibly blessed to have exclusively breastfed Naomi since she was born.  As for any Mum, though, there have been some issues with this along the road.  It can be hard in the middle of the night to know that you *have* to deal with the baby, my husband can't do it.  Sometimes I feel quite tied to Naomi, like I can't be away for very long, not least of all because I hate expressing with a passion and try and do it as little as possible, while still maintaining some sort of life away from the house.

My biggest issues with breastfeeding have come now though, at about 4 months old (although I am sure there will be more in the future).  Naomi is very interested in the world around her and breastfeeding is no way to get to see the world, who wants to look at their Mum's boob or the chair behind her when you could look round the other way and see the people she is talking to, the park you are sitting in or even just the book your Mum thought it would be nice to try and read!!  Naomi and I got a good latch going very quickly when she was born and as a result my nipples didn't hurt very much, they do hurt now with all this on-again-off-again feeding she is doing just now.

The other issue is that my boobs are now covered in bruises where she likes to "hold" on, or pinch my skin.  I have tried giving her things to hold or play with and they satisfy her for a while and then she goes back to pumping my breast to squeeze out the milk and pinching my skin for reasons that I am yet to fathom!!

The next road I have to negotiate is one that Mums using formula need to walk down too; as we start weaning how do you know how much milk to give versus food, and even more than before, as a breastfeeding Mum, how do I know how much milk she is getting at all, and how do I give her less as time goes on?  I know that for now and the next several months milk is the most important part of her diet, and I know that she will take the milk she needs, but I feel a little lost with this particular aspect of breastfeeding!

We have made it through all the other breastfeeding traumas, and so I am sure we will make it through these ones too, but I think I had thought all my breastfeeding woes would be at (and end in) the beginning! Just not true.

Weaning

Yesterday my little girl started on solid food.  I had decided that sweet potato would be good, because it is sweet, very smooth (we are weaning young, to find out why, read this post) and it had my breast milk in it, so I thought it would taste more familiar.

She didn't hate it, but neither would I say it was a resounding success! So today, at the advice of some friends I gave her some baby rice made with my milk, and I think she loved it! She still seemed a bit unsure of the new consistency, but she seemed much happier than the day before.

I am glad too, I have had quite a down day today, feeling slightly inadequate as a Mum, and a bit overwhelmed.  Naomi had seemed so ready for food, she was certainly interested in what Mummy and Daddy were doing every meal time, and so I was convinced she would take to it really easily and I think the fact that it didn't just work straight off had left me feeling a little dejected.  In hindsight, I aimed too high, I wanted to avoid using anything from a packet but as a result, I gave Naomi something she just wasn't ready for.

Tomorrow we will do some more baby rice, we'll just work up to the tasty vegetables currently packing my freezer!

EAT Study

Naomi and I are to be part of a Study looking at food allergies in babies, how they develop and more importantly how to stop them from developing at all!



The main criteria for the study is that the babies are exclusively breastfed and once there you are randomly placed into one of two groups, the control group who wean at about 6 months as per the current recommendations and then the "early introduction" group who begin weaning at around 4 months and are introduced to potential allergens (peanut, sesame, fish, egg, wheat and cow's milk) over around a month and then keep eating these foods regularly till at least 3 years of age.



Well, today Naomi and I went to London to meet the team and find out which group we would be in, it turns out we are going to be in the early introduction group.  I am quite pleased about this, as Naomi has been showing an increasing interest in food and I didn't like the idea of having to keep her on only breast milk for another two months!  We won't be doing any solids for at least another 10 days, as they did a blood test today to make sure she doesn't have any allergies already, so we need to wait for the results of that test.  (We also had some skin prick tests done today, which all came back negative, no allergies in my little girl!)



Naomi was a complete trooper through the whole day, although I don't think she liked having her height measured and I can say with certainty she didn't like having the skin prick test done, or her blood test (although that all seems fair enough to me!).



I wasn't looking forward to the train home, as last time we went to London she cried incessantly for the whole journey.  This time though she was amazing, hardly any crying at all and lots of making friends with anyone she could lay her eyes on!  She even charmed the drinks trolley man into giving me a free bottle of diet coke when I said that I didn't have any cash and he didn't have a card machine!



So, we'll let you know how we progress with the weaning!