Baby Led Eating
Missis is seven months old. She is just sitting. When she was five and a half months, she started to grab food out of my hand, HIDs hand, Boy's hand...you get the picture. And if you tried to take it back, oh, it was utter meltdown. So we started babyled weaning a bit earlier than I was comfortable with. We havn't yet come across a foodstuff that she hasn't grabbed and attempetd to devour with a gusto. The only problem seems to be her frustration at not being able to do it accurately/quick enough/soon enough. Perhaps it's her firey red hair coming out in her personality! It has made me realise that Boy and I had been totally stuck in a rut food wise. Cereal, cheese butty, pasta. Most days! Boring or what. Missis had become a bit constipated, I think due to the bread, so we've been shaking up the family meal rotas and doing some proper planning and shopping, and EATING! I've been going for things that are easier to hold for the sake of avoiding mealtime meltdowns when she just CAN'T DO IT! So tonight it was risotto fingers, recommended by a friend. Delicious, but what a faff and mess to make. Breakfast can be a toughie, fruit is good, but often to slippy to hold (and thus avoid meltdowns), cereals seem a bit little in the absence of a pincer grip just yet, and toast all the time is dull!
She's doing really well. She's so tiny that it shocks people when we are in public (two people in the last week have said she looks three months old, not seven), and it's prompted many people to ask me about baby led weaning, even via my photo albums of her eating on facebook! A few nights ago, we took her along with us to our favourite Italian restaurant. She was amazing. We leisurely ate our meal, and had an adult conversation, while she tucked into pasta and pizza. I loved this stage with Boy. And Missis, aside from her fireyness, is powering on with food. It took Boy ages to realise it wasn't just play and fun, she knew just a few weeks in! She shakes with excitment as her little hands shakily deliver the food to her wide, "O" mouth!
Labels: baby led weaning
posted by allgrownup @ 12:49 pm
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Piran loves crumpets for breakfast, easy to hold on to and eat. He doesn't eat much fruit, so sometimes I have given him vegetables for breakfast too. It is good she is so keen, we have very slow progress but we are sticking with the BLW
Hello!
Eleanor started early, too. She only turned 6 months on Sunday, but has been stuffing herself with food for almost a month now. (Rosemary waited until 6 months, but Eleanor was really not about to wait that long!)
Some things that work well for us, if you're interested (am going to blog about it soon, if I get round to it):
For breakfast: crumpets with philadelphia (cut into 3 fingers),
oatcakes with philadelphia, or bare, rice cakes (either the baby ones, or just plain ones cut up), croissant, with fruit (see below) or cold vegetables from night before.
With lots of fruit and veg, keep the skin on and she'll eat around it (my instinct is always to remove it but read a BLW blogpost recently saying keep it on, and it works really well). Eleanor devoured almost half an orange at the Children's Centre today, eating the flesh and sucking the juice, but leaving the skin and pith. Melon, pear, apple, mango, peach... all work well like this, as do courgette and cucumber in the vegetable category.
We do a bunch of vegetable chunky fingers for every couple of days - either roasted in good quality olive oil, steamed or braised (with a bit of red wine vinegar and sugar) then use them with meals and as snacks.
Toast can be used as a receptacle for various things - philadelphia, hummus, guacamole, etc. Spaghetti is great, as they suck the sauce off it, even if they don't eat it.
Anyway, you may know all this already, but thought I'd share, just in case it's useful!
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