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Tag Archives: baby led weaning

The “Good Eater”: Myth or Reality?

22 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?

≈ 32 Comments

Tags

baby led weaning, child nutrition, healthy meals, nutrition, parenting, picky eating

PH had a softball game yesterday, and as I was standing around chewing a hot dog and handing the onions to my baby, someone commented on the fact that he is a “good eater”.

He really is. So far.

I have never really found anything that Babby doesn’t like, with the exception of some spicy sausage that was a bit too hot for his taste.

The kid eats pickles. And lemons. LEMONS.

You know how, when you are looking at your food and you see the one thing on your plate that you don’t want to eat, you say “I’ll give it to the dog”?

Well, in our house, it’s “let’s give it to the baby.”

Don’t want the zucchini that came in my salad? Babby will eat it.

Don’t want the lemon from my diet coke? Babby will eat it.

Don’t want the yolks from my boiled eggs? Babby will eat them.

Too many sauteed onions on my hot dog? Babby will eat them.

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I assume that his taste buds must not be fully developed, and I know that many kids begin pickiness in toddlerhood, so I’m not ready to gloat over my “good eater” baby yet.

I have to say, though, that I do agree with articles like this, which scold parents for succumbing to their child’s finickiness.

“Sneaking” vegetables into kids food seems to be all the rage these days, and while I agree with Dirt&Noise that it is always good to make all things as healthy as possible, I also agree that if you are always trying to trick your kid into eating healthy, your kid isn’t learning long term habits from it.

When I was in that Post Partum group, a nutritionist came to speak to us. She assurred all of the mothers, some of whom had babies or toddlers who were eating solids, that it was okay if their kid “just wouldn’t eat” certain foods. Then she said something that I have mentally tattoed across my brain for evermore:

It is the PARENT’S responsibility to provide healthy, nutritious, balanced meals at regular intervals. It is the CHILD’S responsibility to eat them.

She went on to say that if a child refuses to eat this or that occasionally, that’s ok. As long as you keep offering it, and as long as you offer other alternatives in the same category at other meals, he’ll be all right.

Forcing a child to eat something he hates won’t help, and neither will giving him something else instead. A child needs to be taught how to take responsibility for his own food choices.

“A child will not allow himself to starve,” she said, “and missing the occasional food group, or entire meal – or even several meals in a row – will not have a serious long term affect on his health. However, making him chicken nuggets when he turns his nose up at the salmon WILL have a long term affect on his eating habits in general, and that’s worse than going hungry now and then.”

Apparently this “eat or don’t, but it’s all your getting” approach even works on hardcore cases.

The Baby Led Weaning book that I bought says very much the same thing. It warns me not to mind if Babby won’t touch his food today, because he’ll very likely eat everything in sight tomorrow. It says that kids rarely eat a balanced meal all in one sitting, but rather balance their own meals by eating a lot of protein today, a lot of vegetables tomorrow, and a lot of grains the day after.

Studies show that when a kid is allowed to pick and choose, he does actually eat vegetables voluntarily. I am to offer him something from each food group each meal, and if he doesn’t want it, then fine. I will do it again next meal, and the next, and he will balance his own meals.

I have definitely found this to be true with Babby. Two days ago he turned his nose up at the egg that I offered him. He nibbled one piece and then deliberately dropped it onto the floor. Today he spent half an hour happily picking at the eggs I gave him.

A few days ago he ignored his vegetables and chowed down on piece after piece of meat. The next day he ignored his meat and gobbled green pepper after green pepper.

Babby is a “good eater”, but not because he eats everything all the time. He is a good eater because he eats something most times and eats most things most of the time.

The first time I gave him potato salad he wouldn’t touch it. The next day I offered him some again and he couldn’t get enough. Is that pickiness? Or just daily variation? I call it variation.

He probably will get pickier as he moves into toddlerhood, but I feel prepared, thanks to my BLW book and that god-sent nutritionist.

I know that I won’t panic when he refuses to eat his dinner, because I will know that he’ll make up for it at breakfast, or lunch, or dinner the next day. I will focus strongly on my responsibility: providing him with healthy and balanced options, and letting him do the rest.

I have heard of some parents who become slaves to their kids’ picky preferences, and it happens out of love. You don’t want your kid to starve, and if he WON’T eat his salmon, maybe you should cook him some chicken nuggets.

Only the nutritionist told me not to, and I won’t.

I don’t agree, though, with people who claim that pickiness is entirely to be blamed on the parent’s feeding methods. Studies have shown that some people (me included) are more sensitive to bitter flavours than others. Those kids are likely to be the picky kids, because stuff just tastes worse to them.

So if your kid is picky, it isn’t your fault.

But it doesn’t follow that your child should have to subsist on cookies and french fries, either. You provide the healthy food, and if they won’t eat, they won’t eat.

I heard a story recently which strengthened my resolve to let Babby be picky if he wants to be, without falling into the trap of rewarding that pickiness.

A friend of mine was out with some friends and their three year old daughter at a fair. The mother asked the child, “what do you want to eat?”

(Open ended question – Danger! Danger!)

The kid said “Pizza!”

There is no pizza at the fair. Hotdogs, burgers, corndogs, mini doughnuts and cotton candy. No pizza.

They told her this, and she threw a tantrum, because she had already gotten it in her head that she wanted pizza. So then she refused to eat anything. The mother became so anxious over her child going hungry that she begged some cookies off of my friend, and plied the child with those.

“Here, honey, will you eat these?”

Really? You’re worried that you kid can’t survive without food for a couple of hours, so you give her sugar cookies? You do know that sugar cookies are not the same as burgers and hotdogs, right?

If the kid isn’t hungry enough to eat non-pizza food, then maybe the kid isn’t hungry enough.

They say that hunger is the best sauce.

When I worked at the service dog school, I can’t tell you how many puppy raisers anxiously told me at turn-in time that the dog was “picky”. I was sometimes given elaborate instructions on what was required to get the dog to eat. THIS kind of food only, he doesn’t like the other kind. Add some gravy. Give him the first few mouthfuls out of your hand. All kinds of nonsense like that.

We didn’t have time to beg Labradors to eat. We put them in the kennel with the others and gave them their daily rations. If they didn’t eat their meal, their kennel mate would.

Pickiness vanished overnight. Within days those “picky” dogs whose puppy raisers had spent months anxiously wheedling and coaxing to eat their meals were gobbling their meals in ten seconds flat.

Yeah, I’m glad that Babby is a “good eater” and I hope he stays that way, but if he doesn’t…

Eat it, or don’t eat, it’s your choice.

I can handle that.

How do you deal with your kid’s pickiness? Was your baby a “good eater” who turned picky, and what did you do?

Babby Update: “I EAT IT” Edition

07 Thursday Apr 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

babies, baby led weaning, baby proofing, crawling, milestones, object permanence, parenthood, seven months, solid foods

I can’t believe he’s seven months old.

The first three months lasted an eternity, and the last four have winged by. My mat leave is more than half over. How’s that for a scary thought? Maybe I should, like, look for daycares and a job and such.

Most of the time, Babby is happy, occasionally fussy, and continually sleepless. His good napping fell apart a week or two ago. I won’t dwell on the sleep thing, though, because I have a sleep mega-post coming down the chute, so stay tuned for that.

He has also been fussier this week. I think his teeth are starting to come through – when he opens his mouth, I can see two well-defined nubbins on his bottom gum. He still bites everything in sight.

As far as milestones are concerned, he’s fine. He can sit up (although he still thinks the best way to stand up is to arch his back, so when he’s had enough sitting, he flollops onto his back). He hasn’t figured out crawling. He’s still working on the theory that lifting his hands and feet off of the ground so he’s balancing on his belly and then waggling his butt energetically like a stranded dolphin is the way to propel himself forwards. This works great in the bath/the pool. Not so much on land.

SCOOT!

When he props himself up on his hands, he pushes himself backwards instead of forwards. The more he tries to creep, the more he just ends up scooting away from the object he’s trying to get at. Then he gets frustrated and wails until I come and rescue him.

I haven’t been looking forward to him becoming mobile, and when he started flipping over at 6 weeks old, I thought I was doomed to an early crawler. However, I am relieved to realize that I didn’t factor something in: when a baby can flip onto his back before two months of age, his tummy time becomes drastically reduced, through no fault of the mother. So that slowed things down, I think.

This is probably good because we haven’t babyproofed in the least – the house is a death trap. Electrical sockets without their plates on, let alone protective covers. Plastic bags on the floor (PH pointed out the irony of the fact that there is a big plastic bag in Babby’s room… filled with baby-proofing equipment). Toothpicks and elastic bands in unexpected places. Man-eating tigers under the bed. That sort of thing.

However, I’m not thrilled with him getting bored and fussing to be moved every five minutes. I’m starting to wish that he would get crawling so he can stop complaining about it.

It’s not a strength issue, that’s for sure. He’s been able to support his own weight practically since birth, so he likes to stand on the ground while one of us holds his hands. Then he tries to walk, but it’s really just a controlled wobble forwards. It’s not walking.

Also, when he’s pissed off he arches his back and he ends up doing this weird thing where only his head and his toes are touching the ground. So strength? There. Finesse? Not so much.

He definitely has object permanence.

Peekaboo, once his favourite game, no longer holds any surprises for him, although he still enjoys the occasional game of it. Hidden objects don’t faze him – he immediately tries to lift off the lid/move the blanket to reveal the toy.

He especially thinks it’s hilarious when I hide behind a blanket and then, when his fingers come thrusting underneath to find me, I bite them. HILARIOUS.

Also worthy of big belly laughs: dolphin kicks in the bathtub, having adults imitate his noises with excessive dramatic flair, tickles, being held upside down, and anything startling.

The biggest thing this month has definitely been the food. This month, for the first time, he has taken in energy which I did not provide. Up til now, every molecule in his body came from my body. Now he is taking in food that I did not make for him. *weeps*

Of course, I’m still the primary source of food. Solids are just supplemental at the moment. All he ate today, for example, was an arrowroot biscuit. But yesterday he gobbled a hunk of soft chicken and masticated a big piece of chewy steak. I try to make sure he gets something with iron in it on a regular basis, like red meat. The paediatrician actually told me that they are thinking of changing the recommendations, and listing meats as ideal “first foods”, because of the iron.

At first he just played with food – it was something new to put in his mouth. But around the middle of the month he really got the idea. I noticed that he was actually eating when I gave him some pork gyoza, two, and realized when cleaning up that there wasn’t nearly enough scraps left over.

Then he sucked the entire pulp out of a slice of pickle and we knew he had the idea.

He has eaten: apple sauce, squid, shrimp, pork, beef, chicken, carrot, green pepper, orange pepper, red curry (actually, he didn’t enjoy that much), spicy thai chili sauce (he did like that), potato, cauliflower, broccoli, gyoza, pickle, lemon sorbetto (just a taste), tomato, oatmeal, arrowroot cookies, saltines, and probably more.

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NOM NOM NOM

Got anything that needs eating? Babby will eat it for you.

Nom.

*No cats were actually harmed in the making of this baby.

Babby’s First Cephalopod

08 Tuesday Mar 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, Life's Little Moments

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

babies, baby led weaning, baby's first solids, calamari, pancake tuesday, parenting, six months old, solid food, weaning

I think it’s appropriate that he is turning six months on Pancake Tuesday, considering what happened at De Dutch yesterday.

The book we bought on Baby Led Weaning encourages you to follow the WHO recommendations of exclusive breastfeeding until six months. After that, signs of readiness for solid foods are listed as:

  • Being able to sit up with minimal support
  • Able to easily bring things to his mouth with his hands
  • Most importantly… shows an interest in eating.

Well, yesterday the waitress set down my pannekoek and a plate of hash browns… and Babby’s hand shot out from his high chair, raked through my hashbrowns, and stuffed a fistful into mouth.

…He may be ready for solid food.

Who are we to argue? For the rest of the day, we offered him what we were eating as long as it was non-salted and non-chokable, even though he was a day short of six months. Are we rogue parents or what?

So yesterday he ate (and I use the verb loosely) pannekoek, cantaloupe, tomato, apple, hash brown (unsalted), and… calamari (batter removed of course – that would be wrong, surely).

That’s normal for a baby’s first day on solids, right?

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Of course it almost all went on the floor in the end because he hasn’t really figured out swallowing. Ultimately, I think he may have swallowed one hash brown and a shred of pancake, and a lot of cantaloupe/tomato/apple/squid juice. So he’s not so much eating solid food as he is behaving like a food dehydrator.

But he’s a happy dehydrator.

Who likes squid.

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