Posts Tagged "weaning"
Just when I thought I was going to lose my mind…
Ten ways in which the Universe was kind to me today:
1. Not only did Kai only wake up ONCE last night, he slept in until, wait for it, 8am!!!!! I got up before him, got dressed, made a cuppa. It was quite possibly the best morning of my life.
2. All that sleep meant Kai was in a KILLER mood. We laughed, we nearly wee’d ourselves with excitement riding the bus, we only had a handful of minor meltdowns at Playgroup and Kai made friends with a small girl with pretty hair. Toast was eaten, toys were shared. It was legendary.
3. When we got home Kai sat happily and drunk half a cup of moo moo milk (as opposed to mama milk). This is only the second time I’ve got him to drink any with out screaming and throwing it at me. If you were in the Midlands area and heard a Ahhhh sound that would have been my boobs sighing with relief. We’re down to two feeds in 24 hours people! TWO!
4. In one of those adorable toddler moments, every sip of Kai’s milk was accompanied by a “mmmm!”, a lip smack and a big grin. I’ve been giving him milk everyday and encouraging him to drink it with lots of “yum yum” and “ooh delicious!” – looks like he’s cottoned on the fact that moo moo milk = gooooood.
5. After drinking said milk we read a story (about diggers obviously), we drew the curtains and Kai lay down in his cot and went to sleep. Just like that. That is the first nap time without tears in about a fortnight.
6. While Kai was asleep I made two cups of tea. I’m not sure who the other one was for but I drank them both. With biscuits. I may make two cups more often.
7. The powers-that-be have decided to dig up a car park in the town centre. That means DIGGERS people. Diggers for probably all this week. This afternoon Kai spent 20 ecstatic minutes watching those diggers, who happened to be driven by friendly digger men who were happy to flash their lights and spin the diggers round and drop things from high up to make a better crash all for my rapt little boy. We will be back.
8. Instead of screaming all the way home, Kai sang. Loudly. It made everyone we walked past smile – not frown and look alarmed at the thrashing hysterical toddler that has been the norm for the last week or two.
9. We got back and Kai SAT. And gave me kisses, and giggled at me talking to him in a funny voice, and played with his cars beautifully till his Dad got home. I remembered how much I love him and decided I might not run way to New Zealand after all.
10. Bed time went without a whimper. Kai chose his fire engine book, we sniggered at the instruction to “feel the Fireman’s hard helmet”, and then we said “Night Night” and he lay down and went to sleep. Again.
Thank you Universe. Now why can’t everyday be like this??!
Read MoreFatigue Wars Episode IV – A New Hope
First of all, can I just say… how lovely are all you lot??! The answer is VERY lovely. Very lovely indeed. Thank you so much for all the comments on my last blog post and the many emails and twitterings you have sent my way.
I’m back from the doctors minus two great big vial’s full of blood with that wonderful Tony Hancock sketch running through my head. And since all nine of my pints have been seriously compromised this morning by at least a foot’s worth I am having a sit and a bacon sandwich to make up for it.
I’m feeling much more positive. The doctor rightly pointed out that, given my history, if my Fibromyalgia was relapsing she would expect my pain levels to have increased along with the fatigue and for me to have crawled into her office begging for drugs. And this is a good point as, actually, my pain levels are ok. I did a lot of walking around yesterday and although nearly fell over a couple of times and had to prop my eyelids open so as not to fall asleep in my over-priced under-heated microwave burger at the Blue Planet Aquarium, I did make to the evening without much pain. More importantly I didn’t wake up with ANY which if it had been the Fibro would have been very far from the case, given it’s tendency to make a 20 minute leisurely stroll one day feel like you’ve been run over by an 18 wheeler truck the next.
So we’re testing for low iron and thyroid function and liver function and WI Christmas Tombola and Beatle Drive function all the other usual functions they need to test for in these cases. Results will be back on Tuesday so I’ll keep you posted.
And I am stopping panicking. Chances are this is fixable, just a blip on the radar of my unstoppable plan to write a best seller by the time I’m 30, or, at least, be the first person to achieve world domination through the power of Twitter.
In other news, I made a big decision this week. It is probably not beyond the realms of possibility that my low energy levels are not being helped by the fact that a certain little 16 month old has still been breastfeeding up to 7 or 8 times a day, day and night. Lets face it, he does NOT need this much milk any more, whatever his opinions are on the matter. He eats well and is a big grown up boy now who could probably make pigeon chasing into a successful athletic career, can do all the actions to ’round and round the garden’ AND ‘wind the bobbin up’, and could show you the difference between a train, a tractor, a digger and a car without even blinking. His separation anxiety is significantly better; time away from me now being more treat than trauma. His independence and self-confidence is growing more and more by the day.
It is time. I am ready. Weaning Kai off the good stuff has begun.
I’m not expecting him to stop feeding completely but I am expecting him to substantially cut down the amount he feeds to just 2-3 times in 24 hours And guess what… he’s done it. Nearly every day this week he’s gone from early morning to bedtime with lots of snacks, good meals, distraction and lots of cuddles, and NO distress. Which proves to me that he’s ready too, in a way I hadn’t expected. Kai now has a good breastfeed before bed, one in the night, and then one in the early hours (after which he’ll sometimes go back to sleep). My plan is that eventually we’ll drop the night-time one (when I’m feeling VERY brave and not so tired!) leaving two feeds a day, which is plenty for a boy his age and will still be giving him all the lovely nutrients and immunity boosting benefits that longer-term breastfeeding still offers.
That gives me ALL DAY for my body to do something other than make milk and get to work doing more important things like digesting large quantities of cake and stopping me from falling asleep at random and inappropriate moments.
And the best thing? I look forward to sitting and feeding Kai now. Rather than it be a draining chore that I resent (which is what it had become) with my mind wandering to what I would rather be doing, I sit and I am present and I enjoy the feel of him close to me and breathe in his baby smell and relish every second, re-connecting after a long day of adventures and growing up in which he seems to need me less and less.
I am so proud of him. And so proud of me too. This is a big step for us but the right one.
So there we go. Now, I’m off for a sleep. My bed right now is more alluring than blogging, than twitter, than eating biscuits, and that’s saying something – I must be really tired. I am tired, I’m exhausted in fact. But hopefully only temporarily. And thanks to all of your wonderful supportive words and positive encouragement I am NOT going to let it get me down, whatever this is.
Onwards and upwards. Or sideways and downwards as is more the case for me right now.
Whatever. BA-DOING!! (that was me bouncing back)
x
Read MoreGagging Not Choking
I survey the carnage.
I have been cooking. With three cupboards, an oven that doesn’t work properly and one work surface measuring less than half a metre wide, preparing food becomes a complicated dance of pirouetting, rearranging and balancing, with a few swear words thrown in for good measure, and giving everything at least 10 minutes longer to cook than it should.
The dishes are piled high in the sink, with me somehow managing to use every utensil I own just to cook chicken and rice. I have spilled sauce on the hob and on me and may have inadvertently ‘lost’ some onion down the side of the cooker. You know nothing ok? We’ll just pretend that didn’t happen (or that I dropped some pasta down there yesterday).
But, I’m done. And nothing is burnt. Bonus.
I stick my head round the door of the front room where Kai and his dad are zoned out in front of Gigglebiz – ‘Little Britain for toddlers’ my hubby has described it as. Spot on. “Kai, do you want some food?” I ask while doing our ‘food’ sign that Kai’s just beginning to start to copy “It’s time for tea!”. “Yeah Yeah!” shouts Kai jumping up.
Wrestled into his highchair Kai is soon tucking in with gusto to his rice and chicken. He grabs his fork for good measure and gives a few half-hearted stabs but it is soon forgotten in favour for great big fist-fulls alternated with delicate pincer-grip motions, picking up tiny grains one by one and examining them before down they go with a enthusiastic lip smack. Big bits of chicken are chewed and quickly devoured. Water is quaffed and waved about and dripped onto the high chair tray to make patterns with. When interest starts to wane, daddy steps in with the forgotten fork and I watch as they share their special mealtime game of ‘one for me one for you’, amazed that Kai is finally letting us near him with utensils after months of refusing to eat anything off a fork or spoon except Kai ambrosia (yoghurt) and that only because hands just don’t get enough in quick enough.
I love mealtimes.
They are my favourite part of the day. Ant is home from work, bedtime is fast approaching and ensconced in his highchair with a big plate of food before him Kai is (usually!) at his most charming and entertaining. Mouthfuls for him are usually alternated with tidbits offered to daddy and me, and sometimes the cat for good measure. He sings, he chews his way through enough food to feed a small army, he pulls glorious and comical faces as he tries and assesses new tastes and at least half the offered food ends up on his lap, in his hair or on the floor.
It is glorious.
At not-quite fifteen months old I have to say that I think eating is one of Kai’s party pieces. The way he gets through a meal is usually enough to stop most people in their tracks, and make them smile and comment especially when they realise how old he is – an age when a lot of his peers are still only just being weaned of mush and onto ‘grown-up’ food.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am far from proud or sure of many things I have done as a mother. But Kai’s weaning is one thing I think I’ve done rather well. In fact, both Ant and I are in complete agreement – weaning Kai the way we did was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made as parents. I talked a little about it previously, but the long and short of it is this:
We held off weaning until Kai turned six months old, despite everyone’s abject horror and insistence that we were starving the poor child. And then we did something that everyone thought was completely mad (and by everyone I mean my mother – come on mum I know you’ll admit it). We didn’t give him pureed baby food, we just gave him big chunks of proper food to pick up and gnaw on himself. He could choose what to eat or not to eat and how much. And if he didn’t want anything at all that was fine too. It’s known as ‘Baby-Led Weaning’ but personally I think it should just be called ‘common sense weaning’.
“But he’ll choke!!” was the first objection. Well actually, no. He didn’t choke. He did gag a lot to start with which everyone PRESUMED was choking, but look – he’s just coughing and learning to move food around in his mouth and not bite off quite such a big bit next time. And he’s already tucking into the next piece. It upset everyone else far more than it upset Kai… Gagging is a natural and pretty essential reflex if you’re going to learn how to eat safely.
“But he’s not really eating anything!!” was the next concern. OK – granted, not an awful lot got ‘consumed’ as it were in the first few weeks of weaning (although the first time it did the resulting nappy was a shocker I can tell you!) In fact, not really till Kai hit about 10 months old did he start eating consistently. But look again. This boy is hovering above the 75% percentile on his growth charts and I’d done my research – milk, breast milk especially will meet up to something stupid like 98% of his nutritional needs for the first year, and still provide the vast majority well into his second year. So there was no rush. Exploring tastes and textures were always the priority to start with – if in doubt I just kept repeating the mantra “Food under 1 is just for fun”. It worked – just look at him now.
“But he’ll be a picky eater if you let him choose what to eat – he won’t eat the right things!!” I never really got this argument. He has tastes, of course he does, and preferences same as anyone else. He still thinks broccoli is the devil’s fare no matter how many times I offer it him. He loves sweet things, but will choose fruit over a biscuit any day. Strawberries don’t even touch the sides. Some things (like potato) he took a long time to warm too but now are his favourites. Other things, like carrot, he seems to go through phases of liking. One thing I have noticed that if offered a good variety of foods, over the course of a week Kai will usually eat a good balance of protein, carbs, diary and fruit and veg. 
But not all in one meal – sometimes all he’ll want to eat is pasta, or cucumber. But the next day you can guarantee will be a ‘chicken day’. I’m working on the assumption that somehow, intrinsically, he knows what he’s doing.
“But you’re encouraging him to play with his food – what about table manners?!”. That’s for next year. At the moment we’re all about the fun. Babies wash. Floors wash. We wash. It’s not a big deal. Flinging didn’t last long and once Kai learnt what ‘no’ meant it got short shrift from us. But if you want to draw patterns in your spaghetti and smear Shepherd’s Pie in your hair? We’re ok with that.
Now, 8 months after starting on our weaning adventures, not one person questions our decision. The results speak for themselves. My dad is evangelising baby-led weaning to the girls in his office, my mum is humbly proclaiming that she has ‘learnt a lot’, and the mother-in-law is glowing with pride.
So there we go. One big success story. Nice to share one of them for a change!
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This post was written for the Carnival of Eating over at Tired Mummy’s Blog – please pop over and lend it your support.
And If you want to learn more about Baby-Led Weaning as an option when weaning your babies I would really recommend this blog and forum for tips, recipes, and much needed reassurance when you’re getting started. Or talk to me!
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Read MoreWhy I Hate Weaning (And Think Breastfeeding Is Ace)
Ahhhh the good old days… Fair enough Kai would feed around the clock (despite telling enquiring relatives that he fed four-hourly to get them off my back- hahaha that was a good one!), and at the time felt incredibly draining, but looking back it was pure bliss. I’d get to sit on the sofa all day, watching dvd’s and catching up with all the tv series I had missed (think I got through two season’s of Desperate Housewives and House in the first couple of months!). Ant even set me up a little ‘nursing station’ with snacks and drinks, the remote control and a pile of books and would ‘wait’ on me, stuck as I was with a greedy baby attached to my boob. Kai may have been hungry ALL THE TIME but it was so easy. All I had to do was whip one out and voila – happy baby. Any time, any place. And I never had to worry about how much he was feeding (although of course I did being the neurotic first time mum that I was), or whether or not he was getting the right nutrients. Cause, you see, breastfeeding is magic like that. Give a baby unrestricted access to the the breast and they will feed exactly the amount they need to, with your body somehow adjusting the amount supplied and the nutritional content of the milk according to what your baby needs for optimum growth at that time. And my little guzzler on the 85th percentile was a pretty good endorsement for that.
But then of course the little monkey GREW UP didn’t he - suddenly I had to start thinking about weaning and food and life became a hell of a lot more complicated.
The first big decision was WHEN to wean Kai. In the end we decided to wait till Kai was 6 months to start whilst systematically fending off all our baby-rice wielding associates who assumed that by waiting we were starving him somehow – one look at him should have been enough to tell you that he was doing just fine on milk thank you very much. We didn’t really get all these supposed ‘signs’ that people talk about and as he’d always fed like a fiend and NEVER slept worth a damn anyway. When he upped his feeding in the odd week I just assumed it was a growth spurt and would pass, and it usually did (although his 3-4 month spurts did run together in one long crazy marathon feed).
By the time Kai got to six months old he was quite adept at picking up things offered to him and putting them in his mouth and rather suspicious/hostile of doing anything he couldn’t have control of (especially anything bottle or spoon shaped) so we decided to give a baby-led approach a try, throwing out the spoons and the pureed mush and giving him bits of proper food to chew on from the start.
Kai at 7 months old - enjoying his weaning adventures
This turned out to be the best decision we’d ever made. Kai loved it. And although it took him a while to start eating anything in any great quantity, by about 8-9 months old he was shovelling it down like you wouldn’t believe. And by ‘it’ I mean pretty much anything offered to him. Hard, soft, chewy, crunchy, slippery, teeny tiny pieces and great big chunks – Kai would have a crack at them all. A lot of practice meant chewing and swallowing skills came on fast – as did the ability to chase and ‘capture’ various sizes and shapes of food around his tray. It was just fab. Watching Kai eat a sandwich or delicately picking up every pea on his highchair are still two of my all time favourite sights. And on those days he didn’t eat much I could still rely on good old breast milk to top him up.
So why do I hate weaning I hear you ask? Well Kai is approaching the big 1 now, and starting to breast feed less and less (well, during the day at least – we won’t go into the nights yet!). And I am becoming more and more aware of the need for food to give him all the nutrients he needs. And it feels like an AWESOME responsibility.
All of sudden I’m having to think about things like ‘a balanced diet’, calculating daily salt intake and monitoring sugar. Toast and sticks of fruit and cooked veg just don’t cut it any more – I need to make actual MEALS! When the timing works out he’ll just eat a bit of whatever we’re having as a family but the rest of the time I have to make stuff specially for him and me (my old diet of a packet of biscuits for lunch doesn’t seem quite so appropriate any more).
And of course, being the perfectionist that I am, it has to be good stuff. I’ve never been much of a cook but suddenly I’m making pitta pockets and pasta bake like a pro (or trying to anyway). It’s EXHAUSTING! Trying to come up with new things, get a good balance between different foods and food groups etc. I HATE IT!!
Bring back the days when boob was enough! I tell you what… next time around I am going to appreciate it all SO much more.
Read More
