Parenthood
BLW allowed me review our eating habits too. We are healthy but I really wanted Annabelle to eat the same as us; little ones are clever and she would be able to see the difference in our plates! So no more ready made sauces or sugar-laden yoghurts. I found her development fascinating and enjoyed eating with her. It was slow to start with, sometimes up to an hour before she had really finished with playing, tasting and sampling everything but it made me sit down and talk to her about the food and tastes she was exploring. I was careful not to stare at her whilst she ate so that she could feel comfortable and luckily both Nana and Gran were on board from the start and enjoyed watching her progress. Early favorites were yoghurt, mango, strawberries, Mummy’s homemade Bolognese, pasta, scrambled eggs and salmon. Despite no molars she could handle strips of chicken and cheese on toast…amazing!
My pressure cooker is on numerous times a week as I cook meals from scratch now, save a few reduced sugar/reduced salt baked beans!! Boots do great no salt stock cubes and our palates have adjusted to the lack of salt in my cooking. I do big pots of Chicken and Apricot curry with the rice included and things like Beef, tomato, vegetable and pearl barley stew. Annabelle loved scooping food right out of the bowl with her hands and is now very adept at using her spoon. I still watch her salt and sugar intake even though she is 16 months now as I want her to be as healthy as possible, if I know she has had something a bit salty (peanut butter on toast for example) I make sure that her next meal contains very little.
BLW does not give a set plan to follow like some puree routes. You can introduce a new food every day if you like, just monitor for allergies, and of course, be sensible if there are any existing allergies in your family. Cutting foods into chip-sized pieces is a good suggestion, as is keeping the skin on banana and avocado; it is amazing that they know not to eat it.
I started giving Annabelle sticks of cucumber, banana, steamed broccoli and carrot each evening, not at dinner time as such but early afternoon when she seemed most receptive. When she was 6 months I started proper ‘meals’. She would have sticks of banana and toast at breakfast with me for instance. We started with slightly softer foods as of course there were still no teeth but it was amazing to know that she was actually swallowing her food and I could really see her developing the chewing action. Rapley advises that milk feeds should continue throughout and that baby should be guiding you to when it’s time to start dropping these. I always fed an hour before each meal so she was not hungry exactly and within about 3 months her food intake increased and she was dropping feeds and replacing them with a snack instead. It is hard in the first few months to know how much is actually being consumed, I could never tell people how many teaspoons were being devoured, I just had to trust her weight gain and her rotund appearance.
"I really liked the notion of eating together as a family at meals to introduce the social aspect of eating"
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