Baby Led Weaning

Growing healthy babies with healthy appetites

Roast Chicken

You'll no doubt have gathered by now that what I am attempting to do is systematically work my way through the list of Babybear's favourite delicacies that I mention on the front page… it's taking a while, eh?

Well, nobody's feeling it more than me, let me tell you… if I don't get it finished soon I'll have to regress her to a diet of sloppy baby rice for a fortnight while I catch up on her spectacular dietary habits.

Anyhow. Roast chicken.

First roast your chicken. I do it upside down (but enough about my love life, fnarr fnarr) so that the breasts are yummy and juicy, then whip off the tinfoil (again, enough about my love life) and turn it over for the last half hour so that the skin crisps. For extra flavour I tend to stick a lemon and some herbs, rosemary or thyme let's say, up its backside (insert your own sex joke here) especially now that the baby precludes smothering the skin in salt.

I found that the easiest and tastiest bit of the chicken to give to Babybear comes off the leg, but I suspect I'm going to find it hard to describe. You know, the kinda bingo wing bit, but it's on the leg… do I mean the thigh? Maybe. Anyway, the pieces part in almost a teardrop shape, which is perfect for baby led weaning, and the sinews of the meat run lengthways. I have found that if I give her the slightly drier breast meat she loses interest quicker and because more bits come off she is more likely to gag. Whatever works for you, kiddo. Oh and she's not above sucking on a bit of the skin. Nor is her mother.

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Posted on July 31st, 2006 in Getting Started - Finger Food Basics/Finger Food Basics - Month 1 with 2 Comments

Weetabix

Boomer has been born into a family with a long held belief in the health giving properties of starting the day with a couple of weetabix. This conviction has been passed down through generations.  This is from her fathers side I think the flaky logs are particularly loathsome.

Anyway, so I gave Boomer a dry weetabix to play with and she scoffed almost a whole one, she sucked on it chewed and generally mushed it up until it was gone.

 

A word of warning dried weetabix bits are like some kind of cement – they give a pebble dashed appearance. Boomer is going to require an extra half hour in the tub tonight.

I don’t really know what the solution would be perhaps immediate soaking after weetabix but that’s a bit of a faff.

I think the best solution is to let her enjoy weetabix with her papa and then let papa deal with the mess.

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Posted on July 30th, 2006 in Getting Started - Finger Food Basics/Finger Food Basics - Month 1 with 3 Comments

Pork Fillet

Yes, pork fillet. If you don't believe me take a look at the Photos folder…
Anyway, we are at my mum's house and she is making dinner for her daughter (that's me – do keep up at the back). It's like Baby Led Weaning, but thirty years later.

So mum douses pork fillet in lemon and parsley butter, fries it on a ridged pan and puts it on my plate alongside some salad and some Jersey Royal potatoes. Yum Yum, thanks Mum.

Now, you might think that some lettuce, some potatoes and some cucumber might satifsy a younger person but no… once Miss Babybear had spotted her mother and grandmother tucking into their delicious meal then nothing else would do.

I first of all cut it into a kinda chip-shaped piece which was NOT a good idea as she was able to bite too many pieces off and was doing a bit of gagging.

Being my daughter, however, her will to eat the pork outweighed any sense of fear that she might have of an imminent choking incident so she continued to eat it and I was forced to take it off her.

Plan B, and this is the one in the photo, was to give her a lump the size of her fist (actually, this is in Gill Rapley's guidelines but I had forgotten) and Babybear was absolutely fine with it. She just chewed and chewed and sucked on it, turning around in her wee hands until she was left with a pretty tired and grey looking piece of meat which she dropped casually to the floor. This was, as you would expect, accompanied by a round of applause from the two preceding generations of women who surrounded her. Ma che brava!

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Posted on July 26th, 2006 in Getting Started - Finger Food Basics/Finger Food Basics - Month 1 with No Comments

A Gagging Addendum

A nice lady whose name escapes me has just written to me on another website to ask me if Babybear ever vomited after a gagging sesh. And of course she did, but because she hasn't done it in a while I had completely forgotten about it. How remiss of me…

So yes, she did do some puking after a big gag, but I just used to put my hand out to catch it and not make a fuss about it. A bit of 'oh, poor Babybear' and then back to her lunch.

What was peculiar about the vomit was that it seemed very mucus-y as opposed to sicky, almost as if her body had produced some sort of emergency lubricant to help clear her throat. I'd be really interested to know if anyone else had experienced this, so comment please if you can?

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Posted on July 26th, 2006 in The Gagging Thing... with 17 Comments

The Gagging Thing v. The Choking Thing

Okay, here goes.
I have no idea why I am largely impervious to the sight of my beloved daughter gagging… perhaps I am just cruel? Other people, such as her Grandma or her Auntie Sharron to name but two, cross the room at the speed of light the minute Babybear starts the tiniest gagging incident and it's all 'ohmygodshe'sCHOKING!' and slaps on the back.

And what does that achieve, ladies and gentlemen? One upset and confused baby, who was in the process of cleverly moving some food round to the front of her mouth with her tongue when some crazy adult swooped in and started battering her.

I do, however, understand why they react in this way – it's not nice when you see someone you love struggle to do something (and if Grandma and Auntie S take a similar approach when she is buying her first flat then all will be well).

What I can tell you is that prior to starting the baby led weaning business I attended an Infant Resuscitation Class at my local maternity hospital. I should have gone while I was pregnant, apparently, but I didn't, so there.

We got Grandma to baby sit while DH and I (and a couple of friends of ours, actually, which was pleasant cos we went for lunch afterwards) headed for the hospital. There was a heavily pregnant woman there who looked about as dazed as I would have been if I had gone at the correct time. She mostly stared at the plastic doll babies, then looked at her stomach, then back again, as if realising for the first time the enormity of what she had done. (Not to mention the enormity of the thing which would soon be emerging from her lady bits… anyway, I digress).

The class was excellent, can't recommend it too highly. I was lucky that my husband (you know the one, Babybear's father) was able to take the morning off so he could come with me because if it had fallen to me to explain how to resuscitate his child when I got home I would have wanted to smother him. Then resuscitate him, presumably.

Basically we all got to practise with the frighteningly realistic dolls, turning them upside down to pop obstructions out of their mouths and watching their little plasticky chests inflate. It really made me feel a great deal more confident about dealing with incidents, should they arise. Which I'm glad to say they haven't.

Gagging, as opposed to choking, is actually a safety response to food travelling too far back into the mouth so when we see our babies gagging they are actually handling the problem and it's best just to keep calm (or at least look calm) and wait until it passes. I give her a wee drink of water immediately afterwards which she seems to like.

I think that this is actually quite a good infant resuscitation website, but it is no substitute for a real class with a real (fake) baby.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/first_aid_action/hs_child.shtml

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Posted on July 25th, 2006 in The Gagging Thing... with 3 Comments

Pasta in General

26th July 2006
Funnily enough we haven't given her that much pasta yet, principally because I like it with a tomato-based sauce and she isn't supposed to be eating tomatoes yet. Also it does sometimes cross my mind that we are overloading her with gluten (what with the Organix Moon Biscuits and the constant rounds of toast) so if we're not eating pasta I'm certainly not making it specially.
I read somewhere that Farfalle and Fusilli are good for babies to hold onto, so that's what we have in the cupboard at the moment. She likes it with pesto, parmesan and asparagus, that sort of thing…

Update 4 March 2007

Nine months on from my first post and I am killing myself laughing about my po-faced 'we're not eating much pasta'… Babybear would now eat it morning, noon and night if I let her. We mostly stuck to Fusilli as the Farfalle were a bit gaggy to begin with (although she's fine with it now, obviously). I really want to recommend Conchiglie though, because the sauce gets stuck inside the shell so it becomes a dinky little parcel of veggie, carb and protein. We rarely have spaghetti as  both Babybear and her
father find it irritating, but the conchiglie are perfect for a spag blog.

Babybear eats A Lot of the three Ps, pesto, peas and pasta. It's our never-fail meal, to be honest. Sometimes I'll stir in some cream, creme fraiche or soft cheese if there is some in the fridge. Sometimes I'll whack in some fried bacon as well. Oh yes, we know how to live round our house, let me tell you…

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Posted on July 25th, 2006 in Getting Started - Finger Food Basics/Finger Food Basics - Month 1 with 25 Comments

Hummus

Ladies and gentlemen, if it's good enough for Apple Paltrow-Martin, it is good enough for my daughter…

I should, of course, be making this delicious mix of chickpeas, sesame seed paste, garlic, lemon juice, salt and olive oil myself but I'm afraid that a month of baby-led weaning has left me reluctant to approach the Magimix. Perhaps some day…

Actually, I have made it before but I do prefer the shop-bought stuff. It's creamy-licious. The baby has it on toast, rice cakes (more of which elsewhere) or banana if she's feeling adventurous and I am too frazzled to clean her up between courses. It does go everywhere but it's quite benign really, thanks to the pale colour, and easily wiped off.

Now, some people might want to shy away from hummus as the sesame paste can be a trigger for allergies but neither my partner (he's actually my husband but that makes me feel so OLD) are allergic-y and we eat a lot of Lebanese food so we've decided to go for it. We were in a cafe today enjoying a spot of meze and Babybear was perfectly content to suck hummus off some flatbread. The pickled, hot red pepper that the Husband handed her by mistake was another story…

PS Marks & Spencer has just brought in a couple of new hummuses (hummi?).
There's an organic one, which is tasty and whatnot and only available in the smaller size. But the real stroke of genius is their idea to package three tiny little pots (say, two sandwiches worth) so that you don't have to keep throwing out unused hummus after three days. Wonderful, wonderful work. Although only available in Reduced Fat and containing maltodextrin, which is a bit of a bummer.

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Posted on July 25th, 2006 in Getting Started - Finger Food Basics/Finger Food Basics - Month 1 with 4 Comments

Pasta (with chickpeas, spinach, lemon, garlic, chilli and anchovies)

Ye Gods. This is a rather delicious recipe that the Husband and I frequently enjoy but even I wouldn't just have handed it over to the baby… he had no such qualms.
She loved it, of course.

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Posted on July 25th, 2006 in Getting Started - Finger Food Basics/Finger Food Basics - Month 1 with 1 Comment

Pear

Aaah, that most capricious of fruits, with its three-minute period of perfect ripeness book-ended by weeks of rock hard-ness or headily perfumed squishiness. I can't be bothered with them, really.

I've given them to the baby a couple of times, and she thinks they are okay. I don't bother giving her chip-sized portions, i just slice the bum-cheek off one side and had it over. It is kinda messy but at least it's wet and clear so it's easy to wipe up.

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Posted on July 25th, 2006 in Getting Started - Finger Food Basics/Finger Food Basics - Month 1 with 15 Comments

Cucumber

Well, it's not the most interesting ingredient but it's pretty useful to take out with you as it's pretty clean. I used to cut it lengthways in the chip shape stylee (taking the seeds out) but interestingly the baby has recently decided that she quite likes it in the form of a thick-ish disc.  I think it might be because it is nicer to chew on, and the cooler the better, what with her poor teeth…
 

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Posted on July 25th, 2006 in Getting Started - Finger Food Basics/Finger Food Basics - Month 1 with No Comments