The BLW book obviously talks about the fear of your child choking. It distinguishes between gagging, coughing and choking and I believe makes a great argument as to why introducing solid foods earlier may actually decrease the likelihood that your baby will ever actually choke on food. I read the paragraphs over and over and still I would freak out a little bit. So we took some time to give Lydia some normal baby food and then feed her small chunks of table food just so she would get used to the feeling of something solid in her mouth. One week into solid food our routine looked something like this: organic vanilla yogurt for breakfast with blueberries that are cut into fourths, and a puréed veggie for dinner along with a few small tiny bites of what we were eating. She absolutely loved tasting new things and clearly preferred food with texture and more complex taste over canned, mushy carrots.
As she gained the ability to smash things up a bit with her gums, move them around with her tongue and finally swallow them I knew we were getting closer to the BLW method. For the past two weeks we have definitely been trying to lean more toward giving her solid table food (although a stomach bug forced us to digress a bit). Lydia's all time favorite thing to eat is yogurt, so I won't be taking that from her, and sometimes when we are out or feel like eating something unhealthy for dinner we still pull out the canned baby food, but I think we are getting there. Every 4 or 5 days I try to make a big batch of roasted veggies for Lydia to eat for dinner. Today it was yellow squash, broccoli and carrots. I just tossed them in a little olive oil and out them in the oven on 350 for 30 minutes.
As far as her yogurt goes I add a little bit of texture to it by putting frozen berries and some ate in it the night before so that everything is nice and soft by lunchtime.
I give Lydia tastes of whatever we are eating whenever it is appropriate and mealtimes really are fun! She works on her pincher grasp (picking things up between her thumb and pointer finger) with blueberries, puffs or broccoli while David and I can enjoy eating our own food. Once she gets the grabbing-small-pieces-of-food down I think that the options for what she can eat will open up big time. For now we are left with things that are small enough so as to not choke her that we put in her mouth, or things that are nice and mushy that she can pick up on her own.
Something that I hadn't given too much thought until Lydia started solids was if I would let her have more processed things. In general I let Lydia have anything that we are eating which she can also swallow (minus honey, peanut butter and eggs per pediatrician's orders). I want to be careful about what Lydia eats, but at the same time don't want to impose a double standard. I obviously draw the line at coffee and other things that would be at all harmful, but I figure that if we are eating pizza for dinner then she can suck on the greasy crust. With that being said, one of the things that I like most about BLW so far is that it has forced me to take a good look at what David and I eat on a daily basis. I am much better at incorporating vegetables into our dinners and having fresh fruit cut up in the fridge now that Lydia also relies on our meals for her nutrients.
As we continue on this journey I really want to try to put more energy into finding things that lydia loves to eat which are also easy for me to prepare. I will be sure to toss any good ideas that seem to be working your way! Any mamas out there with advice or easy recipes? All in all I love feeding Lydia real food! She loves it and I can't tell you how cool it is just to watch her experience new things... And how nice it is to go more than two hours in between feelings. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment