On food.

The other day a soon-to-be mommy friend asked me about my baby feeding strategy. I have just sort of been winging it with what feels right, while taking on suggestions from the pediatrician and the Earths Best "feeding guide" I printed from their website (it has a handy chart showing what suggested age in months to introduce certain foods like yogurt, cheese, meat, eggs, etc).

When I was pregnant I fantasized about making my own baby food and how wonderful and fresh it would be for my child. Fast forward to this winter when it was baby food introduction time - there was no time left in the day while working for me personally to take the steps to make my own baby food. In addition, around the same time I read an article about the risk of nitrate poisoning in homemade baby food.

When M2 was about 4 1/2 months old we first tried rice cereal. She wasn't really liking it so we waited another two weeks or so to try again. We tried oat cereal too, but she also wasn't really digging that either. We decided to go straight to purees. I had bought the "veggie starter" pack and "fruit starter" pack of Earth's Best with my diapers.com order. I can't remember what we gave her first, maybe pears? We didn't follow the "rule" about waiting 3 or more days between trying different things. We just went right in and started giving her one new puree per evening. We watched her to see if any kind of rash or other food allergy symptom came up and nothing seemed to. After a couple weeks she was eating the larger 4 oz 2nd foods jars. She really liked all the fruits and veggies we fed her, but the meat options were a no go.

At her 6 month check up the pediatrician said we should really be feeding her the cereal since it is iron fortifide, so we started feeding her cereal in the morning mixed with fruit. Those last few weeks of daycare we started sending a jar of food with her to eat in the middle of the day, and in the evening we were giving her some cereal with a veggie. At the 7 month marker we started feeding her yogurt.

Right now we have her on 3 meals a day. She almost always has cereal with fruit for breakfast, and either a yogurt (YoBaby Organics!) or a jar of baby food for lunch (we've been doing yogurt every other day). For dinner we'll feed her a veggie, and sometimes mix it with cereal depending on how much cereal she ate in the morning. She eats about 5 milk meals a day. She breastfeeds upon waking up, and then has pumped breastmilk for 3 bottles throughout the day. In the evening she gets a bottle of formula before bed. If she has a day where she doesn't eat much or drink much, I may wake her up around 11:30 before I go to bed to give her another little bottle. She's a long skinny thing, I just want to make sure she's eating enough!

Most of the food she eats is Earth's Best Organics purees. I've also tried Gerber Organics, Sprouts, Ella's Kitchen and Healthy Times (all organic). M2 really likes the Earth's Best foods, the Gerber green beans, and all of the Ella's Kitchen flavors. She loves the pumpkin pie by Healthy Times, along with their Aloha Mango Chicken (this is the one meat one she likes). The Sprouts ones I like in theory, they are supposed to be "foodie" meals for baby. However, M2 has not been a fan of either of the unique flavor combos we've tried of that brand (parmesan-yukon gold potato-summer squash, pasta-lentil-bolognese).

For awhile now she has been really interested in what we are eating. If we hold her while we are eating she will try to grab our food from us. The past week or so I've noticed she will whine and cry when we are eating. Last night we were helping some friends move, and during the evening we had pizza. She seemed to really want some so I ripped off a few bits of bread from the crust and fed them to her. She was soooo happy! Tonight she did the same whiney thing while we were eating, so I handed her a bit of steamed broccoli. She got really excited, and since I was trying to eat my dinner, I placed her in her booster seat and snapped the tray on. We gave her several pieces of broccoli which she proceeded to play with and eat. She probably ate about half of what we gave her.

In theory I really do like the idea of baby led weaning where you give them whole food (safely of course) and supervise them in case of choking. It allows them to learn about food, textures, while self feeding. But the neatfreak germaphobe in me screams NO! We do have a splat mat under the booster seat chair, and the upholstered seat is covered in plastic, but I still cringe at the thought of food being flung all over. Like tonight with broccoli. However, seeing how much she enjoyed her BLW meal tonight, I think we will likely start doing this more often. Even if it means a mess to clean up. I probably should have used a bib tonight, but the broccoli meal was kind of impromptu. We stripped her down at the booster seat and gave her a bath following dinner.

Mmm...broccoli:

Mr.P and I's appetizer phase of dinner (we had lasagna and steamed broccoli afterwards):