Baby-led Weaning

As we approached Finn's 6 month birthday, I started putting a lot of thought into how to go about feeding him his first solid foods. I had read about Baby-led Weaning in my breast feeding book and it intrigued me from the very start. So, as is usually the case when I don't know what I'm doing, I ordered a couple of books on the subject of feeding baby; Wholesome Baby Foods (which is a book promoting purees) and Baby-led Weaning.

After reading both, I decided that I wanted to try Baby-led weaning, however, I was glad that I had purchased the other book as well, since the author of Baby-led Weaning didn't offer much in the way of what foods were appropriate for each age group and Wholesome Baby foods provided a lot more detailed instruction on that front.

Finn seemed to be very interested in watching us eat so I was confident that when we gave him his first foods, he would dive right in and be a great eater from the start. As usual, things did not go as I had hoped. Finn would barely touch the food at first and when he did bring some of it to his mouth, he would get the most disgusted look on his face. When he did manage to take a bite of something, there was usually a lot of choking and gagging, which was hard enough to watch, but what was worse was that there was once again blood in his diaper (even though I hadn't had coffee in months). So after some intestinal distress and an intense bout of crying that prompted me to call his doctor, we decided to put a hold on solid foods for a couple of weeks and give his little digestive system a chance to recover and mature a little more.

So after a couple weeks of just breast milk, some probiotic and water, we started again, except this time I tried doing purees and spoon feeding him. What a disaster! Not only was preparing purees tremendously time consuming, I couldn't get Finn to eat much more than a spoonful. After a couple of weeks it had gotten to the point where just putting him in the high chair caused him to purse his lips and turn his head away!

Then one night after failing to feed him, yet again, Ben came into the kitchen and started eating some of the green beans that were still left in the steamer after dinner. Finn was watching him intently and Ben asked if he could give him one. I saw no reason why not, so Ben gave Finn a green bean and to our surprise, he devoured it. We gave him another and another with the same result.

Well that settled it. I wasn't going to bust my buns any longer on purees that he wouldn't eat if I could just give him the same foods we were eating, so back to baby-led weaning we went and it has been amazing. I am constantly in awe of how well he handles his food and how much of it he actually eats. He seems to like just about everything we put in front of him. The only two exceptions seem to be rice and broccoli. For some reason he won't even touch those foods with his hands, much less bring them to his mouth for a taste.

I'm so glad we gave it another shot. It has been so much more fun for both of us and I'm so proud that he is such capable and confidant eater!

Football in the face

In our attempt to get out of the house and do something fun on Sundays (as opposed to just doing chores), we took a picnic to Coronado to listen to the live big band music that they offer at the ferry landing on Sunday afternoons. We picked out a quiet spot on the grass between two groups of older people and settled down. Finn was too cute as he ate his sandwich and then he just played by himself while Ben and I enjoyed the music (which was not a big band, but rather a jazz trio). Then a large group of people came and sat near us. They had a bunch of kids and balls galore. Right away I felt that this was too crowded a place to let kids throw balls around. But unfortunately, none of the adults with this group seemed to think so. One of the dads and his kid started throwing a football back and forth right behind us. I turned to Ben and said "If they aren't careful they're going to hit Finn right in the face!" The words were no sooner out of my mouth, than the dad missed catching the football and it came bouncing toward us and hit Finn square in the face. Finn didn't cry at all, so I can only assume that he wasn't hurt. I think he would have cried even if he had been overly startled, so I really think there was no damage done. The adult came over and apologized repeatedly (almost too much) and asked if Finn was OK. They stopped playing catch, but soon several more of the children in their party started throwing more balls and frisbees around so that Ben and I decided we had to get up and leave or risk Finn being injured by a stray ball. It really is a shame because all three of us were really enjoying the lovely day and music. Those people should have been very embarrassed, but sadly I don't think they cared. Hopefully, when Finn is older and wants to throw a ball around in a crowded area, I remember this story and tell him "no".

Mother's Day

I celebrated my first official Mother's Day last weekend. It went surprisingly well, considering we have a nine month old with an unpredictable napping schedule! I got a bouquet of flowers and a lovely card, which Ben had Finn sign as well. Apparently, this was a courageous endeavor because Finn started wielding the pen like a spear as soon as he grabbed it. Finn napped beautifully (which is my measure of a good day) and we had a lovely outing to Balboa Park, where we rode on the carousel. I wouldn't say Finn loved it, but he didn't hate it either. It also happened to be the day Norway House was open in the international village. They had good food and music. However, when someone asked his name and we replied "Finnleif" they didn't understand it. If his name isn't recognized at Norway house, what's the point! Clearly we need to move to a place with more Scandinavians.

9 month check-up

To begin, I have to report that Finn started crawling last night (5/7/13). I thought I saw him do it out of the corner of my eye in the afternoon. I was working on a project on the floor and Finn was coming over to investigate, but wasn't making much progress. But then as I turned to pick up my scissors off the floor next to me, there he was at my elbow, reaching for the scissors. How in the world do babies seem to know what the most dangerous objects around them are and then have an all-consuming desire to play with them! But I wasn't certain he had crawled to me since I hadn't really seen it. So when Ben came home, we put him down on the floor and put his remote control car just out of reach, and sure enough he crawled right to it without stopping to rest his belly on the floor or even sit down. Heaven help me!

He had his 9 month check-up yesterday as well. It went ok. He weighed 18 pounds, 12 ounces, which I thought was pretty good, but apparently moves him down into the 20th percentile for weight. His doctor didn't seem worried about it, but I felt frustrated because for the last 3 months I've been working really hard on trying to make sure he gets enough breast milk. He's nursing every 2 hours or so during the day and then all night long! And on top of that, he's been eating pretty nutritionally dense solid foods. Really the only for me to do is not to worry about it. Ha! That's funny!

Sleeping has been a real challenge lately with all this crawling practice. It's as though some unseen force is compelling him to practice crawling at all times. So it has become increasingly difficult to get him down for naps and at night not only is it difficult to get him to go to sleep, it's hard to get him to stay asleep. He just keeps popping up on all fours or sitting up and then crying because he is so tired, but he just can't seem to relax enough to sleep!

So, of course, we had this happen during nap time before his doctor appointment and by the time he was just about to go to sleep, we had to get ready to leave, so he was crying while we got ready to go, he feel asleep in the car, then I had to wake him to take him out, which made him cry some more. Then at the doctor's office, he would cry if anyone but me got near him, which made examining him that much more difficult. Thank goodness he didn't have to get any shots!