Weaning Wednesdays

Hubby commented that I seem to be very fond of using alliterations in the blog. I admit, its somewhat an obsessive thing with me, so do bear with it! Anyway, since food preparation and feeding seems to take up a large part of my life right now, I'll just post updates on the "feeding journey" on Wednesdays.

So far, I've mentioned before that we started solids sometime back, but baby J was almost 7 months when we started, as I read that we can actually start later than 6 months, especially if parents are worried about food allergies.  So far, baby J seems to be sensitive to quite alot of things in my diet (I can't take dairy products at all, along with soy in high amounts, among other things), so I thought we could start later.

Baby J hasn't been very co-operative in terms of eating solids (and makes it a very messy business each time).  We started him off on white rice cereal mixed with breastmilk at first, and he was very interested in eating (it was very small amounts as well, so I guess he had less time to lose interest in the food!).  But now he gets very distracted during feeds, sometimes putting his hands into his mouth and smearing the food all over his tray table.  He sometimes even blows raspberries and spits out the food if he doesn't like the taste.  And on top of that, the taste of some foods seems to make him puke out his stomach contents!  So while some babies are eating all sorts of goodies like sorbet (according to my hubby who constantly bewails the slowness of his son's consumption of all yummy things), baby J has only tried a few things.

We've followed various sites and books and have tried the recommended starter foods, introducing new foods one by one and trying each for 4 days (or longer as sometimes he would refuse to eat) to check for reactions:

1. White and brown rice cereal: Brown rice forms the base of all the stuff I feed him, as I mix the fruits/veggie purees into his rice cereal as he can't seem to take strong flavours.  White rice seems to make him constipated, while brown rice makes him poop more regularly.

2. Apple & pear puree: He seems to be ok with the taste of pear and apple, and rather likes it.

3. Banana puree: He absolutely hates bananas.  He spits it out, or throws up, and the table is always splattered with bits of food when we tried this.  However, bananas seem to make him poop regularly everyday.

4. Pea puree: Peas seem to make him throw up.  I hope I'm not going to get one of those picky eaters that refuse to eat veggies!  Plus, they seem to cause his gut to seize up and he will poop only once in a few days, and his farts will be very potent.

Sigh.  I'm going to try sweet potato, carrot and mango puree next.  Mums, any suggestions on how to make mealtimes more pleasant?  Right now, I've just managed to figure out how to get him to sit down to eat his entire meal.  The only thing that seems to work is to sing a catch tune, bob up and down and shake your head, which makes him happy and laugh, and then when he opens his mouth, in goes the food.  So far, we've been improving.  Previously, his bib, table and surroundings would be splattered with food, now, he's pretty clean.  But of course, no matter what mess he makes, just one look at that toothy grin is enough to set things right!