Weaning 101 (or, how to drive your parents crazy during meals)

Today, for a change, we've invited the littlest member of the family to share some tips about weaning. Here's what he has to share...

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Hello! I'm Baby J, who's actually no longer a baby. I'm here to share my seven "S" secrets to starting solids:

1. You need to insist on self-feeding, as this means you get to eat the fun stuff like spaghetti:

2. When eating, you can try doing two fun things: smear your food, which makes interesting patterns on your clothes and face, or splatter them, which creates all sorts of funny noises (but do note that sometimes that also results in not very nice sounds coming from your parents).

3. Be specific about your food: It'll be great if you prefer your veggies to your meat. This way, you'll have mama scratching her head over what to feed you, since most weaning books tell you how to hide veggies in meals, but not meat. Plus, they be more willing to give you stuff like fried chicken next time in an attempt to get you to eat more protein!

4. Again about being specific, do indicate your preference for foods that stain. Stuff like blueberries, prunes and bananas are great, since you get to do face-painting and art during meals. Plus, they'll pay more attention to you, since they don't want you to get your clothes ruined!

5. Now, if you've succeeded in driving your parents crazy, great! But if they start to scold, it's best to distract them. Try being silly. Wave your arms, babble at them. They can't resist your smile, remember?

6. If that doesn't work, and you're still in trouble, start looking sorry. Or distract them by wriggling out of your seatbelt and try standing up. Rest assured, they'll be too busy trying to keep you down to scold further.

7. If all else fails, do the sob sob thing. Always works! At least, most of the time.

Oh, and if you're older and get to eat yummy things like noodles, do hop over and see my big brother's tips on enjoying kway teow! Happy slurping!

Linking up with: 

Weaning Wednesdays: Rast results, and sippies

Its been a busy week so far since I've been running out to do my fieldwork the past few days, but I've been enjoying hanging out with Junior J when I'm at home. :)  Anyway, the results for the RAST test we did about two weeks back came out yesterday, and it was good: Negative for Ig E antibodies for peanut, milk and soy... however, the overall Ig E level was slightly elevated, but the PD said not to worry. This just means that the boy doesn't have Ig E mediated allergies to these foods, and we were thinking the raised overall levels may be due to the dog.  So I've started adding small amounts of dairy to my diet, and it seemed like the boy was ok after I ate cheese.  However, he was definitely uncomfortable last night after I ate ice-cream, and woke up a few times, so I guess I still have to take it slow when it comes to re-introducing dairy back.  But I'm so glad that at least I can eat cheese again! :)   

Oh, and I've been wanting to blog about this for awhile, but kept forgetting... I won a pair of Tilty cups in a blog giveaway by another local mummy blogger, Leonny (Thank you again!), and we've been using these cups for awhile.  Junior J has to be spoon-fed fluids during meal-times to make him swallow the food in his mouth, however, we've tried giving him this cup to use on his own.  I must say I really like the design of the cup, as the slanted side really makes drinking from the cup much easier.  No more tilting the cup and the boy until his nose is pointing to the ceiling, in order for him to drain the last portion of his drink!

Also, the spouts are easy to drink from (valve-free to promote dental development), and the cups are BPA, phthalate, PVC and dye free, and made using polypropylene.  Its also an award-winner!  However, my only complaint about the cup would be its lack of a cover for the spout, which makes it a risky business carrying it in the diaper bag lest it topples over... All in all, I would say its worth getting, and its great to use, especially at home!  You can get the cups here, check out their cool Weego bottles too! :)

Weaning Wednesdays: Familiarity vs. Variety

I've yet to decide if Junior J prefers the same familiar foods being served again and again, or if he likes variety.  So far, I think its both!  He's been eating oatmeal at least once a day since he loves it and never seems to tire of it, mixed with all sorts of stuff that we normally put in rice porridge (since he's not fond of rice), like fish (ikan kurau), spinach, carrots and chicken.  I usually try to sneak in more veggies by adding french beans, broccoli and cauliflower, and try to sweeten the deal by grating pear/apple into the mix.  Some days, he gets soups, which usually are a varied combination of tomato, carrots, pumpkin, onion and fish, or sometimes I'll cook a big pot of soup for ourselves (like chicken or pumpkin soup) and spoon some out for him.

The boy seems to love variety too, for example, I've been varying the way I cook eggs for the boy (he gets one egg almost everyday since the boy's not growing fast enough, and the PD said to increase the protein intake), since he seems to get tired of eggs being cooked the same way everyday.  Usually the egg gets scrambled with a combination of mushrooms, green pepper and tomato, or I'd add an equal volume of water, whisk it and steam it so that it has a smooth consistency like tofu.

He's been game to try new foods most of the time, like mango sorbet (the fellow has a sweet tooth and happy munches grapes, mango and raisins, but refuses to chew stuff in his oatmeal!) and seems to love cheese.  We've tried melting some cheddar on bits of broccoli and he eats that (he spits out broccoli if its served on its own), and he loves tomato pasta sauce when I add cheddar to it (but he doesn't chew the pasta, so I've given up feeding him pasta totally).  Yoghurt was a totally different story, he ate a small cup every morning when we started him on it, but after 2 weeks he started refusing to eat it, to the point of putting his head on the table during breakfast whenever the spoon went near his face!  Right now, however, the dairy he's been getting seems to be triggering off pretty bad reflux, and he wakes up a few times at night crying and asking for "nen-nen" (his word for milk). :(  So we've stopped the dairy products for now.  Ah well... hopefully the boy outgrows the dairy sensitivities soon, since they say some babies outgrow it at around 18 months!

Weaning Wednesdays: Beneficial bacteria

We went to visit a PD today to have baby J's weight gain checked as we were worried as his weight gain seemed to have plateaued (at least going by our estimates, with no weighing scale to guide us!).  Hubby's ex-colleague recommended her friend, who happened to run a clinic near our place, so we popped by for a consult in the afternoon.

It turns out that baby J's weight and height more or less put him on the 25th percentile.  That's been the norm for the boy in terms of weight, but it meant that he's slowing down in terms of height increase, as he used to be on the 50th percentile for height (yup, the fellow is rather small-sized, but hey, both his parents are small, so what do you expect?).  The weird one was the head circumference measurement: He's been moving up the charts from the 25th, to 50th to now, the 75th.  Hubby says its nothing to worry about, so I guess our little guy just has a big head.  Probably from all the praise he's getting from the grandparents!

So anyway, the PD said we didn't need to worry so much about the little boy's weight gain, and that it probably slowed thanks to his reflux, increase in activity and teething (and she mentioned the fellow had lots of teeth for his age!).  However, she prescribed probiotic drops for him (containing Lactobacillus reuteri, produced by BioGaia) to see if it might help.  Her take on it was that probiotics may help the fellow's gut, which may also in turn, help in improving the boy's reflux, as well as aid in better weight gain.  A quick check online yielded some interesting information on the bugs I'm supposed to feed the boy:

1. L. reuteri is more effective in improving colic symptoms compared to simethicone (used to treat colic), based on one randomized trial on exclusively breastfed infants.

2. A double-blind, placebo-controlled study done on infants in child-care showed that those who were fed formula supplemented with L. reuteri had fewer and shorter episodes of diarrhoea, as well as less episodes of fever, clinic visits and child-care absences, compared to infants fed formula with Bifidobacterium lactis supplementation or no probiotics.

So we'll start on the probiotics tomorrow, and hopefully it'll help with all those gut issues *fingers crossed*!

On the weaning front, I've been trying to add more green veggies to the list.  Hence the boy has just tried french beans, and since my mum bought a whole box of persimmons, he got to try that as well, and he loves them (Another orange thing to the list of favs I guess)!

Oh, and its the hubby's birthday today, so we went out for dinner to celebrate (more on Friday about the food!)... Happy birthday dear! :)

Weaning Wednesdays: What works...

We've started having meals together with baby J since he's now having 3 meals a day, and I think its good as he seems to be more willing to eat when he sees that we are eating as well.  Breakfast usually would consist of cereal (either Cheerios or graduate puffs which I'm trying again) with some fruit, lunch would be some veggies and sometimes meat (with abit of rice sneaked in), and dinner would veggies again with either rice or pasta.  

Since I've ditched all my purees ever since our fridge conked out the other time, all his meals have been freshly prepared.  What seems to be the fastest way would be to plonk all the cut veggies, rice and meat into the Pigeon porridge cooking pot with a wee bit of water, fill the rice cooker with some water, and then just switch it on and leave it to cook.  About 15 minutes later, I get my rice and veggies, all ready for serving!  The pot has been designed such that you can leave it in there with your rice, so that you can cook rice for your own meal along with baby's food... which I think is a pretty smart idea!  (Trust the Japanese to come up with it!)

I've added pumpkin and broccoli to the weaning list. Just yesterday, we went to Udders with two of our friends for ice cream after lunch, and I ordered the pear and mango sorbet (since ice cream is a no no for me thanks to the milk which would make baby J reflux).  We let the fellow try a little of the pear sorbet, since he's tried pear before, and he was wrinkling his nose at the coldness of the sorbet, which was really funny!  Didn't let him try too much though, since we don't want him to get used to all the sweet stuff!  Oh, and for those who are interested in learning how to make ice-cream, Udders actually runs ice-cream workshops cum buffets... just check out their website!

Weaning Wednesdays: Kebabs and orange stuff...

Ok, the kebabs were not eaten by baby J, but us!  I was having a kebab craving yesterday, so hubby and I headed down to Cafe Le Cairo for dinner.  The eatery is located at Arab street, which is a nice place to explore as its rich in culture and chok-full of little places to shop.  Its also THE place to go to if you want to buy fabrics, as there are at least 15 fabric shops, squashed among other shops selling wicker products and carpets.

I previously had a meal there many years back, when my uni class was brought there for a food-tasting session for a module on Islam history and culture.  The food there is apparently pretty authentic according to my lecturer, and they have expanded their premises quite a bit since my first visit there.  They now have an air-conditioned section upstairs, which is good if you have kids as it may get pretty smoky downstairs thanks to all the people smoking the Turkish shisha pipe.  

The kebabs were a tad tough, but still pretty yummy, and it was nice sitting there sipping mint tea and having a candlelight dinner with hubby (however, that meant it was dark so it was hard to take good shots, especially with the iPhone!).  Baby J was happily eating his baby pasta with squash puree, which I used as his "pasta sauce".

Which brings me to talking about his food again.  Baby J has still more or less retained his hearty appetite for solid food, save for rice porridge which he usually spits out (seems like we have a Chinese baby with rather "western" taste buds right now!).  We've added papaya, nectarines as well as squash to his repertoire, and I've upped his daily meal count to 3.  He didn't like the taste of the nectarines, possibly because they might not have been ripe enough, but he absolutely loves papaya.  Its his all time favourite food, and he eats ALOT of it at one sitting, and his resulting poop ends up smelling like papaya as well!  (Not that I'm complaining, since that's way better than some of the really stinky ones that result when he takes ikan bilis!)  Right now, we've come to the conclusion he loves all things orange, like carrots, squash and papaya. At the rate he's going, he's going to turn orange soon like his favourite foods, with all that beta carotene he's getting!

Weaning Wednesdays: Parks, pasta and pork

We went to Macritchie Reservoir for a walk this morning as hubby was on leave, and of course, baby J and the doggy came along with us. All of us had breakfast there, where our breakfast was cooked by the good man, who woke up early to fry the sausages and mushrooms, while baby J ate some Cheerios and banana cubes, and Nicky got a doggy biscuit. It got really hot though, so we had to head back home pretty soon as baby J got pretty grumpy, slumped down in his pram, and sounded his protests at various intervals.

The reservoir's a pretty nice place for evening walks, but not at 0830 with the sun beating down at you! (And I didn't get to take many shots as I was holding on to the leash and Nicky just had to chase after the macaques with me in tow!)

Oh yes, I just mentioned that baby J ate bananas, which he used to spit out when it was fed to him in a pureed state. I read an article recently on the wholesome baby foods website which seemed to answer all my questions on why the little tyke was being so DIFFICULT with regards to mealtimes, and decided that I would try to let him take the spoon to feed himself, and aim to give him as much finger foods as possible. So far, it seems to be working, except for some days where he absolutely refuses to eat after taking two to three bites, which we've attributed to him teething again (this time, at least 4 teeth have sprouted, much to my horror with regards to breastfeeding!).

Right now baby J has tried brown rice baby pasta (which are tiny and really cute!) mixed with chicken puree and carrots, watermelon cubes, Cheerios, egg yolk mixed with some rice porridge and Gerber's sweet potato graduate puffs, and we're currently giving him minced pork in his rice porridge. So far, the puffs and the egg didn't go too well, as I think the puffs increased his number of stools (but I'm not sure if its diarrhoea, or because he was sick then), and the egg yolk seemed to have caused a very slight rash around his mouth (but I'm again not sure if its due to his drooling from all those teeth sprouting!). He loves the crunchy stuff like the Cheerios and puffs though. Hopefully his appetite for solid foods continues... fingers crossed!

Weaning Wednesdays: Eating on the go

Its the day before the trip, and I'm still packing.  As we are not too sure what to expect in terms of the hotel amenities, we have to pack quite alot of things for baby J, and yet I'm trying to weed out as many things as possible since some of the luggage weight will have to go towards hubby's medical equipment.  So it seems to be alot of packing and unpacking and arranging and stuffing going on... (I did say I'm a slow packer!)

One of the challenges for me is to think about how to feed baby J solids when we are there.  Granted, I can just take the easy way out and just breastfeed him entirely, but I do want to try working it out since we tend to travel overseas quite abit (especially since hubby's family is in Malaysia), and baby J eventually will be totally on solids.

So what I'm planning to do will be to bring my baby food processor along, and use it to cook food.  I've tried cooking his food by heating it using the boiling water bath (that actually is meant to heat bottles, but oh well, we can improvise right?), and it seems to work.  My usual stainless steel mug doesn't fit, but I tried using the Pigeon porridge cooking pot and it fits nicely inside.  :)  I'll be bringing instant baby oats as well as ikan bilis (dried anchovies) powder for him, since toting along homemade purees don't seem to be feasible.  I also bought a jar of applesauce and a jar of squash (from Gerber, since it seems to be pure apple/squash, with no preservatives), just in case I can't get fruits over there.

Oh, and since I'm not too sure about the airline's regulations, I'll be bringing baby J's sippy cup and rice crackers for him, just in case I'm not allowed to put him on my lap to breastfeed him.  Most mummies I spoke to recommended letting the baby drink/eat during take off and descent, so that he swallows to help him deal with the pressure changes.  Will pack his feeding bowl for his morning meal on the flight, and am planning to place oats in one compartment, and his bib and towel in the other, to save some space!

Ah yes, as I've just mentioned, we've introduced ikan bilis and rice crackers to baby J's diet.  I tried feeding him ikan bilis since it was one of the easier things to bring along on the trip that won't go bad easily, and he seems to like the new savoury taste.  Most western baby food sites recommend introducing fish at a later stage in case of allergies, but the Asian guide mentioned that ikan bilis can be introduced from 7 months onwards.  I think fish allergies would probably be extremely rare in our case, seeing that fish is such an integral part of the Asian diet!  To prepare the powder, the fish has to be soaked in water, rinsed (to remove as much salt as possible) and then pan-fried or toasted (without oil), and finally ground to powder in the blender.  The only weird thing is that baby J eats the ikan bilis mixed up with oats, since he now absolutely refuses to eat any rice.  Give him rice, and he cries and spits everything out!

We've tried feeding him rice crackers as well, as I thought he might be ready for finger foods, but didn't want to use the usual teething biscuits since the wheat-based biscuits are usually very hard (and it seems a big waste to discard all the broken bits as recommended since they cost so much!).  I thought the rice-based crackers would "melt" in the mouth, making it easier as a first finger food.  We managed to only find 2 brands of baby rice crackers: Baby Bites by Take One, and those from Pigeon.  The Baby Bites version was on offer and I bought it, only to read the ingredients to find that they had all sorts of stuff in it, like chicken powder etc.  Also, it was one of the products implicated in the China milk scandal, so I returned it and exchanged it for the Gerber purees instead... We ended up getting the Pigeon fish and brown alga crackers, since they did not contain preservatives, colouring or flavoring agents, and had minimal salt added to it (I tried a little bit!).  We gave a piece to baby J to try over the weekend, and he loved holding and nibbling it, all the while looking like a hamster... Hopefully the cracker can help distract him from the discomfort of flying!

One satisfied customer...

Make that two... baby J finished his lunch today and seemed to like it, so that makes me extremely happy!  We've been trying chicken, and for the past two meals (of brown rice and chicken puree), he has screamed his head off after two mouthfuls.  I thought it was due to the taste of the chicken, since its so different from all the fruits and veggies we've tried so far.  Hubby suggested that I mix the chicken with oatmeal (which I thought was a weird combination initially), since he likes that, so I did that today, adding some carrot puree to mask the chicken taste, and he liked it... or at least he opened his mouth to eat, which is so rare now!

We have a busy weekend lined up for us.  Even Nicky is busy, and has a sleepover arranged for him today, to see if he's ok staying in the same house with Angel.  His birthday was yesterday, but we didn't have time to celebrate it for him since I had to attend a lecture, so we'll probably give him a big treat next week when he's back from his sleepover.  I think I'd better start packing for the trip too, since I'm such a slow packer... Am starting to get jitters thinking of the trip coming up next week!

Have a fantastic Friday everyone, and a wonderful weekend!

Weaning Wednesdays: Yucky or boring?

One of my friends recently sent me this which sort of summarizes what has been happening at mealtimes:

Well, I said sort of. Baby J still prefers breastmilk and usually cries for "mummum" (which for him, means milk) halfway through his meal. But before he does that, its already an uphill task getting him to open his mouth to eat his food (unlike the baby in the video!). He'll bite on the spoon, as well as suck on his fingers and smear the food all over the tray table. Recently, he's also learnt how to stick his tongue out when I am wiping his mouth, so that the food in his mouth gets wiped off as well! The only thing he seems to enjoy is drinking from his sippy cup, which he grabs to drink from, but try taking away his cup and he starts to throw a temper tantrum. He also insists on sitting like an "ah beng", by putting his leg ON the table, and all attempts to put his leg down usually are futile since he puts his leg up again after that.

I always thought that babies will look forward to eating their solids, even though they'll take some time to get used to new tastes.  So far, he seems to only finish meals containing oatmeal with pear or applesauce, and only eats a portion of all other things offered to him, and that is after I've tried various means of getting him to eat, from the spoon being an aeroplane to letting him hold the spoon to feed himself.  SIGH.  I'm not sure if he just dislikes the food, or if he's getting reflux from the food which makes him uncomfortable and hate the idea of eating.   I'm hoping that when he starts finger foods soon, he'll start enjoying mealtimes more. 

Anyway, we've tried prune puree as well as chicken this past week.  He absolutely hates prune, even though I've been sneaking in small portions into his applesauce, and only eats a few mouthfuls each meal.  Oh, and prunes don't freeze well, becoming this black fibrous clump that doesn't come away cleanly from the ice cube tray, so I don't think I'll be doing prune purees anymore, at least for the moment!

As for chicken, we started on that yesterday, and he didn't take too well to it, partially because he was having reflux since Tuesdays as I drank soya milk (I was trying to see if he was still sensitive to soy, and apparently he still is).  About half an hour after the meal, he had a little bit of spitting up during his playtime, but I'm not sure if that's due to the soy or the chicken, so i'm going to risk it and try it one more time today.  *fingers crossed*

Weaning Wednesdays: Sweet Potatoes

This is gonna be short since I've gotta leave soon for the field.  Anyway, there's nothing much to update on the weaning process, just that we've managed to add one more new thing to baby J's diet: Sweet potato.  So far, he quite likes the taste (for once!) of the puree, but I've not tried the puree on its own yet, as I'm currently mixing it with a small amount of brown rice.  Most of the foods I've introduced have been mixed up with rice or oatmeal, as he doesn't seem to be able to tolerate the taste of a new food when introduced on its own, and either spits it out or coughs and chokes on it.  However, I've read in one of the weaning books that its important to gradually increase the amounts of the new food until the baby is used to its taste, so I've been trying to do that.

Anyway, for sweet potatoes, so far my friend recommends the ones with orange or purple coloured flesh (rather than the Japanese or white coloured flesh ones) as they are sweeter, while my mum says the purple ones may not be nice, so I went with the orange coloured ones instead, which indeed are very sweet and yummy!

Ok, gotta go and see the crabs!

Weaning Wednesdays: Useful utensils

The parent-in-laws have left for home, so life is slowly getting back to normal.  The house still looks like a disaster zone though, and we still have 2 more toilet cabinets that need to be fixed up.  Managed to get the wardrobe fixed up with the help of the FIL this morning, but the doors have yet to be fixed on yet.  Baby J has caught a cough from the MIL, and is pretty grumpy.  Add this to late nights and early mornings, along with fieldwork (today's weather was good, but I was baked alive out in the mangroves!), and you get one extremely tired and grumpy mama.  Oh well, I'm still blogging just to unwind before I sleep, while waiting for the in-laws to sms that they've reached home safely...

Oh yes!  Baby J has started to say "mama", instead of "mamamamawwaaaaaahhhhhh" which he used to do when he was tired and hungry.  Now he goes "mama... waahhhhhh, mama...."  I never knew how two simple syllables have the power to turn me from a raging grumpy woman to a very happy one!

So again, back to the topic of weaning.  We've added barley and carrots to the repertoire of foods for baby J, and he seems to like barley, and is pretty indifferent to carrots.  Right now, these websites have been extremely useful to me:
Wholesome baby foods: This site has EVERYTHING you need.  Recipes, food guides, nutrition information.
My friend's blog on weaning her son: This blog actually charts her entire journey for weaning, and describes in detail how she prepares the food and her son's reactions to the various meals she prepares.

And... we discovered the "Take and Toss" range from Learning Curve sometime back from Ariana's blog, Becoming Mom.  The whole range of feeding utensils are PVC, phthalate and BPA free, are recyclable, and are relatively inexpensive, which really appealed to us!  We're currently using the bowls with lids, which are very convenient to bring out and have 2 compartments, as well as the spoons, which fit just nice into baby J's mouth.  Initially though, as the spoons were made of harder plastic, we used the Tommee Tippee feeding spoons, which were slightly larger, but softer and hence won't hurt baby J's gums.  Both types of spoons change colour when the food is too hot, which is a boon!

And in terms of sippy cups, we tried the Tommee Tippee Easiflow cup since it won some award, but found that baby J had difficulty getting anything out of it!  Right now, the Take and Toss sippy cup works better for baby J, who loves to drink water from it...

Ok! That's it for today... Gotta go!

Thinking Thursdays

We've been reading story books to baby J since he was two months old. Right now, when he's in a good mood, he will willingly sit in your lap and listen, while trying to turn the pages as you attempt to read to him. And I simply love the gorgeous children books you can find these days! Right now, some of the books that we are reading with him are:

Look Out, Stripy Horse!

We got this off the "recommended shelf" at the library near our house.  The illustrations are colourful and the characters are simply so so cute!  Baby J loves to look at the pictures for this one.  And did I mention?  We got the little boy his own library membership card, so he gets to borrow his own books!  (That leaves the mama very happy as she gets to borrow stuff she wants to read.)

Harry and the Dinosaurs and the Bucketful of Stories

I've always thought that little boys will be extremely fascinated by dinosaurs, so when I saw this book at Borders, we ended up buying it!  The illustrations are fabulous and since there are 5 stories in there, it'll last you for awhile longer... You should see the picture of the T Rex sitting in the dentist chair... extremely cute!

For myself, 2 of the books I'm currently reading are:

Feed Your Child Right: The First Complete Nutrition Guide for Asian Parents

Like I've previously mentioned, I'm trying to work out how best to feed the little boy, and this book is extremely useful as it caters to Asian parents wondering when best to introduce ikan bilis to the kiddoes... The revised version that they are selling now is much nicer than the older edition (which was just black and white text), with lots of nice pictures that make you want to whip up mini meals for baby...

Cool Spaces for Kids

Again, a library find.  This book is packed with tonnes of ideas of creating usable (and nice looking!) spaces for kids inside and outside the house.  Makes your fingers itch to get down to doing some of the projects!

PS: This post was meant for Thursday, but I was just too tired yesterday after my lecture. It was one of those bad days where I had to do lots of washing, as baby J woke up in the morning and threw up in his travel cot, and then proceeded to poop so much the diaper leaked!

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!

Starting solids

We started baby J on solids today, after delaying for quite awhile (while enduring much nagging from the grandmas as they believe in starting solids early so that they will “become strong”).  Had quite alot of fun shopping for all the feeding implements, but will talk about that next time.  Anyway, we decided to start him on rice cereal, since it was recommended as it would  have a lower probability of causing an allergic reaction, and baby J seems to be sensitive so so many things in my diet.  As the box indicated that we start with one teaspoon of rice cereal mixed with milk, I dutifully expressed some milk and prepared that teeny spoonful in a small dish.  Seemed like alot of trouble for a tiny mouthful of food!  And baby J’s expression says it all…