Rob's Blog

Some time ago I discovered a website – MyDaddyCooks.com – which features videos from a dad who includes his toddler (aged 2-3 depending on the age of the video) in the cooking of the meals he cooks for his family. I loved the idea, but thought there was no way I could keep Izzy’s attention long enough to be able to cook anything edible with her. I also had obvious concerns about the safety of a toddler in a kitchen.

Despite my misgivings I was keen to give it a go, especially as Izzy was starting to take more of an interest in the goings on in the kitchen. The first thing I cooked with her was a simple sausage casserole. I prepared all the ingredients (including browning the sausages) in advance and laid them out on the kitchen table. Everything was done cold and safe. I sat Izzy down on her booster seat and we started.

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Last weekend we went to  a wedding (at which we had a very good time). We had Izzy with us, for the day, and of course had to feed her.

Abby was all for buying some pouches of mush, but we decided there is no reason we couldn’t continue with our baby led weaning. We chopped up some fruit, put it into small pots, and took it with us. We were provided with a high chair, which is where our first realisation comes. One problem with baby led weaning (at least with Izzy) is we can’t really use plates – she just picks them up and tips them over – we have to put the food onto the highchair tray. This is fine at home, but when out and about you don’t know how clean it is. We wiped it down with a baby wipe, but are going to get some anti-bacterial wipes to keep in the changing bag for future.

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If you’ve been following this diary, sorry for the lack of entries. I decided it was getting a bit samey and have decided it’s likely to be better to make occasional entries  when we have any new developments.

Izzy’s been eating that same sort of stuff. She’s really learning to pick things up on her own and put them into her mouth. I’m quite mean with this – I’ll hold something up for her, but won’t put it in her mouth when she “calls” for it. Instead I let he watch me put it down so she knows where it is, and she quite often picks it up on her own. Sometimes I put it into her hand, and sometimes I give in and put it in her mouth.

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Today was a little odd as we had a very broken night (Izzy was suffering from constipation) and then we slept quite late. This meant meal times were all over the place.

Breakfast:
Stewed apple and pear. At first she didn’t seem bothered at all, but she did have a small amount of apple.

Lunch:
More apple and pear, but still didn’t eat much.

Dinner:
Same again, plus some melon. The melon was a bit hard so she didn’t have much, and she wasn’t very hungry overall.

Breakfast:
Banana, and mango. She wasn’t very hungry.

Lunch:
Mango pear and kiwi. The pear was a bit too hard though.

Dinner:
Slightly stewed apple and pear, and some steamed parsnip. She ate loads as she hadn’t had very much earlier in the day.

I didn’t get round to doing a diary yesterday, so there’s two days in one here. It’s also fairly short and to the point.

One thing we have discovered over the past couple of days is she often gets upset after eating, but if we give her some cooled boiled water after she’s finished she’s happy. She normally takes about 30ml, just enough to quench her thirst.

Breakfast:
Mainly lightly stewed apple and some pear.

Lunch:
The rest of the apple from breakfast, and some left over fruit salad that we had eaten the previous day.

Dinner:
Some fried courgette (she still doesn’t like this – I agree!), and some squash. Loads more fruit salad

Breakfast:
Apple again and kiwi fruit (she absolutely loves this).

Lunch:
Left over squash and some more kiwi fruit

Dinner:
Mango (she really likes this, but it’s too slimy for her to pick up easily), and more squash.

We’re down at my mum and dad’s at the moment which means things are a bit different for Izzy, but we’re still carrying on with the baby led weaning.

Breakfast:
Izzy slept for quite a long time last night, so was pretty hungry. We slightly stewed/steamed some apple, and gave her some fairly soft pear. She ate four quarters of apple with very little mess, and has a small amount of pear.

Lunch
We were having fishcakes with steamed carrot and broccoli, so we gave Izzy some of the steamed veg, as well as the left over (another four quarters) apple from breakfast. The apple went down very well, but she didn’t seem keen on the veg. I don’t know if it’s because the carrot still had skin on (we have peeled it up to now), of she just didn’t fancy it. She also sucked on (but didn’t eat much of) a piece of wholemeal bread.

Dinner:
We didn’t plan enough before she got hungry, so dinner consisted of soft pear, clementine and bread with humous. The fruit went down fairly well, but the favourite was the bread and humous!

She ate quite a lot today, but I’m writing this at 10:30, and she’s still not asleep (she normally is by this time), so I don’t know if this is related, of if it’s just coincidence.

Izzy is 6 months old today. All the “official” advice says you should only start baby led weaning at 6 months old, but she was getting hungry and seemed ready, so she’s 20 days in now!

Breakfast:
Abby did breakfast (as she does most days in fact), and it consisted of nectarine, banana and of course satsuma. The nectarine just got sucked for a bit, and she ate a fairly small amount of banana and satsuma, but she’s never very hungry first thing in the morning.

Lunch:
We gave Izzy the remains of the sweet potato from last night (slightly warmed in the microwave), and some satsuma. She ate quite a bit more than at breakfast, but still played with it a lot. The softer pieces of the sweet potato were definitely the favourite. I think I am steaming it for slightly less time in the vague hope it will be a bit less messy, but I think I should make them softer. We’ve also decided that orange is her favourite colour of food!

After lots of grabbing Abby also gave Izzy a small piece of wholemeal bread from her panini (it had no cheese on that bit. Izzy was happy sucking on that for a while, and I think probably swallowed quite a bit of it. She’s starting not to like us eating if she’s not, which is hard because if we are eating ourselves we can’t help her eat!

Dinner:
Something a bit different this evening – Abby fried up some squash and courgette. Despite being a little firmer and our experiences at lunch time, she really seemed to like the squash, but the courgette didn’t go down well (I don’t blame her – I think it’s horrible). She also had a bit of banana.

This is (possibly confusingly) the second part of our diary of our Baby Led Weaning experiences.

Breakfast:
Abby gave her some banana, rusk and satsuma. She didn’t eat much banana or rusk, but had about half a satsuma. She’s not always very hungry at breakfast time.

Lunch:
I steamed some parsnip for lunch, and cut up some pear. Izzy screamed and screamed, and despite picking some pieces up she wasn’t interested in eating them, or taking any pieces we tried to feed her. We decided she was too tired and/or her teeth were hurting too much to want to eat.

A few minutes later after Abby had calmed her down, she tried again with Izzy sitting on her lap. She seemed a bit more interested in the parsnip, but when offered pieces of satsuma she picked them up and quite happily ate them. She probably had nearly a whole satsuma. When it was finished she just wanted to turn the pot of parsnip over!

Dinner:
Dinner consisted of left over parsnip from lunch, and some freshly steamed sweet potato. For the first time since the early days we ate our dinner at the same time as Izzy – partly because that’s just the way the timings worked, we didn’t plan it.

She ate quite a lot this evening, and most of it was out into her mouth herself – she is really getting the hang of it. We dipped some of the parsnip into the sauce of the baked beans we were eating, and we even gave her an oven chip off Abby’s plate. She also had some satsuma which she loves at the moment.

We’ve been asked to keep a diary of our experiences introducing Izzy to solids using the baby led weaning method so that it may help other parents who may want to try the method. I thought I may as well use my blog as a place to keep the diary.

I’ll do a catch-up post at some point to summarise the first 17 days, but for now we’re beginning at day 18.

Breakfast:
I cut up some banana and soft pear this morning, but she didn’t seem very hungry. She played with it for a bit, but any that went into her mouth didn’t stay in for long. She probably swallowed a couple of mouthfuls.

Lunch:
I steamed some butternut squash cut in large chunks. She loved this but made a very big mess smearing the soft veg everywhere. Hard to tell exactly how much she actually ate, but seemed to have a reasonable amount. She really enjoyed it which is the main thing.

Izzy making a mess with butternut squash!

Dinner:
I steamed some parsnips and sweet potato. This was the first time she had tried parsnip but it was nice and soft and she seemed to love it.

The big improvement this evening was Izzy really started to puck up the food herself. She’s always done this to some extent, often with us placing food into her hand, but the feeding was mainly us holding the food and her pulling it into her mouth, or moving her mouth onto it. Today she learned that if she used both hands to scoop the food up she could eat any if the food, even the smaller pieces. No need for stick-shaped food any more.

After lots of sweet potato and parsnip, we tried some satsuma. She found this easier if we bit the ends off the pieces first so she didn’t have to puncture them, but she loved it. We planned to try a few pieces, but she ate most of a fruit.

Overall, a lot was eaten at dinner.