Tag Archives: baby food

Adventures in Weaning

Apr
21

Posted by: Maggie

Eleanor never does anything easily. Everything has been a bit of a struggle with her. Getting her to nurse in the first place and sleep without being held when she was a newborn, getting her not to scream and cry during tummy time, to take regular naps, to eat food that wasn’t pureed, and to drink out of a sippy cup–none of it has been easy, and we have learned that the effort we put into trying to get her to do these things has mostly been a waste of time and energy. Eleanor does things on her own schedule. And you won’t try to push her, if you know what is good for you!

This is why I expected a long drawn-out weaning process. I assumed that I would run up against some strong resistance. I prepared myself. I read the Nursing Mother’s Guide to Weaning. It gave me some great age-specific strategies and reassured me that there was nothing wrong with nursing past the age of one. I was ready to wean her gradually, to substitute a snack for nursing, to distract her with a book or a game when she asked to nurse, and to have to give in to her requests when she was adamant but start abbreviating nursing sessions. I was hoping we could get through it all and be weaned by the time she was 18 months old.

When she was about ten months we had gone down to only twice a day, once at nap-time and again at bed-time. And when I started my bar study course in January I was in class at bed-time so we were down to just at nap-time. So we were already down to only nursing once a day.

My original plan was to start by separating naps and nursing, so that she wouldn’t have a problem napping without nursing first. I thought that in the beginning I would nurse only when she woke up from her nap and then try to drop that once she was napping without a problem.

The first day I put her down for her nap and when she got up she asked for some milk, so I offered her some yogurt instead. She happily agreed and didn’t ask to nurse again. Ever again! That was it!

As easy as that, we just stopped nursing. It’s been a month and I haven’t offered and she hasn’t ask. And I guess because I was already down to only once a day and occasionally skipped that if we were out of the house I never had a problem with engorgement. She was done and I was done without a problem. Why can’t everything be like that?! Like the putting things in the mouth and the throwing food. Can’t we just decide to stop and then stop? Please.

Having said this I have to admit that I’m not so sad to be done with nursing, but not overjoyed either. I know that a lot of mothers feel like they are missing an intimate time with their child and aren’t happy that this means that their baby is growing up, and other mothers are just thrilled to get their breasts back to themselves. I guess I would count myself more with the latter group. I feel like I have plenty of cuddling time with Eleanor to satisfy me and, although I do have some newborn nostalgia, I’m not sad that she’s not a baby anymore. On the other hand I only really felt like a milking machine when she was a newborn. Since then I feel like I have been in charge of my breasts and never really begrudged nursing.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time it was a major pain in the ass. Especially when I was working and going to school. I had to wake up in the morning and immediately spend about 30 minutes pumping a bottle. Then I would get myself ready to go, eat breakfast and spend another 15 minutes or so pumping another half a bottle. Then I would go to class and come home and pump another bottle, eat lunch, and then head to work where I would at some point pump another bottle. Then I would come home in the evening and pump another bottle. Then just before going to bed I would pump another bottle. The freezer was filled with bags of milk and the fridge with bottles of fresh and defrosted milk.

I also was never really comfortable nursing in public and only did it a few times. It was not that I’m a modest person. I’m not, I have never been shy about showing a lot of cleavage. It was more that I found it physically uncomfortable. I just always felt awkward trying to hold Eleanor up to nurse without a nursing pillow, and those pillows aren’t very portable. And then you have to find a comfortable place to sit. For me, it was never worth the convenience of just whipping out a breast. Instead we made things a little less convenient by always having to bring a bottle or two of pumped breast milk with us.

Although it was such a pain, I never regretted making the decision to only breastfeed. It is every mom’s personal decision and I can definitely understand the moms, especially the working moms, who go with the ease of formula over the extreme inconvenience of pumping. But I just think the health benefits of breastfeeding are so huge, and the money we saved by using my FREE milk rather than buying formula are so worth all of the annoyance that I’m happy that I stuck with it. I hope I will have the determination and patience to do the same for all of our future children.

This Baby Thinks She’s People

Apr
20

Posted by: Maggie

This is what happens when you let Eleanor feed herself soy yogurt.

She rarely lets us feed her anymore. I manage to feed her oatmeal for breakfast by putting Curious George on tv to distract her.  Any other time we try to feed her is a struggle.

We recently bought her some toddler silverware. She loves it. And she loves her soy yogurt, but does not want me to feed it to her. I can usually get through it by talking and singing to distract her, but sometimes I just have to give up and deal with the mess.

I feel bad because she ends up with more of it on her chest than in her stomach. She’s good at the scooping and the putting it into her mouth, her problem is in keeping the spoon level on the way to her mouth. It invariably tilts to the side as she gets it close to her mouth and the contents spill onto her chest or into her lap.

After a while she usually gives up and uses her hands.

11 Months Old

Nov
07

Posted by: Maggie

I can’t believe Eleanor is almost a year old. I can’t wait to throw her first birthday party. Plans are already in the works and her party dress has just arrived in the mail.

I realize that it has been a few months since I posted a thorough update on Eleanor. So here is a not so brief list of what she has been up to lately:

She is getting big and tall. She is wearing 18-month size clothes. We think she is about to have a growth spurt. She is eating almost twice as much as usual at every meal.

She is still into the pureed foods. For a little while she seemed like she had lost interest and only wanted finger foods, but now she usually just plays with the finger foods, including throwing them on the floor, but is eating the purees without complaint. We have always only given her organic foods. We like the Gerber Organics and Earth’s Best Organics. Her favorites are sweet potatoes and winter squash right now. When she actually eats some real food she likes cut up soy dogs, beans, steamed butternut squash, and steamed broccoli. She also seems to really like risotto and orzo pasta, which I’ve been making with butternut squash or sweet potatoes.

We still haven’t found a sippy cup that she will drink from. She just wants to play with them and spill as much water out of them as she can. She has, however, become very proficient at using a normal cup. Her spills are only when she decides to throw the cup after taking a drink or when she decides that she has taken too large a gulp and dribbles it right back out of her mouth and onto her shirt.

She is sleeping about 12 hours a night. Her bedtime is 7:30pm so she wakes up in the morning at around 7:30am. She is still taking two naps a day. The first is at 9:30 or 10am and the second around 3pm.  Lately her morning naps have been very long, about 2 hours and then her afternoon nap is about 30 minutes, occasionally she skips her afternoon naps.

We are still nursing three times a day, before each nap and at bedtime. I also pump a bottle in the mornings so she can have milk for her oatmeal. We discovered a few months ago that she has a cow’s milk allergy (she broke out in hives and had terrible diaper rash), which is common in younger babies, so we are sticking with breastmilk for a while. We will try to reintroduce cow’s milk in a few months.

She still has just six teeth. We are still waiting on the bottom lateral incisors to show up.

She is working on the walking. Her record is 7 steps but usually it is 3 or 4 at a time occasionally we’ve seen 5, but she prefers to do her walking when no one is watching. If she sees us watching she loses concentration and falls over or just sits down and starts to crawl.

She loves music, especially The Jackson Five, the X-Files theme music, and, of course, the Sesame Street theme song.

She still has no interest in television.  We are happy about that. We put Sesame Street on in the morning because she likes the songs and we love the guest stars, but after the song is over she might pay attention for a minute or two, but then is off to play with her toys.

She is a ball of energy. She never sits still for more than 30 seconds. It is near impossible to get her dressed without chasing her around the room, or change her diaper without her flipping over or standing up multiple times.

She loves her books. Her favorite right now is Dog by Matthew Van Fleet. She makes us read it to her 4 or 5 times a day.  At naptime her favorite is Miss Spider’s Tea Party: the counting book by David Kirk. And at bedtime she loves Sandra Boynton’s Pajama Time! and Goodnight Moon (which I have memorized by the way, reciting it is a fabulous party trick).

She loves clapping, tummy kisses, playing peekaboo, being chased around the house, and putting everything she finds into her mouth.

Her word count is up to about 8, she says “mama” and “dada” (and knows who she is referring to; mama is also her word for milk, and dada is also her word for dog), “up,” “ba” (in reference to her ball), “hi,” and “bye, bye.”  The last two are accompanied by a wave, usually with both hands, and occasionally she will throw in a blown kiss.

She can respond to requests including “give that to mama please,” “put your arms up” (when taking off her shirt), “give mama a kiss” (she has yet to master the fine art of pursed lip kissing, kisses are always open-mouth, sometimes with tongue), “go get your ball,”  “where is your elephant/lion?” (she points to her stuffed elephant or lion), “what sound does an elephant make?” (she makes a sort of elephant/motor boat noise).

She understands what “no” means, but doesn’t yet seem to be able to conform her behavior accordingly.  They say that babies of this age don’t yet have impulse control.

She is very adventurous. She wants to explore everything in the house and every place we go.  She has just discovered that she can use toys as step stools to climb up on any piece of furniture, including chairs, coffee tables, end tables and side tables.

She is very social. She wants to wave at and talk to every person we see.

She points at everything she sees and asks “eh?”

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