Do annabel karmel's meal planners make anyone else feel completely inadequate?

[babs102]

They are ridiculous, how does anyone have time to prepare that much food?

followin AK's menu for your young children means actually neglecting the children. i'd rather nourish their souls properly and throw some spaghetti and jarred sauce in their plates...

slime, both of mine could happily eat a baby portion of a full roast dinner from the minute i let them. probably about 7 mos in dd1's case and i didn't notice with dd2 as i didn't even bother to do her sticks of veg etc with her, she really was left to pile in from day one. neither of mine can stick mango, for the record. nor can i.

"By thesecondcoming on Sun 25-Oct-09 10:20:11
i am sniggering at all the 'we are BABY LED WEANING' like it's some fucking rocket science massively important movement you have all signed up for.
would any of the devotees of BLW please indicate how it differs from 'offering finger foods' as has been done from the year bleeding dot... "

where are you seeing this attitude, secondcoming? on this thread? and i believe i already dealt with this point when you made it at 8.24 or so. it is 'letting the baby feed themselves' or 'offering finger food'. why the sneering still?

the reason, i think, that people become quite enamoured of 'blw' or 'letting the baby feed themselves', however, is that most of us have a copy of annabel karmel's meal plans in the house and when we looked at them we felt much as the OP, inadequate, already embattled and miserable.

you might be surprised, if you have older children, as to how much of a monopoly the woman has in terms of magazine and newspaper coverage, and how much respect she has from HVs. not to mention the fact that the queen put her on her honours list and that her products are stocked high on the shelves of any supermarket you care to mention.

when people realise that this is something that they don't have to subscribe to, i think it does seem revolutionary and is an enormous boost to a mother's confidence in herself.

i am therefore persistently baffled by people's need to sneer and put that down, tbh. it is just 'letting the baby feed themselves' and not spooning stuff in, but that, in a culture that pushes baby spoons and purees and 'oh my GOD they'll CHOKE', anything that encourages women to use the brains god gave them and feed their children how they want is a good thing.

and if you look in teh BLW book or on my website or whatever, you'll see that that is the prevailing attitude. if a person is happier and their baby is happier doing exclusively purees then more power to their elbow. some babies don't like feeding themselves, as it happens, and a lot of babies don't like being fed. i'd like to think that there's room on the broom for everyone without resorting to nastiness and sniggering about other people's choices.

Karmel is totally Stepford. Her children and matching crockery are all unnaturally pristine.

I do follow most of the recipes but I have my own planner as some of the things in AK's planner are silly. I don't believe my baby is neglected as I cook in the evenings. I tend to avoid the intricate recpies (no time to make minestrone soup!) and keep to the straight forward ones. I dont make the breakfasts and always give fruit or yoghurt/fromage frais for pudding. I agree with the OP that the planner (with that much food for each meal) is totally unrealistic. I have always freshly cooked food(before having the baby), I am just that way inclined. It's probably because we always had it at home. I am not saying that everyone should or could do the same, just saying what we do in our household and yes, some days I am shattered!

lol @ UnquietDad and 'totally stepford'... Do her children match her crockery? That'd be amazing! ROFL

AK what a load of rubbish, my AK book has not been read since dd was about 10 months and she is now 2.8 years. You just do them what you would eat(not junk), but if you have a roast. puree them that or cut it up into small bits depending on age, and same with every other food, cut down on the salt and sugar and thats fine.

I can see how first time mums reading this would be anxious that if they did not follow AK and her fussy cooking that they would not be doing the best for their baby/child.

moon faced,more slap than pat butcher american doesnt scare me. cant take her seriously.too plasticy and insincere

Yes BLW does sound much like we all do,introducing finger foods and letting them feedthemselves etc nothing new about it at all imo

well no, actually. it's not quite that, presuming that you're also spoon feeding mashed food alongside.

blw is really pretty much no spooning at all, no mashing, no purees. the whole point is rather that kids get given what their parents have from the very beginning, in as unadulterated manner as is possible. (ie it's good for lazy people. )

the thinking behind it is that the child is always in control of its intake, doesn't get any triggers from its parents about 'just finish this and you'll make mum happy' and always sees food in the form that it comes, so can reject it if he doesn't like it. say with green mash it could be spinach and potato or mashed brussel sprout, so a child might take a dislike to all green mash whereas in fact he just loathes brussels sprouts, like all right-thinking individuals.

tbh i see blw as 'the way all fourth children are weaned' but distilled into a few pointers so that you can do them with your first child when you still have time to worry about this kind of thing.

and annabel karmel didn't become a multi-millionaire from 'much like we all do', piglet. maybe you and your pals just let your kids self-feed, but she's selling a hell of a lot of books to a hell of a lot of anxious people.

I pureed like a frenzied nutcase hypnotised by annabel karmel. I spent weeks in a PND state hunting around kitchen shops for a mouli so that I could deskin sweetcorn.
He had wonderful concoctions and I was congratulated on how he would eat brocolli and spinach by onlooking great aunts.

He gave up eating vegetables and fruit completely by about age 1. He's five now and tasted a bit of raw carrot the other day but only after I resorted to shouting you can't just eat meat!

DS2 was BLW'd and loves his fruit now. He'll tolerate the odd pea and in the right mood will eat raw carrot, but doesn't freak out at the sight of whole veg like DS1 does.

I heard her on a phone-in on radio 5 suggesting offering un-breakfasty things to children at breakfast - like tomato soup or something. Remember wondering how anyone could be on the ball enough at that time to think about proper ingredients and cooking, let alone imaginative, savoury options for grumpy, early-morning teenagers!

what do you do if you'd really like to avoid Annabel Karmel and mushing and do blw but your baby isn't interested in shoving stuff in her mouth except her fingers? I'm always reading 'and then he just swiped something off my plate' but that never happens here!

Can you mush for a bit and then switch to proper food fully?

totally didn't think you were, slime, no worries. and y y y to the meat, have pictures of both of mine chewing on steak with juices dripping down their chins.

'course you can, dinster. it's all just food at the end of the day. no biggie. in fact that's what the nhs recommends you do, mash food and serve on a spoon and introduce finger food as soon as the child is able. with blw all anyone's saying is 'they're probably able at six months'. but in some cases, as with all things child-related, they'll want to do it later. so it's up to you what to do in the meantime, you can either help out with a spoon or just delay the whole thing until they want to do it by themselves.

tbh weaning is such a blip on the parenting map, lasting what, three months? imo the best thing anyone can do is try not to introduce anxiety to the dinner table as that seems to be the most potentially damaging thing, anything beyond that is up for grabs imo.

...and if they still won't eat their veg by age 5 it's time to introduce anxiety, shouting and bargaining for cakes.

lol, i x-posted with you db. oh yes, by five it might be worth investigating intravenous broccoli purees while they sleep. (or dinosaur vitamins, which always make me feel like i have my bases covered. )

the best puree etc weaning book i had was one from marks and spencer, oddly enough. really calm, nicely laid out, and the food looked tasty. they don't do it any more i think.

Thanks Aitch, that's really reassuring! I was about to become an anxious AK reader but will hold off now and attempt to relax until dd improves her hand-to-gob skills...

has she got her pincer grip yet? that's when things really kick in, imo, and they become obsessed with picking up specks of dust etc (which can be handily redirected towards peas and sweetcorn).

""Her children and matching crockery are all unnaturally pristine." - not anymore though - the two daughters Scarlett and Lara are plain irritating i suppose - all st tropez tans, skiing holidays with big groups of equally wealthy friends and falling out of skimpy Issa dresses. my friend's dd was 'friends' with one of the daughters on bebo and there was a lot of that text/rapper language on their profiles despite a pretty exclusive upbringing and education

not yet - she's not the most athletic or co-ordinated baby (and comes from a long line of last-to-be-picked-for-the-netball-team-ers). I shall greet the pincer grip with whoops. And sweetcorn!