Eating what we eat...really?!

[MusicMum18]

Hi,
Just been to health visitor today, lo has lost little bit of weight but still ok.
I have been using Annabel Karmel to create lots of varied fruit and veggie purees. For each meal I've been giving lo some fruit or veggie finger food in strips then I give her purée. She wakes every couple of hours in the night for a feed. Health visitor said she needs more now and that I need to give her what we're having.

I just tried this and I had a cheese sandwich for lunch with salad so it felt a bit weird but I gave lo a cheese sandwich. She loved playing with it mashing it up, putting it in her hair etc. but if don't think she consumed much. So I am worried about how this will work? I'm having pie later so do I just give her a slice of pie? It all seems a bit strange, esp as she has no teeth!

I'm also worried about sugar. Just been to supermarket and literally everything seems to have the stuff in! Are there any good baby ranges or yoghurts with less or no sugar in?

My lo is just over 6 months old, is very interested in food, hasn't refused any fruit or veggies yet.

I'm just not convinced about giving her the same as us. I'm worried she won't be able to eat, get fed up with it then go hungry. I've heard I shouldn't feed her and she should do it herself but it's hard not to feed her when I see so little going in her mouth!

Also how much whole milk etc should I give I've just given her some cheese which she looked bemused with when it melted in her mouth before spitting it out. Also with yoghurt I'm never sure if she's hungry for yoghurt or chewing on spoon as she's teething at the mo.

Sorry for panicky message, I'm just a bit overwhelmed and don't know what to do.......

I'm not really sure where the "food is fun" thing comes from either?

As I understand it you will move from 100% nutrition coming from milk at 5/6 months, to 50-50 milk and food by 12 months. Some babies get there faster than others though.

By 12 months milk should be a drink and food should be what it is to you and me.

"food is for fun" is a phrase that isn't in any official documents and seems to stick around. It isn't helpful really, I guess it's trying to reassure parents with slow/fussy eaters.

Breastmilk has iron in it, and alongside that you can give a suitable multivitamin daily as well. I used the WellKid one but there are various brands to choose. Contrary to what a PP has said, these vitamins do have iron in them! No baby "needs" meat - think of all the vegetarian babies around the world, but they do need access to a healthy range of foods that contains all the nutrients they need. Your meal for today sounds fine, you could add some green veg to it as well (brocolli is usually popular).

Aim to work up to 3 meals a day by around 8 to 9 months, but you can follow your baby's lead if they are getting to grips well with food and seem to want more.

You can give a iron supplement if you want, but vitamins contain vitamins. The NHS advises and distributes vitamins for children, not iron.

Apologies for not using the exactly correct technical terms. I gave a vitamin AND mineral supplement that contains iron. It wasn't an NHS one. Infant formula also contains iron, which is why fully or mainly formula fed babies don't need iron supplements.

The NHS "healthy start" vitamins contain A, C and D I think.

Most breastfed babies don't need iron supplements either.

You can give them if you want to, particularly if you are concerned that your baby might not be getting enough iron from food.

Of course, no one will stop you

Every 2 hours in the night sounds exhausting! I did breastfeed but for the feed before bed I did give a formula bottle, mainly because my the end of the day, I was tired and my milk was rubbish, so wasn't filling her up. Plus DH could do it too! From starting the bottle just at night she slept through until 6-7am so a good 12 hours. Might be worth a try?

Sorry you're confused, Snossidge, you seemed to be telling me that the "multivitamin" liquid (this is the manufacturer's name for it) that I used didn't contain iron, when it was clear that it did. I was attempting to be helpful to the OP, not start a debate about whether iron supplements are necessary for babies.

No, I wasn't telling you that. I had clarified a previous poster stating that breastfed babies get the iron they need from vitamins.

The brand of vitamins & minerals that I use does contain iron which was the point I was making. Perhaps panickingalot uses the same brand. It's just something for the OP to consider as she said she was concerned about iron levels.

My DD started waking for feeds every 2 hours at 6 months due to growth spurt, and then again at 8 months just before my periods came back. I noticed that she seemed hungrier before my periods - I'm not sure if it was to do with hormones affecting milk supply.

The phrase "food is for fun until they're one" is well meaning bollocks, designed to reassure parents who have slow weaners. It means that the majority of your baby's nutritional requirements should come from milk but it doesn't preclude other sources of nutrition.

The "iron definciency" thing was a big scare promoted by formula companies to try and get breastfeeding mothers to switch at 6 months. It's shocking how quickly it made it into the parenting consciousness. Breastmilk contains iron, and plenty of it, and it is more easily absorbed than vitamin drops. Around the time I was weaning, there were also some reports that too much iron could harm development. report here

If your baby is losing weight then filling her up with vegetables instead of breastmilk or formula isn't going to help with weight gain. IIRC the only two fruit or vegetables with more calories than breastmilk are avocados and bananas.

We really did give DD exactly what we were having, except cut up into fingers. So pasta shapes, tomatoes, salad, cheese, sausages, vegetables etc. What I will say is that anything small and round, such as cherry tomatoes or grapes, must be cut up first - they are a major choking hazard as the skins are very thick and can't be squished by the action of the gullet muscles. When they're cut it weakens the structure sufiiciently to make them safe.

Gill Rapley's book is really good and can offer a lot of guidance.

As for adding fruit puree to yoghurts to sweeten them, sugar is sugar, regardless of whether it's sucrose or fructose. Just read the labels and look for the lowest total sugars.

Thanks all for your help, I've been using the Wellbaby vits which contain vitamin D which I've heard is really important as we don't get enough sunlight. Lo has dabbled with cauliflower cheese, carrots, broccoli and green beans. We had the pie, as it wasn't homemade and I didn't know salt content. Mess everywhere! Think I'm going to give purée tonight....I like the blw approach but I don't think she's getting enough of what she needs as she doesn't know how to eat yet. I worry that she sits back in her high chair not because she's full but because she's exhausted trying, and usually failing to get stuff in her mouth.

I like the blw approach, but after hearing pros and cons I think it's best for me to do a mixture of purees and blw.

Also a pp said that you should work up to 3 full meals by 12 months. Is this a meal like we have eg carbs, protein, veggies. Or is it just some food at mealtime eg does a bowl of porridge constitute a meal?

By 12 months DD was eating 3 full meals like we have...

Example menu

Breakfast: porridge and blueberries
Lunch- cheese and mushroom omelette, broccoli, carrots, Greek yoghurt and fruit
Dinner- shepherds pie, veg.

The NHS site just says 3 meals by around 8 to 9 months it doesn't specify what exactly constitutes a meal. To me, I would interpret it to mean breakfast/lunch/dinner, giving the same (healthy and appropriate) food an adult would have but in child portions. An adult shouldn't have porridge for each meal in a day, so I wouldn't do that for a baby. But if one day, you give porridge for the evening meal for whatever reason, it isn't going to be a problem!

I always thought the food is fun until they're one thing meant that you concentrate on giving them variety and not stressing too much about which bits they eat and which bits they squidge and throw instead as firstly some would always get in and also milk would make up for any deficits while they were getting the hang of it...from comments on here, that doesn't seem to be how others understand it? Am I not right then?

OP, I did a mix of purées and finger foods as it suited the food or my day or whatever and it was fine.

It's fairly standard practice to shovel a bit of mush in on a spoon while the baby is squishing and lobbing the rest.
BLW hadn't been invented until about ten years ago. It was still standard practice to give them something to play and smoosh in their hair. Some of it did make it in to the mouth eventually but at 6 mos you might be waiting a while.

One of mine ate three square meals a day and still bf every two hours day and night. I stopped by when he was ten mos out of exhaustion, and within two days he was sleeping through. He wasn't losing weight though. He was the size of a small house.

You can experiment with feeding her yourself. It's a bit more of a faff, obviously, but some babies do prefer it. I was going to go for blw with DD but she much preferred being spoonfed, so we did a lot of that with finger foods thrown in. Hasn't appeared to make any difference at all to how or what she eats as she's grown up (usual sample size of one disclaimer )

But as others have said, she is young and it's fine for her to just play with food for another few months yet. She will get it at some point, but HV don't always explain that that 'point' might be at 9 months old.

You have my sympathy, I bloody hated weaning - but it's ok, she has milk, just try and relax and offer her food and let her experiment by herself.

I just wanted to add that it's really normal for babies to pull faces and spit stuff out the first time you give them something new. Don't be put off by it, try again in a few days and you might find they eat it with gusto. They're just experimenting.
Also, don't be afraid of strong flavours (home made curry for example)- kids often love them and when they're weaning it's a really good time to expose them to different tastes and textures before the toddler fussiness kicks in.

We've always fed our kids what we eat (lots of meals are easy to purée) as it just makes life a lot simpler. It's a bit tedious going low salt but it's still easier than making two meals!

Annabel Karmel and Gill Rapley are at opposite ends of the spectrum from purée to blw. Personally I had both books and mixed recipes from both. My ds was pretty good with a spoon very early on so fish pie and things were fine.

If you want to get more calories into your baby you need to expand the purées beyond just fruit and veg. Include cheese and meat and carbs.
Think about how much weight we'd lose on a veg-only diet!
Cheese an be added to puréed squash for example.
Bolognese is a great baby food.
And my ds adored and still does microwave porridge with whole milk and a squirt of Ella's fruit pouch on top.

I also used both Annabel Karmal and Gill Rapley's book. Did a mix of things from them both.

I was planning on a mix but my little one likes to be in charge so we ended up doing a BLW style - she doesn't always have some of what we have as its not practical, times don't work etc. I also don't give her all her food at once to create a mess with - I give her it in bits and pieces and she consumes most of it.

I can't be doing with cleaning up carnage every meal.

I did find skipping ahead in the Annabel Karmal book a few months helped with things - she loves the meatballs, burgers, sausages which are in the 9-12 month part but she had them around 7-8 months.

Typical meals for her are fish pie, pasta (I love the AK pasta sauce recipe book), piece of fish and veg, chicken thigh and veg, casseroles if we have one, lasagne, scrambled egg, eggy bread, toast with avocado spread on it, soup is a favourite from nursery, toad in the hole.

Is a mix of spoonfed and does it herself - is spoonfed at nursery so has got a bit lazy in that respect - however is dead easy to go out for dinner with as will happily eat most things when we are out! Will often have her own meal and not share ours.