camping with 8mo baby - what to feed her?

[Liz79]

We are hoping to go camping in a tent to the peak district in august when DD will be 8mo. I am bf her and will start weaning in 2 weeks when she will be 6mo. I will still be bf when we go camping. We are worrying about what to feed her and keeping things clean enough. We thought we might boil some whole cows milk on the stove in the evening and then put it in a thermos and put it on a weetabix for her breakfast each day. Would the milk be ok like this? I think it would cool down to just the right temp over night. We would give some fruit with the weetabix, maybe chunks of banana, avacado, pear. What fruits will she be able to eat by then which don't need cooking?

She would probably get 1 jar for lunch each day but I don't really like this idea. In the evenings we would probably go to a pub/cheap restaurant and thought we could order her something like a baked potato and cheese and a side portion of boiled veg. We're not sure about ordering things like pasta in sauce, fish pie, cottage pie etc because they will probably use salt in the cooking. What should we do? We will take a cold water steriliser for her cup for water and her cutlery. Would use restaurant plates though. Also is it worth getting one of those little manual hand blender grinder things to mush things chicken at the table?

Was going to do BLW but think I will do a mixture.

Have copied this to the camping board

Thanks

My HV told me not to bother sterilising anything for food so if you are not giving her a bottle don't worry about the cold water steriliser. By that age they are putting all sorts into their mouths any way (DS2 current favourite thing is the dogs ears!).

Why can't she have weetabix with cold milk? You could even express milk (personally couldn't be bothered!) Could by little cartons of follow on milk that don't need to be chilled and use those for mixing up food/cereal.

For a week it wouldn't hurt her to have mashed banana for a meal a day if you are eating out at lunchtime. If you are doing BLW/finger foods then salads are often a good bet (tomatoes, eggs, cheese, cucumber, bread) when eating out.

Wouldn't bother with a hand grinder - I just use a fork to mush things or a knife to cut into hand size chunks.

8 months is a good age to camp with so have fun and hope the sun shines for you.

What would you normally have for breakfast when camping ? Fruit (at 8 months she can eat any fruit - apricots, plums, peaches, pears, berries, mango, pineapple all v popular here, just give her a nice big chunk to gnaw on) would be fine, or if you fancied making porridge for you all she could have that - or any other cereal. It could be dry cereal as in Cheerio type things as well, or croissants etc.

She'd be fine to have a sandwich with you at lunchtime if thats what you'd have.

A baked potatoe with cheese or tuna and salad or veg would be great, or an omelette, or just share bits of whatever you were having.

No need to sterilise anything.

If you check out Aitches blog at www.babyledweaning.com, you'll see that you can just give them real food from 6 months with no need for jars/mashing/pureeing, which makes life a lot easier when eating out.

We camped a lot with small babies and we relied heavily on

1. Weetabix with formula milk
2. Baby rice or other cereals with formula milk
3. Mashed bananas.

Other simple meals mashed up with a fork - including potatoes, and pasta - we used spaghetti chopped up small. My babies learned young to chomp away on roughly mashed food as we didn't bother with blenders and processors much (BLW is supposed to approve of this isn't it? my babies were in the old days before BLW)

We didn't boil milk, ever, at home or camping. I didn't realise anyone did that.

My friend asked her health visitor if pouring milk on weetabix constitutes cooking with it. She was told no, but by boiling it you alter the proteins to make it more digestible.

I don't want to give her formula as I am BF, I think I will put cold UHT milk on weetabix. Will she just eat 1 at that age? I have no idea of normal quantities for children!

Will a 8mo baby really be able to eat sandwiches? What about strips of torn chicken? I don't know what to expect of her really and how much will go in with BLW!

I was bf too and did express while camping to put on cereal but sometimes it was hard work and there was hassle with sterilising the expressing equipment in our camper van, and I resorted to formula or cow's milk.

Try giving her what you eat. If it doesn't work, there's always .....jars.

I started weaning my DS at 5 months and he only started really eating solids in any quantities at 11 months, though of course all babies are different. You may end up with lots of left overs if you ordered her a whole baked potato and side order of veg though!
I've never heard of boiling milk on weetabix - normal milk would be fine. Mashed banana and avocado may be another good option.

Every baby is different. dd take ages to work out how chewing/lumps worked but ds2 had a whole piece of toast as his first ever taste of food. dd wouldn't have managed a whole weetabix at that age ds1 would have had 2. You'll just have to wait and see.

If you are planning on giving cheese, ham and chicken to your dd, I wouldn't think that heating the milk to make the protein more digestible was too much of an issue. You're only going for a week - make your life as easy as possible.

1 wheetabix is about right at that age - although some will eat more. I have never boiled milk, and I think that that HV was talking rubbish - what they mean is that they shouldn't have cows milk as a main drink (ie replacing formula or breastmilk), only in their supplementary food.

By 8 months, sandwiches are no problem if they are used to eating real food. Aged 6.5 months, DS would happily sit in the pub chewing/gumming steak strips alongside us. He certainly enjoyed chicken torn off from a piece by then too. Loads of pictures on the blog of small babies enjoying big food !

I admit to being indolent mummy, and giving DS whatever is on offer to me - and he still suprises me aged 2 as to what he will happily eat. He enjoyed octopus and squid out of my paella last week.