Weaning...Stage 1

The Food

So, having decided to start weaning Zachary this weekend and that we're going to try and give him real food as far as possible, I had a fit of earthmotherdom this morning and thought I'd get some purees underway ready for eating.

I had Annabel Karmel to the ready (although everything I made was just fruit and water!) and a baby food grinder we'd bought as every other pureeing/blending piece of equipment we had went to Derby in the great June clearout.

However, trying any kind of cooking or activity which involves me not handling Zachary for any length of time is risky at the very least...and so it was today. I managed to get 2 apples and a pear peeled and chopped. The apple cooking away merrily in the pan. Just as it was ready to begin pureeing, Z began to make a fuss. So there's me trying to ignore his increasingly desperate pleas for attention while grinding boiling hot apple sauce. Nice. To make matters worse, there's a little twisty knob on the top of the grinder which needs to be tight to remove the grinding implement for cleaning and fruit extraction, but loose for the actual grinding...guess which setting I had it on while I was trying to grind apple. Hmmm.

So, Z is griping, I'm frantically trying to get as much hot apple through the grinder as I can, the setting on the turny thing is wrong so every now and then the grinder pops out and hot apple shoots out of the base and over my hand. Oh yes, and over the side of the fridge. And down the side of the cupboard (where unfortunately it will have to stay until we move and take out the fridge...). And all over the worktop.

Otherwise the grinder works pretty well. Needless to say I didn't get to the sweet potato or squash I was going to try! Mind you the squash has a best before date on it of January. I think I need a stiff drink before I open it up. I'm kind of expecting it to be full of very dry or very mouldy vegetable, just sitting inside the husk of a shell. Tasty.

But despite this I still managed to produce 3 little tubs of pureed pear and 2 of apple. Each tub should do about 2 servings. Felt pretty good about this - after I'm calmed down!

The Feeding

Bouyed by the success of the fruit preparation, L suggested we actually try Z on some today and so we did.

The fruit went in okay, but then Z produced a look somewhere between disgust and utter confusion which just sent us into hysterics. Poor boy, he was actually starting to back off from the spoon after a couple of goes! Most of the apple came out again - apart from the fruit which he'd obviously retained in his mouth after the first spoonful which made him cough and had to spit the rest out.

Not great, but not awful either. We didn't make him cry and he seemed pretty happy once he'd stopped gagging... Our thoughts - the apple puree was probably a bit thick and we need to mix it with some milk to make it much more liquidy. Bearing in mind Z has only ever eaten (?) liquid to this point, going from that to fairly thick puree was probably not going to be wholly successful.

Going to try baby rice mixed with my milk tomorrow - take it back to basics and try the thinnest blandest thing we can to hopefully help Z get more used to the idea of having something new in his mouth which he needs to swallow. And by using my milk it will have something which smells and tastes familiar.

Other baby stuff

Z is truly loving playing on his tummy - he's getting his chest off the floor with straight arms now rather than just using the power of his tummy. I think I may have also seen him trying to push his way onto his knees... But in the meantime he also has a great little sideline in moving backwards. Nothing speedy or that you can see with the naked eye really, but if you look away and then back again in about 10 minutes, he will have moved!