What a difference a week makes.

Haven't blogged for a week and things have really changed and developed. Emma has totally got the hang of chewing stuff and moving it to the sides of her mouth so it is between the bumpiest & hardest bits of her gums.

She is also drinking water well from her doidy cup. The first of my 3 children to take to water straight away. Strange but welcome, I really shouldn't complain!

She has had lots of new tastes as well. She is nearly 6 months so we decided, as we aren't a family with allergies, to start giving her the things you are supposed to wait on. So she's had bread and cheese and roast chicken. Bread is absolutely adored and I crumbled half a slice into some tomato and basil soup which made that go down a real treat as well. Like the other 2 she is really liking jacket potatoes and you can mix anything into those woohoo.

So we are now on 2 meals a day and she is down to the one night waking!!!!!!!! She also has fewer short breastfeeds, preferring to have a good long one halfway between her mealtimes. Makes the struggles of the last few weeks feel really worth it as she is really really really enjoying her food.

She even had a good go at some apricot halves. They are slippery because they are out of a tin but she can extract all the goodness and even deal with the stringy bits that get left. An apple wedge didn't go down half as well.....

Switch timings?

After a bit more of the same as before we went away for the weekend. On Saturday night Emma refused to eat barely anything but on Sunday lunch it was a whole different story. She had the inside of 2 roast potatoes, at least 1 carrot stick and a good munch on a green bean.

So I'm beginning to wonder if lunch time is a better time for her even if it isn't for me. She is usually asleep at the time that Naomi and I eat. I might have to start taking food out with me for her although she's not yet old enough to have the finger food that it is easiest to do that with. She isn't 6 months for another 10 days and she isn't having any meat or wheat or dairy until then.

Ho hum. 10 days isn't a long time in the scheme of things for her just to carry on at dinner time and not eat much. She was doing some very good chewing of the potato and a lot less of everything came back out again which is brilliant.

The b's of broccoli and banana

We were having spaghetti bolognaise tonight so I switched back to whole carrot sticks and did some broccoli as well. She found the idea of holding the food a bit odd today, it did look like she was looking for the spoon! Her mouth was open and she was staring at my hand. So I know I'm holding the broccoli in this picture and that that isn't strictly BLW. But she had a good munch. And carrot sticks she was sucking in whole. We had our first gag after she managed to gum off a good bit. If she can get the food into the sides of her mouth between her gums then she chews just like you or I would, which is fabulous.

We also tried her on a bit of banana for pudding. With Naomi we held off on fruit because we didn't want her to get a sweet tooth and it totally backfired in one sense. Even at nearly 3 she struggles to eat fruit, she really doesn't seem very interested. Although she doesn't have that sweet tooth so that is something to be grateful for! She is as disinterested in most kinds of pudding, cake or sweets.

Here is what the aftermath looked like!

More of the same

Tried Emma on more pureed roast veg tonight and it was pretty much the same story. She is definitely loving the taste but struggling with what a spoon is for. Hey ho!

Is she really ready?

Having done one child (my son) the traditional puree way and another (my first daughter) the BLW way, I thought I would see what Emma thought of pureed veg. We had some left over from Sunday night so I let it down with some breastmilk and warmed it through.

Once again she was very eager and seemed to love the taste. There was lots of smiling and gabbling. But most of it came out again. I'm not sure if this means she's not totally lost her tongue reflex yet or it was simply that she was trying to lap it to the back of her mouth like she would if she were taking milk from the breast. We had tried her on a bottle of expressed breastmilk on Sunday night which was a complete and utter failure all round. Again that would be a totally alien type of sucking to that which she is used to.

I'll give the puree another go, as I have a bit left, and see what she thinks. I'm quite happy to go slowly to start with. But a spoon will be useful for giving her our meals whizzed/mashed up. I know that isn't strictly BLW but I am excited by the thought of just being able to feed her whatever we are having. Naomi loved that.

We caved!

I had planned to wait until Emma was exactly 6 calendar months but we have been experiencing increased night wakings this last week (she is 24 weeks tomorrow) and so I thought we would see what happened.

We were having roast pork with lots of lovely veg so we gave her some carrot, parsnip and sweet potato. You could tell that she was
used to differing flavours in my breastmilk because the taste didn't seem to phase her at all.

We did them BLW style so not a lot went in but she had a very good gum on them!