Because I make my own baby food.

Feeding my kids has always been difficult for me. I set high standards for myself that I can not easily achieve. What I want is to always feed my kids homemade, organic, healthy meals. What I actually feed them is a random assortment of things that range from healthy to pre-made/processed junk. I've gotten to a comfortable place with this, though, as I now accept the reality of my ability. Here is the story of how I got to that place.

Introducing solids to my first born was a bit scary. I strictly followed my pediatrician's protocol - wait until 6 months, then begin with mashed up avocado, banana, and fully cooked egg yolk. Skip the rice cereal, as it has no nutritional benefit, it is just a vehicle for artificially added iron which the baby can get naturally from other sources. For example, raw liver (frozen, and from a very high quality butcher). I chose to skip this as I did not trust my own judgement about what a fresh liver should look like, but I did like the idea of having a natural source for this vital mineral. You can learn more about this controversial first-food on the Weston A. Price website.

After weeks of this, my baby still was not eating much. He just didn't seem interested. I had a bit of success when I added a lot of breast milk to the mashed up egg yolk, watering it down so that it was similar consistency to milk. But even then, he wasn't that interested.

I was at the grocery store one day with my husband. We were walking by the baby food section and he says to me, "Why not just try the rice cereal? It isn't going to hurt him. Lots of kids start out on this and they are all fine. Just try it and see if he likes it. If not, no big loss." ... That sounded logical, but I was still hesitant, because I thought feeding him rice cereal was pointless, from a nutritional POV, and I wanted to do better than that. So I bought the cereal with the MOST additives: vitamins, iron, pro biotics, DHA, (and of course it is organic). Even though the cereal itself is just a vehicle for these other things, at least he is getting a good dose of the other things.

I get home and read the label to see how to prepare the cereal. The directions are vague, and it makes me mad. This is the first time I've prepared rice cereal - I want to know *exactly* how much cereal and *exactly* how much and what kind of liquid to mix in!  Instead, it says "Pour into bowl, add liquid, stir". It didn't take long to figure out that it really is just that simple, and that I could figure out the correct proportions of cereal to liquid as I went along and add in more cereal if I wanted it thicker or more water or breastmilk if I wanted it thinner, but MAN that was a frustrating time.

Anyway, I now consider rice cereal to have been my son's "Gateway Food". The first time I gave him this rice cereal he ate it all up! I was so surprised, he had never eaten so much in one sitting before. Maybe it was just the right time, maybe that day he woke up ready for solids, or maybe it was something about the flavor, temperature, or consistency of the rice cereal. Despite the nutritional void, if nothing else, this cereal taught him how to eat, and that is a huge benefit that you do not typically associate to a first food. After that one bowl of rice cereal, he eagerly ate up everything else I'd put in front of him.

This opened up a new challenge for me. Avocado, banana, and egg yolk are all easy in the sense that preparation requires little more than a fork to smash it with. But now that we've graduated to rice cereal and beyond, what will he eat? I want to feed him home made, organic, healthy foods - but what? I don't cook often, I somehow don't have time to even boil a potato for him. I don't want to buy pre-made jarred foods. But what else can I do? So I buy the pre-made foods, organic at least, and feel guilty for it. He seems to like them, it can't be all that bad...

Gearing up to start solids with baby#2. What a different animal! He seems eager and ready to eat at just 4 months. This throws me for a loop - I thought I had to wait until 6 months, but why? He seems so ready now at 4 months. His pediatrician supported me, saying if I thought he was ready, go ahead and start. So I did, finger feeding him a few bites of smooshed banana at 4 months old. He was thrilled, and made a fuss in the moments between each fingerful.

I remembered hearing about something called "Baby Led Weaning" on one of my parenting lists. I looked that up and got the book. First, it reminds me to wait until 6 months to introduce any solid foods. Their reasoning is that a baby's digestive system isn't ready even if they seem to be showing signs of interest in food. That there are small holes still in a baby's intestines and food particles can move through those holes and develop into food allergies. I'm not quoting from the book, and my recap here does not sound very scientific or convincing, but this is how I remember it. Anyway, it was enough for me to decide to wait a couple more weeks or maybe months, just to be safe. I knew there was a good reason I waited until 6 months with my first kid.

The title is a little misleading. It should be called "Baby Led Feeding". They advise that babies should continue to be breastfed for as long as possible, but they call it "weaning" because any introduction of solid food means the transition to no milk is beginning. Did that make sense?

The basic idea in this book is that jarred semi-solid baby food is a modern invention by Gerber, and that babies don't actually need to start their solid food adventure with spoon fed slime. Rather, if they have the motor skills and motivation to grab something off your plate, bring it to their mouth, chew on it, and swallow it, then they ought to be allowed to do so. This is the kind of common-sense parenting that I love. And I love finding a book to support an idea that feels right to me, but for which society, in general, does not accept. We are so used to believing the product packaging that we have forgotten how to trust our own instincts. "But won't he choke on that?" - no, probably not. Babies have a reflex to spit out chunks of food they can not chew or swallow. Their gums work surprisingly well for grinding up food. If something does get stuck, they'll throw up and it'll come out. If that doesn't work, I do know how to do the baby Heimlich. Gerber processed baby foods have been around less than 100 years. Prior to that, this method of letting a baby explore food and learn through experimentation is how all babies learned to eat.

Another thing I love about this approach is that it makes so much sense developmentally for a baby. More specifically, MY baby. I keep trying to spoon feed him the slimey jar food, and all he wants to do is grab the spoon and try to do it himself. I remember getting really frustrated with my first born for stealing the spoon, preventing me from being a good mother and making sure he had the proper amount of nutrients in his belly! JUST LET ME FEED YOU DAMMIT. But now I know how important it is to just let him (talking about the 6mo now) have the spoon, not to fight it, not to care how much actually gets in his mouth. I know now that he is working on the mechanics and learning something that is equally as important as whatever nutrients he may ingest in the process. I feel free, now, to just let him eat! Or not eat. Whatever he ends up doing is fine. I'll still breastfeed him later, which is where he'll continue to get the majority of his nutrition for another 6 months.

I'm empowered now with various ways of feeding my baby. Store-bought organic semi-solid food, home made organic semi-solid food (when I manage to do it, not beating myself up over it this time), organic enriched brown rice cereal, and whatever happens to be on my plate.

There is the new challenge: Making sure that what is on my plate is healthy enough for my child. The standards by which I feed my children are waaaaay higher than the standards I set for myself. I know I need to correct this imbalance, but I am not someone who likes to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Most of my meals come from the surrounding restaurants. While they serve fairly high quality food, I still don't know exactly what is in there, and it makes me nervous to let my baby have it. I often do anyway, but not without an appropriate helping of mom-guilt for me.

Oh I just remembered something else - broth! Waldorf education believes the way to start babies out with solid foods is with a good veggie broth. This allows their digestive system to be introduced to new foods in a very subtle way, allowing for a slower, smoother transition. Just throw a bunch of stuff into a pot, let it simmer for an hour, and strain it. I did this last week for the first time (always intended to do it with my first and never did), and it was surprisingly easy and tasty. My baby drank a lot of it, and I served the softened veggies to him and my toddler, too. He mostly played with them, but did manage to suck on a fist full or two. Now I feel like I can check this off my baby-to-do list. Next time, I intend to freeze some so I can just have some good veggie stock on-hand when I want it. I could use it in his rice cereal instead of plain water. 

For what it's worth, my 3yo is an amazing eater whose favorite food is an Indian dish, Chicken Tikka Masala (from a restaurant, of course).

This morning, my 6mo shoved half an egg yolk into his mouth all by himself, gagged a little because it was so dry, then continued on playing with the other half, crumbling it all over himself and dropping bits onto the floor. In his short life, he has already tasted a couple of burritos, eaten rice (the whole grain, not in cereal form), corn (gummed an eaten cobb), veggie broth, fist fulls of sweet potato, banana, avocado, and probably a lot of other things that I've already forgotten. He's a good eater already!

-NinaMama