Namastè!
Today we had a simple dinner--pepper stew meat and rice.
As you surely know, we have a toddler in our ranks.
Baby Namastè is 16 months old now and a total joy. Surprisingly he's even pleasant at mealtime.
Most moms of toddlers can attest--they are not the easiest crowd to please. Some eat only certain foods and staunchly refuse all others. It can be challenging putting together healthy meals for little people who don't even want to sit still long enough to eat!
When we first began solids for Baby Namastè, it was because he kept trying to take bits off our plates to eat. (Also to squish and toss!) He was roughly ten months old before he had any real interest in solids, and he refused even a taste of purees.
Wait...ten months?! Development books say six!
Not among the BLW crowd. Baby led weaning, for the uninitiated, is the practice for allowing the baby to decide when solids begin. Typically the baby will show interest in what the parents are eating--they'll want to squish and play with the food, and then they'll start exploring its tastes and textures by humming, chewing, and swallowing it. Baby led weaning skips purees altogether.
I had never heard of it. Not by name, anyway. I was just taught to go by baby, not the calendar. At six months, our baby could sit unsupported. He could crawl! He could hold his bottle on the odd occasion he wasn't nursing. He could even hold a spoon.
But he wasn't eating baby food. Or any food, really.
He would squish peas or smash banana and smear it all over his high chair tray, but it never made it to his mouth. When it was time for noms, he only wanted what came from Moms! I was okay with it. Our pediatrician confirmed what we were already planning to do--let him tell us when he was ready.
I hadn't heard of BLW by any proper name because I dislike all the parenting labels and subsets in existence today. A lot of stuff we do now and feel trendy about, has actually been done for many moons. Our ancestors just didn't take time to hash tag it.
I digress.
Like any mom I was so ready to make organic baby food and store it in cute little pouches and jars@ I just knew my kid would be a foodie. I had even gotten a cook book of recipes for purees so he wouldn't be bored.
Pffft.
Purees were finger paint!
When he was ten months old, we moved into Castle Namastè. We were sitting down to a delicious dinner and the baby was going bonkers. I got him to nurse and he didn't latch.
He. Didn't. Latch.
No.
He went straight for a fist full of my baked sweet potato.
This time he ate it!
So I sat him in his high chair again, this time with some sweet potato, a few English peas, and a little bit of spinach.
He didn't exactly clean his tray. He only ate two or three actual bites.
I started reading on BLW and looking for whatever information I could find. This was gonna be how I raised him to enjoy food.
As it turns out we didn't need special books or even special foods. Just patience. BLW means letting him have bits of our food to explore, play with, and eventually eat. Because it involves letting babies figure out how to eat--the chewing and swallowing--it can be a little messy. And scary, as the babies will often gag as they acclimate to swallowing food versus only milk.
Alas, we will (hopefully) skip the chicken nuggets and bananas phase because our son eats what we eat, as he's never been given a separate meal.
I used to be more than a little anxious regarding his dealings with solid food. He showed what I thought was a very late interest in eating anything but breastmilk. Because he is a small child, we've regulated on more than a few well-meaning advisors who insist we can bulk him up by making him eat or drink cow milk.
Our healthy, happy little twig child weighs 19 pounds and 14 ounces at 16 months old. He eats and nurses quite well; he's just active and slight of build. And since he's not a baby cow, he won't be having cow's milk. We don't eat dairy at all, honestly. I'm intolerant and I assume my kids are. I never took the risk with him.
For us BLW meant our son got to move at his own pace. He has his whole life to enjoy solid foods. We just went with the flow, and we truly think we're better off for it. I used to worry that he would be the child who only ate one or two foods because that's how he began.
He just needed time and practice. Currently he loves tacos, including lettuce and tomato. While he only has 10 teeth, he can--and does--eat almost anything he sees us eat. Much to our joy, he is a baby foodie! Right now he's willing to try most things. In addition to his tacos, he enjoys Indian food, Jamaican food, Italian food. He does not care much for meat. Neither do I, and his dad is a vegetarian, so that's possibly just par for his course.
What I learned through BLW is to trust my parenting and my baby's cues. The calendar cannot define when a child will be ready for a certain milestone, nor when it will happen. I firmly believe that slamming purees in a bottle or forcing a baby to eat foods too early, does way more harm than good. There's nothing good about it, honestly.
As I learned to trust his cues and readiness, I also she'd a good bit of that anxiety over his eating habits and his size. Right now our little twig child is a happy, active, healthy, thriving toddler! He needn't be at the top of a growth percentile chart (which we don't even acknowledge, as the ones most pediatricians use are feared to formula fed infants' growth trends and Baby Namastè was bt formula fed) to be at his top form.
In trusting his cues and readiness, I also solidified my trust in myself. I'm mom. I've got this. BLW proves that our approach--let Baby lead--has been correct for us all along! It's rooted in everyrhing we hold true. Babies teach us to parent them. Then we teach them.
Namastè!
-- Tayè K. ♡
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