Bigger and better adventures

Talia has been doing very well eating only finger food, but at some point she will need to graduate to cutlery.  I decided it’s time I relaxed enough to let her practice using a spoon and not stress if it goes everywhere. She’s been putting a toothbrush into her mouth for the last week or two, and I figured a spoon shouldn’t be any more difficult.

So on Friday I let her loose with 2 spoons and a limited amount of yogurt in one of those suction-cup bowls. And it went really well! I was helping her load up the spoons, but she was putting them in her mouth herself (she really doesn’t like me trying to do it) and a surprising amount of yogurt actually went in and stayed in.

The next morning I tried the same thing and she threw the spoons on the floor - yogurt-o-rama!  Fortunately our sealed cork floors are very forgiving and easy to clean. Then in the evening we visited my parents, and I shared some dessert with Talia by passing small spoonfuls of icecream and lemon pudding, and she did a much better job.  (If you’re reading this Mum, please email me the recipe, it was delicious!)  

So I think we’ll be doing spoon training every day or two until she gets the hang of it, although I think the challenge will be more the food than the spoon!

First, the good news: we’ve broken the 8kg barrier! Talia weighed in at 8.165kg this morning. She is 14.5 months (11.5 months corrected). It has taken her 3 months to put on this most recent kilogram, which is exactly how long it took her to put on her first kilogram after leaving hospital. Fortunately, although not without it’s challenges, these past three months have not been anywhere near as stressful as those first three months.

It has been ages since I posted about what Talia is eating, and I’m sure to forget if I don’t write it down. Since the Great Spoon Strike began in April, I’ve had to come up with a wide range of finger food to cater to Little Miss Picky’s culinary whims. Food can now be categorised as follows:

Almost always acceptable as food and eaten regularly: avocado, beef sausage, dates, cooked veges (peas, mushroom, carrot, potato, sweet potato, celery), yogurt coated sultanas, fish (usually served crumbed)

Might be eaten, might not, depends on the day and there’s no way of telling in advance:
Part A (slightly more likely) omelette, pikelets, cheerios, sultanas, rice, meatball, matzah ball, muffin, pasta, red & white beans, corn, capsicum, grapes, chicken, biscuit
Part B (slightly less likely) cheese, banana, pumpkin, dried apricot, apple, rice cracker

Was a hit but we don’t dish it up every day: sushi, cake, prawn, cheesecake, hot chips, smoked salmon

Used to be popular but not at the moment: wholemeal toast (spread with avocado or peanut butter), fruit toast (spread with butter), cruskits (without or without avocado)

Oh seriously, there is no way I am going to eat that: mandarin, strawberry, anything on a spoon (eg weetbix, yogurt)

Things we haven’t fed her yet: chocolate, ice cream, jelly, tomato, salad greens

Daddyfeatures suggested we rename Talia “John West”, in keeping with the quantity of food being rejected at the moment.

There is a lot of discussion on the forum about how to deal with babies who don’t want to eat.  Some mothers see it as a fight but we are pretty determined not to take that path.  Some mothers are concerned about feeding disorders but I think our issues are merely a combination of small appetite (not much we can do about that), teething (ditto) and early onset of rampant I’ll-do-it-my-way individualism (no comment really!!)

I decided today I would take before and after photos, as Talia has been doing some impressive rearranging and redistribution of food from highchair tray to floor.  So I laid out and photographed a beautiful little bento box of nibblies in an ice cube tray and put it on the high chair. And do you know what? The little imp either ate the contents or left it exactly where it was. Out of the entire spread she dropped a single cheerio over the edge. So there was no aftermath to photograph.

Some days I swear she must be able to read my mind.

Since she figured out solids at the end of last year, Talia has been fantastic, eating all sorts of homecooked meat and veg.  She had started to catch up with her weight and all was going well… until now.

A week or maybe a little longer ago, she started objecting to receiving food on a spoon, pushing it away with her hands and turning her head to the side.  With a bit of ingenuity (”say aaah Talia!”) I could get a spoonful in, and after carefully digesting this first mouthful with all the seriousness of a wine connoisseur judging expensive shiraz (up to but not including the spitting out stage), she would then allow me to feed her the rest of the meal.

I thought I had it all under control until the beginning of this week, when she decided that not even the first spoonful would be considered acceptable, under any circumstances.  It has been very difficult to deal with, as I don’t want mealtimes to be a fight, but I can’t let her go without a healthy diet.  It’s not that she won’t eat - just that she won’t allow herself to be fed.  It wouldn’t matter so much if she was older and able to use a spoon, but at the moment she will only accept a limited range of finger foods - and they are subject to change without warning.  Savoury pikelets were a hit on Tuesday but thrown out of the high chair on Wednesday.  Raisin toast has come back into favour, as have avocado finger sandwiches, but baked ricotta is now out and her acceptance of random veges appears to depend entirely on her mood, the phase of the moon and whether or not the wind is blowing from the west.

This is the sort of point where you realise that being a mother is a full time job and then some.

Corrected age: 7 months, 0 weeks
Weight: 6.375kg
Diet: a slurp of pre-breakfast breastmilk; formula; fruit with yoghurt for breakfast; chicken with spuds, carrot, peas or corn, followed by fruit for lunch; and something similar again for dinner. Sometimes 4 meals a day!
New foods since last Monday: peach, chicken

Today was the first chance I’ve had to weigh Talia since the feeding penny dropped and she started scoffing solids like a chocoholic let loose in a Lindt factory. It was no surprise at all to discover she had stacked on the grams - up 405 g in 2 weeks! Wow!

Worrying about Talia’s weight is now officially “so last year”.

A month ago I posted about being advised to start Talia on extra physiotherapy. Since then she has made absolutely fantastic progress, so I was feeling much more positive about it than I did on December 6. Still, I took my mother along for additional support - and it made sense that two of us learn about any extra exercises Talia should be doing.

Well, the physiotherapist could hardly believe it was the same baby who wouldn’t do anything other than lie on her back and cry the last few group sessions. She sat up confidently, reached for toys and demonstrated her “stuff tummy time” rolling action. We learned a few useful ways to play with her which will help build her core strength even if she is not on her tummy, and then we were told that we don’t need to continue with one-on-one sessions unless I feel she is having any problems. Hoorah for my little superstar!

As a bonus, we dropped off a bag of clothing to the hospital op shop and then bought a few more items from the same place. I love charity shopping, everyone benefits, and the clothes I bought are gorgeous, I can hardly wait until she grows into them.

Growth seems very likely. I missed my weekly weigh-in with the child health nurse this morning, but I’m certain Talia is getting heavier. She might even be having a growth spurt. Since I posted a week ago to say that she wasn’t eating consistently or very much, she has decided that solids are GOOD. I have gone from one serve of mush per day to 6 serves, and she is guzzling formula like there is no tomorrow. Current favourite: pumpkin and avocado. I’m also serving pumpkin with carrot and pea, banana with milk, banana and pear, apple and farex.

Corrected age: 6 months, 2 weeks
Weight: 5.970kg (so close to 6kg!!)
Diet: breastmilk, formula, a couple of small spoonfuls of fruit and vegetables. Since the last Café post, I have introduced apple, avocado, banana and corn. She still doesn’t eat regularly or very much, but more goes in than comes out again.

The child health nurse was open for the first time in 3 weeks so I went and had all her measurements done for the first time since early November. In the past two months, she has grown!

Weight: up 1.36kg to 5.97kg - and finally back on the shaded part of the graph, the 3rd percentile

Length: up 3cm to 63cm - just above the 10th percentile

Head circumference: up 1.5cm to 43cm - just above the 50th percentile

So it’s all good. I am a happy mummy today.

Corrected age: 5 months, 3 weeks
Weight: 5.555kg (yes, today has been brought to you by the number 5!)
Diet: breastmilk, formula, a smidge of vegetable mixed with farex and milk

We’re back with the solids, but not very convincingly. I’m starting to wonder if the tongue is a problem, so I asked the child health nurse this morning if it was abnormal for her to be sticking it out so much. She said it might just be a habit, or it might be the sign of an underlying problem - but she is not qualified to comment. So I’ll just have to wait and see.

I have a freezer full of orange icecubes - sweet potato, pumpkin and carrot. I’ve also discovered that orange coloured mush is really hard to wash out of bibs.

I wasn’t expecting to hear from the hospital until shortly before Talia’s 8 month check up in February, but today I received an “infant temperament questionnaire - 6 months” in the post. It is LONG - 95 questions! I intend to ignore it until later in the month. Don’t ask me what that says about parent temperament.

I needn’t have worried about the childcare situation - I contacted my line manager and she told me that due to budgetary constraints, they would not be taking on any casual staff in 2008. So I will put myself back on the waiting list until after next winter. It feels like the right decision.

Today we tried carrot (mixed with formula and farex). Some of it stayed in, and we’ll try a bit more tomorrow.

Tonight was the first night of Hannukah. It was strange to be lighting candles and singing to Talia by myself, but Daddyfeatures is in Singapore again, all week. It is the first time he has been away since Talia came home from hospital. I thought I might feel lonely but between Talia and the cat and the computer, I am too busy!

Corrected age: 5 months, 1 week
Weight: 5.165kg
Diet: breastmilk, formula, the merest taste of solids (potato and sweet potato)

Monday morning the Child Health Centre is open for anyone to weigh their baby, so I try to hike up there every week and see how Talia is progressing. She has been very slow to gain weight since leaving hospital, which has caused me a lot of stress and contributed to a bout of postnatal depression. I was so keen to breastfeed exclusively and it was a great disappointment to find that I am a “low-flow” mother and barely able to produce enough milk to keep my baby alive. Fortunately things have improved for both of us since I introduced formula, and now I am still breastfeeding “for medicinal purposes” but without the stress of knowing it is Talia’s only source of food.

I started Talia on “solids” (which are anything but solid!) a couple of weeks ago and have tried Farex, pear, sweet potato and potato. At first she just screwed up her face and wouldn’t have a bar of either farex and pear (”Eat it yourself, Mum!”) but then she seemed to grasp the idea and opened wide as I spooned in a mix of milk and mashed potato. Unfortunately, as fast as it went in, she pushed it with her tongue - straight back out again. I don’t know that she actually swallowed any of it. So I am going to wait for another week or so and see if the tongue reflex goes away.