Friday, November 4, 2011

Chronicles of Naptime... and some musings on food

Not doing too bad! Here's our most recent updates:

Day 4:

Went to a La Leche League meeting in the morning during what is usually his first nap. He slept a little on my lap.

What would normally be nap 2- Went to sleep by himself in his crib around 1:50, I let him sleep all the way til 4:30! Great nap!

Day 5:

We're currently on nap 1... he went to sleep on his own in his crib at 9:30 and now at 10:45 is still sleeping away! Once we pass that 45 minute hump I know we're good! I think the dreary day helps, it's niiiice and dark in his room. I need to get actual curtains, what I do know is close the blinds and then cover with a quilt and some pillows to help it to stay nice and dark. On sunny days a good bit of light still manages to get in. Not today though! Today is a good day for sleep!


So anyway, besides all that. I want to talk about the La Leche League meeting I went to yesterday. It was AWESOME to be able to spend time with some other breastfeeding mothers! It's always great to spend time with other mommies, but especially if they are going through exactly what you're going through! I can't wait til the next meeting :)

During the meeting I asked about starting solids. Sam's Dr. said we can start trying cereal to help him get used to food, but to not worry about really feeding him a lot of different things til 6 or 7 months. I like this advice. I was afraid I was going to be encouraged to start him on 3 meals a day at 4 months, which I do not agree with. However, I've been hesitant to even start trying with cereal. Sam seems perfectly satisfied with breastmilk, and while he does show interest when we're eating, I don't think it's so much an interest in the food as it is an interest in just Mommy and Daddy in general. I made baked sweet potatoes the other night, cooled a little bit on my plate and James tried to give it to him, there was no interest whatsoever.

So I brought all this up at the meeting yesterday and one of the leaders gave me a Baby Led Weaning book to borrow. Baby Led Weaning (BLW) is basically all about letting your baby set the pace as far as eating solid foods. And baby really does eat SOLID foods. With BLW you skip the baby cereals and purees, skip spoon feedings, and baby learns to eat actual food all by themselves. I've been interested in this since I first heard about it when I was pregnant. Obviously, this practice has been around LONG before baby food in jars and all that, it was only just recently even given a name. Around 6 months, or once baby can sit up mostly unsupported and can pick things up and put them into his mouth, you start putting 'sticks' of food onto the high chair tray. Bananas, avocado, sweet potatoes, broccoli. Mushy, but not completely smashed up. So baby can experiment and learn by picking the food up himself, looking at it, smelling it, and eventually putting it into his mouth and discovering, "Hey! This tastes good! And I'm doing that thing that Mommy and Daddy do a few times a day when they say, 'Mmmm yum' a lot. I think they call it eating? Whatever it is, I'm liking it!"

I talked to James about this last night, and read him a couple passages from the book I borrowed. He's all for it. So I think we're going to go the BLW route :) Sam will be 5 months on Monday. So he'll get another month or so of just nursing, which he is loving, and then we'll start giving him some finger food to see what he does with it! It's exciting how fast he's growing up! I can't believe he's already just about 5 months old. Time moves so incredibly quickly!

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