Mama Loves Wholesomebabyfood.com

Mama Loves is a linky party where mamas can share anything that has made your life easier as a mama.

Maybe you've found:

• a toy or book that captivates your child(ren)
• gear you just can't live without
• a recipe your choosy toddler gobbles down
• a parenting book that you've found perspective changing
• an activity that wears your kid(s) out (these lead to good naps, which we all love)
• an outfit that flatters your post-baby body and makes you feel fabulous
• or anything else you're loving--creativity welcome!

To link your own Mama Loves post up, head on over to Julia's blog, Pontifications of a Twin Mom

__________________________________________

I'm wayyyyyy behind on this, but I thought for this week's Mama Loves, I'd flashback to something I loved a year ago and  would use again in a second if there ever was a new babe in our home. 

I am not a cook.  In fact, when my husband left for a week long work trip today, he left me a detailed menu of dinners for Sam, Anna and I, complete with cooking directions aimed to make mealtimes easier for me.  However, I did make almost all of Sam and Anna's baby food.  Why?  I don't know what really drove me to it most.  I still dislike cooking, and I don't get enjoyment out of cooking my kids regular table food meals.  I know I liked having control over what they ate as their first foods- ALL of the ingredients.  With the issues we had with bottle refusal due to reflux, it was nice to have more control over what went in their mouths.  I loved the cost savings over prepackaged baby food too.  And I thought it all tasted so darn good.  In retrospect, I credit our super easy transition to table foods and Sam and Anna's very varied and healthy current diet to their beginnings in eating fresh veggies and fruits from the start as well.  I highly suggest giving homemade babyfood a try if it has ever crossed your mind. 

What made it possible for this non-cook to cook a variety of baby food was this website:

It was my baby food making bible.  It had a chart for what to introduce when.  It had directions for how to cook each food to maximize its nutritional content.  It told me what things went well together, so when we defrosted foods, we could add different cubes together to make different "meals" for Sam and Anna.  I actually cut and pasted the suggestions onto a word document to hang on our fridge at home to help during dinner prep.  Who would have known that carrots and peaches were a good combo, or  mangoes and sweet potatoes?  It even expanded our food horizons by allowing us to introduce foods not commonly found in the pre-made stuff.  When Sam and Anna tried parsnips for the first time... so did I.

Without http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/, I have no doubt in my mind that I would not have made it past a few feeble attempts at making my own baby food.

A Solids Adventure

First off, I suck. I have been a bad, bad blog buddy and haven't routinely commented on blogs in who-knows-how-long. Here's my usual priority list: 1.) Sam and Anna 2.)Work 3.)Laundry 4.) Blog posts (because it is important to me to have a record of their baby days) 5.) Sleep 6.) Whatever else I can fit in (which includes commenting and housecleaning, so if I'm not commenting, you can imagine how my house looks right now!) I'm going to make a big effort to get better, I promise!

Secondly, I also feel a little crummy that I'm late with the big 6 month (half a year!) old post. I've never been late on a monthly milestone. But I had never been teaching kindergarten full-time while parenting twin babies during a monthly milestone before. The post is brewing, but it takes more mental energy than I've got right now to do it.

So instead, I'm recapping our solids adventure so far (typing one handed while holding a sleeping Sam so I can get my baby fix in since I was at work all day):

First, we started out with Earth's Best rice cereal. I had read that Gerber has hidden dairy and soy in their rice cereal, and didn't want to risk a problem with that, considering Sam and Anna were on a formula made for milk/soy protein intolerance for awhile so that's why we went with Earth's Best brand. We attempted a morning solids "breakfast" about an hour after their first a.m. bottle. We started like this because our babies aren't great morning drinkers especially, and we thought that extra stuff would help tide them over until their next bottle. Also, I had heard that when introducing a new food, a morning feeding is better so that if your baby has issues with it, it will be through their system before bedtime and thus not causing sleep issues at night. We quickly abandoned the rice cereal, because it tasted like formula and let's face it- Sam and Anna have never really been too fond of formula. They weren't too keen on the rice cereal, either, understandably. Plus, it doesn't have a huge amount of caloric benefit and our babies needed extra calories, not something to satisfy a big appetite.

After 4 days of rice cereal, we quickly moved on to avocado , since it is a higher calorie food, and because it was a pretty "safe" food for GERD babies. We also decided to move their once daily solids meal to the evening (about an hour and a half before their last bottle) so that we didn't have to try to cram it in before going to work and we could feed them together, rather than have our daycare provider give them their one solids meals. Avocado is so easy to make- we cut up half of one, blended it in our food processor, and then divvied it up between both babies (so each one got a fourth). It was so simple, we just made it on the spot each day before giving it to them. At first we added a little water to it, but then gradually used less and less water and eventually just gave them 100% avocado. Sam and Anna loved avocado. This food seemed to be the one that helped them learn how to eat pureed food from a spoon (although they are still learning!) I think they enjoyed the fact that it tasted nothing like formula. The evening dinner solids meal seemed to work well for Sam and Anna, so we've been sticking with that.

After a week with just avocado, we bought some sweet potato to try. I cubed 3 peeled sweet potatoes and steamed them for about 15-20 minutes. Then I blended them with a little cooking water, and put the puree into baby food cubes to freeze. It was easy-peasy, as I often say to my kindergartners. Sam and Anna thought they were okay. Each day they ate a little more than 1 oz of sweet potato. Forewarning: that stuff really stains, though! I was just relieved that so far we hadn't had any major food fails.

We stayed on just sweet potato for a week, and then alternated sweet potato and avocado for a while. We didn't want to start something new right before our trip to Minnesota in case they had problems. Plus I couldn't decide between bananas and squash for the next food to try!

I ended up getting organic bananas because the squash needed to be baked, and I didn't have time to do that since we were out of town for a few days. Today was day #1 of bananas, and OMG, we couldn't shovel it in Sam's mouth fast enough. Anna downed her half of a banana faster than she's eaten before too. My husband blended it in our food processor, but mushing it up with a fork would work just as well.

Since we've been on a fruit, veggie, fruit pattern so far, we'll probably just continue that until we run out of options. We'll do squash next. I plan to make as much baby food as I can and as much as my free time allows. I'm not going to beat myself up over feeding Sam and Anna store-bought food though. It's just cheaper to make your own, and since they have reflux/eating issues, I just feel more comfortable feeding them things without hidden ingredients.

So questions for you been-there-done-that (or doing it) parents- What foods have your babies liked best so far? How old was your baby when you added in a second daily meal? Our pediatrician suggested at 7 months, but I'm thinking we might before then and have our daycare provider give that one in the morning. Any tips on how to feed two at once by yourself (My husband is going on four trips in the next 2 months-eek!- and I need some advice on how to accomplish that)? The bibs get so nasty, I use stain remover, but still feel like I need to wash them at least every other day. This is really hard for me to fit in. What do you do to keep clothes and bibs stain free?

And also- Any other random solids advice for us? I kind of feel like we're flying by the seat of our pants on this one, and just taking our babies' unique situation (low weight, small appetite, possible oral aversions, reflux, etc.) into account. So far so good, but I'm terrified we'll choose the wrong food and pay for it for days!

Day 1 of Bananas

(doggie bibs in honor of Benelli)

A New First!

Just because I didn't think I had enough on my plate right now (yeah, right!), we decided to introduce solid food this weekend. I was more curious to see what Anna would do, because when we tried the added rice formula at 6 weeks with her for her acid reflux, she flat out refused to drink it. Sam and Anna don't meet all the "criteria" for beginning solid foods, but they do meet most of it. Let's face it- it's going to be a long, long time before they weigh over 15 lbs and I'm not sure they'd ever still be hungry after finishing a bottle (ha- in my dreams!). I can tell their tongue thrusting reflex is gone, and they have shown interest in our food when we eat. They have excellent head control and are on their way to sitting unassisted.

It went well! Both were unsure at first and made very serious faces, but did swallow some rice cereal. The second day I think they swallowed more than what ended up on their bibs, so I'm calling it a success! I can breathe a sigh of relief that their formula eating issues are not a by-product of an overall oral aversion created by the reflux that was not completely controlled for so long- which would affect anything we'd try to feed them. I'm a little unsure how to proceed though, because of their limited appetites- I definitely don't want solids to take up important real estate in their stomachs. However I think it is important for them to get practice eating solids at this point, and have positive eating experiences.

First bites
Happy Babies!

(For those of you who are wondering how I had time to create a post after I had a post explaining how busy I am- I typed the whole thing one-handed while soothing Sam back to sleep. Now that he's back down, I'm off to do school-work. Laminated name tags don't cut themselves out!)

The Things I Do For My Babies

Y'all- I don't cook. I worked out a handy (and smart, if I must say so myself) agreement with my husband long before the rings were put on that he'd do all the cooking at our house. He's in charge of the kitchen and pretty much everything that has to do with it. In return for his cooking, kitchen cleaning, dish washing and bottle making, I don't say a word when the kitchen is less tidy and clean than I would personally like it to be. He's an excellent cook, loves experimenting with food and has even reformed me from a very picky eater to a person who loves Indian, Thai, and sushi, among other foods.

Since we've been married for over 7 years, it's been a long time since I've cooked regularly. Let me tell you- when it comes to cooking, if you don't practice, you do forget how to do it; at least how to do it well. I used to be okay in the kitchen- now I have been known to even mess up mac and cheese.

Now knowing all that, it should surprise you that I decided making/cooking baby food would be something I wanted to take on.

For a baby shower gift, we got a electric baby food mill, baby food storage cubes, and baby food cookbooks. I did not register for these, and at the time, I thought: seriously? The gift giver (my MIL, who taught my dear husband how to cook- but that's enough blog fodder for another post entirely) thinks that with twins I'll have time to make baby food? Now that the babies have been here for a while, I may be singing a different tune. Maybe I won't have time to make all the baby food my little ones will eat, but I think it will be a nice effort to make what I can. It will be more nutritious for them, and less expensive. And after paging through the baby food cookbooks- it looked fairly easy and not all that time consuming. So tonight, I attempted making our first batch of homemade baby food.

I settled on carrots for a few reasons: "Yellow" veggies are typically recommended first, after rice cereal. It was a toss up between carrots and sweet potatoes, until I read that the proteins in sweet potatoes are harder to digest and then I read that carrots are one food that is suggested to be organic. Since the formula that has worked best for Sam and Anna has partially broken down proteins (and people, we've tried 5 different kinds of formula before we finally settled on this one), I was worried that the proteins in the sweet potatoes might cause problems if we attempt that first. So carrots, it was.

Now you won't see any pictures for a while of Sam and Anna enjoying the pureed carrots (although I tasted them and thought they were yummy) because we haven't actually started solid foods yet. I froze the pureed carrots, which will be fine for 6 weeks-2 months. We're waiting until closer to 6 months to begin our adventures into solid food. Call me crazy (and I'm sure this is atypical first-time-mom behavior) but I'm really not that excited to start this stage. It's not because I want my little ones to stay "babies," it's partly because feeding them formula is still a huge challenge for us daily. It takes a lot of work to get in as many ounces as they get a day, which is still not as much as they should (damn reflux and oral issues). I'm dragging my feet on adding another eating challenge into our day.

I'm also not enthused about starting solids because some foods can cause reflux flare-ups in babies that have reflux. It varies so much from baby to baby, that we won't know the foods that will cause a reflux flare-up until we try them. For that reason, babies that suffer from reflux need to be introduced foods much more cautiously and slowly than a typical baby.

Honestly, I'm scared of having more trouble with reflux. With every food we try, I'm going to be nervous that my babies will be miserable for days afterwards. I think that may be a subconscious reason why I thought to give making baby food a try: to have some control over the uncertainty that solids will be for us. And maybe even to try to drum up some enthusiasm for the milestone event that is just around the corner. I promise I'll post pictures when that day arrives. :)