My little girl is growing up too quickly!
Last night we gave her baby cereal for the first time EVER!
After the paediatrician visit and finding out that Emmeline is underweight, I didn’t want to wait a second longer than necessary and as Yaincoa goes to him mom on Monday, I want to try to give her food before he left so that he could be part of it all. The problem was that the doctor told me that Emmeline should eat a 180 – 210ml mixture. So I bought the continuation milk but I really didn’t want to give it to her, so I decided to express milk to mix that with the cereal, that way she would also have a familiar taste! Well, I expressed and expressed and froze up about 140ml and then had about 60ml in the fridge. But stupid me forgot to defrost the milk in the freezer, so in the end there was only a tiny bit of my milk and lot of other continuation milk. Boo. I decided to mix it all up and put it in the bottle as I didn’t quite fancy doing the whole bath time routine and then chuck a bib in Emmeline, put her in her chair and try feed her and then try put her to bed. The problem with this option though is the fact that Emmeline has only ever drunk out of a bottle about 3 times in her whole life so it was all new to her. We had been giving the bottle to her with water and she is getting better, but she seems to enjoy chewing the bottle much more than actually drinking from it! So needless to say, I was not overly hopeful about our first venture into solid food territory.
So there we were, Emmeline bathed, moisturised, blow dried and dressed in her pyjamas. I cradled her in my arms and she automatically tried to burrow her way through my sweater to find her food source. ‘No, no, no, not tonight!’ I put the bottle in her mouth and she pushed it straight back out. I tried again and this time she chewed away on the teat and by doing so some of the milk sprayed out, so she got a good taste. She paused and looked up at me as if to say ‘is this ok mommy?’ I gave her my biggest smile and encouraged her to drink more feeling total relief, amazement and wonder at all of this. She drank a little more pulled a face and boycotted the bottle. Every time I tried to put it in her mouth to drink she looked away or closed her mouth. So I decided to try something new. I got Xavi to bring Emmeline’s new princess bowl and spoon and I put some of the milk in there and decided to try to feed her with the spoon. She seemed a little shocked by this as if she was thinking ‘hmm, mommy is putting the spoon in my mouth AND it has food on it!’ I put the first spoonful in her mouth and it all just dribbled out of her mouth and onto her bib. The same thing happened the second and third time and I started to wonder how you teach your baby to swallow. I even did the whole ‘one spoon for mommy, one spoon for baby’ thing, swallowing each time and showing her my empty mouth. Baby cereal does not taste that bad actually, kind of sweet! Eventually Emmeline seemed to swallow a bit more and again I started to feel a glimmer of hope that this may be easy, she may eat all her cereal, I may get a halfway decent night’s sleep! Then her mouth started to close up, her head started to turn away and her face started to look like I was putting lemons down her throat and not sweet cereal. I guessed that meal time was over. Away went all the bowls and bibs and spoons, out cam e the boobs, and my girl emptied me out!
Well, I guess that tomorrow could be the day that Emmeline suddenly realises that cereal is great and she devours the whole lot . . . . Oh who am I kidding?!
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