The long road to the solids

So we have almost gotten through emmelines first week of solids and it has been . . . well I don’t really know what word to use as I didn’t really know what to expect to be honest with you! The week has been emotional and stressful and exciting and scary!

We started on Saturday night with some cereal mixed into a bottle of my milk and ‘leche de continuacion 2’ – continuation milk for babies. I filled up a bottle, not overly hopeful that Emmeline would drink much, but willing to give it a go and hope for the best. I was hopeful that she would drink it all up partly because it was the first step on that wonderful road of food, but mostly because I REALLY, REALLY want her to start to sleep through the night! However, Emmeline has only ever drunk from the bottle a handful of times in 6 months, and she finds it more enjoyable to chew the teat and not actually drink from it! This coupled with the fact that it was something totally new left me feeling very doubtful!

As I guessed, she only drank 20ml before hunting for booby! Oh well . . . Breakfast the next day was interesting. I had honestly not thought about the logistics in feeding a baby or the hurdles that I would be faced with. I propped Emmeline up in her little pink bumbo chair and put on a pretty pink bib. I mixed her cereal in her pretty little princess bowl and got out her matching princess spoon. I put her bumbo chair on top of the table in the lounge and started to feed her, a huge content grin on my face waiting for the joy of my little princess gulping up her cereal.

Or not.

I headed for her mouth with the spoon filled with (actually quite delicious smelling) cereal, but Emmeline decided that looking at daddy was more interesting. Or she decided to fling herself backwards rather dramatically to look at the TV upside down. Or she decided to try to grab the remote control/my mobile/ tissues/ wet wipes/ anything she could see. Down went the bowl, off went the tv, out went daddy, away went everything she could see except me and her bowl of cereal. I tried again, but we had a problem. I seemed to have a baby that did not know how to open her mouth. Eventually as she let out a yelp of irritation at me jabbing her mouth with the spoon I got the spoon in her mouth lighting quick. She looked a little confused as to how that happened. Once food was in though she pulled the most incredible faces of disgust like a real little drama queen. I told her to stop being so dramatical about everything, but she continued. I managed to get quite a few spoons in before she started to do her Stevie Wonder impression and shake her head from side to side. She was covered in cereal, her chin, her cheeks, her nose, in her nose, her forehead, her eyes, her hair, her hands, her clothing . . . oh, and my hands, my arms, my hair and my clothing.

This was not how I imagined it!

Then came the vegetables.
Oh dear.

Carrots and potato, sounds alright doesn’t it? Not to my little noodle it doesn’t. We got the first spoon in there fairly easily as I think she thought that it was cereal. Oh but the minute that she swallowed we got the gagging, the shivering and the mock vomiting movements. Seriously child, IT’S NOT THAT BAD! We got more in much to Emmeline’s total disgust and then she started to protest. Problem for her was that every time that she opened her mouth so widely to protest, we would stick another mouthful of veggies into her mouth. We finished up with carrots everywhere!

The next day’s cereals resulted in Emmeline abruptly finishing the meal by blowing bubbles every time I put a mouthful of cereal in her mouth! More clothing in the washing. I see that I am going to have start to do washing more often.

That afternoon was green beans and potato. I HATE green beans and so I totally understood her screams!

Emmeline seems to have very quickly learnt a new trick. She doesn’t close her mouth when I put food in there. That way, she doesn’t swallow. And that way the cereal, veggies and banana simply fall out her mouth and onto her bib, arms, legs, hands, chair, tray, table, floor etc. I can only pile so much in her mouth before it is too full and I have to wait hoping that she accidently swallows before remembering that she has food in her mouth. Or xavi dangles the mobile phone in front of her up high so that she tilts her head up trying to grab the phone and hopefully the food will just fall down her throat. We have had about 50% luck with this one.

Gonna have to buy many, many more bibs.

I wonder when and if my child will ever learn how to eat properly? I am now like a prisoner in my own home as we cannot really do very much these days due to meal times. Before we could go anywhere and as soon as she got hungry, out came a booby and lunch was served. No mess, no fuss and only some embarrassment when Emmeline would pull away and just leave my boob hanging out there for the whole world to see. But I had learnt to cope with that.

Now I have to be home in the middle of the day to feed her. There is no way that I can feed her in public just yet. Not just for the carrots being flung in every direction without a care as to whom they land on, it is also for the screaming that Emmeline omits when green beans hit her tongue. I just know that people will look at me as though I am feeding my child shards of glass mixed with a good dose of poison! No, we are not ready for that yet.

Whilst I am happy that we have started with solids I do also miss the days of the booby. They were much easier! Let’s just hope that Emmeline learns the whole open mouth and swallow system sooner rather than later! Silly noodle!

Branching away from the boob!

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?!