Week 2 - lots of new tastes

We're well into our second week of BLW now, and at times finding it a bit hard to make time for meals, but have still managed to offer food at least once a day.

Towards the end of last week Jacob's milk intake dropped by about a third, and he was tired and coughing a lot. We thought it unlikely that he was dropping his milk naturally due to the introduction of solids, since the only thing that seems to have gone down is juice sucked off various fruits.

A possible reason came to light yesterday, when I had a text from a friend to say that her baby (with whom Jacob was in close contact 10 days ago) has chickenpox. Sure enough, Jacob has a few spots scattered around, and so we're just waiting to see if they develop further.

On Saturday (before pox suspicions were raised) we went out for the day to Barry Island with friends. Jacob enjoyed the beach, having his first dip in the sea and his first go in a ball pit at the soft play centre. As is practically expected of you at the beach, we had fish 'n chips for lunch. We know that whilst the very idea of BLW means letting your baby share your meals; little kidneys can't cope with very much salt so I don't think we'll be making chips a regular part of Jacob's diet. I did let him have a go on a few (unsalted) ones which had been left to cool by the side of my plate. He wasn't very keen though, and was far more intent on launching himself headfirst out of his Daddy's arms onto the floor. He was caught at the very last second, but it scared the life out of all of us, so we decided to leave the food for the day.

Since then, he's had a go on a rice cake with cream cheese, which he smeared liberally all over his face but wasn't too bothered about eating. Yesterday he had crumpets with butter (I read the packet afterwards and saw that crumpets have a shocking 0.5g of salt EACH, that's half his RDA) and some strawberries. He loved the strawberries, and we saw the first evidence this morning that they'd gone through his system ;)

Today we bravely offered his first 'proper' meal, of veggie spinach and ricotta lasagne with salad. Putting it on his tray, I was all poised to start cutting it up and offering it to him on loaded spoons, when he showed me how silly I was being by easily peeling off the top layer and shoving it in his mouth.

It was by far our most successful meal to date, we sat for nearly an hour while he chewed every last piece, making encouraging chewing faces/noises every time he started to gag. He hunted around on the floor and in his lap (and in his hair, and in the folds of his bib) for any bits he'd missed (or spat out) and had a second go on them all.

There was significantly less food when he'd 'finished', so we'll have to wait and see whether or not anything goes through.

I never thought I'd be this interested in or eagerly anticipating the contents of a nappy.

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