Sweet Baby E hit the six-month mark last month and according to our pediatrician, we needed to introduce cereal into her breastfeeding routine. We both thought food with zero nutritional value was strange in 2015 and pressed for the reason. We were told it was so she would start ingesting more iron – the cereal is fortified with iron. Well, that sounded stupid to us. (No offense to anyone who is feeding or has fed cereal to their infants. In fact, let me just do a blanket disclaimer. No blankets were harmed in the writing of this blog. No, no, that’s not it. DISCLAIMER: I mean no offense to anyone reading this who did something with their child that Wife and I are choosing not to do and/or that I ridicule. We’re new at this and will make plennnnty of mistakes so don’t worry, we’ll get ours.)
I asked the pediatrician if E could get iron from oh, I don’t know, spinach and she said that yes, it’s possible to give her pureed spinach and many in the pediatric community are starting to entertain the idea of letting infants gnaw on meat as a great source of iron. There are also supplemental iron drops that can be given to the breastfed baby. We thought that was the route we would probably go as we began introducing pureed foods to E.
We spent about a week giving E different pureed foods to try. E’s facial expression reviews will follow parenthetically. Sweet potato was first (weird), banana (better but still weird), avocado (deargodalmightywhyhaveyougivenmethis??), and finally butternut squash (delicious!) Somewhere in there, Wife heard about or looked into Baby-Led Weaning. I had heard the term before, but foolishly thought it meant breastfeeding would continue until the baby indicated she didn’t want the boob any more. You know, weaning led by the baby…
No, that’s not it. I have to assume the ‘inventors’ of this movement chose Baby-Led Weaning because it sounded far more pleasant than Holy-Shit the Baby’s Choking, Cough-Hack-Gack Red Baby, or Let’s Hope They Spit It Out.
To say I was incredulous when I first heard about this is an understatement. But suddenly, everyone I spoke to with a young child had practiced or was practicing Baby-Led Weaning. The book we purchased says we’re supposed to let E, toothless milk-fed six-month-old baby E, gnaw on hunks or large pieces of pretty much any food. Carrots, apples, celery, bread, sweet potatoes, green beans, oatmeal… The premise is that the infant’s gag reflex is much closer to the mouth opening (Yes, yes, we all knew someone like this in high school. Move along…) and the infant does not have the ability to force the food to the back of the throat in order to swallow it. The combination of those two things means if the baby successfully breaks off a piece of whatever is being gnawed, she will not swallow it and instead will spit it out. Eventually. Even after it looks like she’s choking.
Oh, and you’re really not supposed to make a big deal about it or stare at the baby while she’s choking, I mean, eating.
My heart.
I’m the calmer-in-an-emergency wife in this house and have been trained off-and-on for years in CPR and basic first aid, so it’s my job to sit next to the baby as she gags on solid food a few days short of seven-months-old. Truth be told, the first few times we’ve let her try out different foods this way, everything went as described in the book. “Our baby is brilliant!” we congratulated ourselves.
My mother-in-law visited tonight and brought some thick homemade graham crackers for Wife, really, but they decided to let teething Sweet Baby E gnaw on some this afternoon. Again, big success. I came home from work and they couldn’t wait to show me how cute she was eating her little graham crackers. Dinner rolled around and we gave her the same crackers, now a little soggier. Oh, she loved those crackers! She sucked on them and gummed them and broke off a dime-sized piece and turned into Bill the Cat and after I briefly caught a glimpse of that piece near the opening of her mouth, we never saw it again. While this was going on, my MIL was losing it behind me and I was trying to figure out the perfectly normal choking of Baby-Led Weaning versus the oh shit does she look blue to you choking of we need to do the Baby-Led Heimlich Maneuver.
She must have swallowed the cracker piece (despite supposedly being unable to do so) and we all laughed awkwardly and breathed a collective sigh of relief. Baby E, who was having a blast, immediately moved on to three large sections of carrot, celery, and apple and proceeded to choke NOT IN A GOOD WAY on apple and celery pieces that she broke off in no time at all. If our baby looks orange to you, it’s because carrots are the only food stronger than her pit bull jaws and will be the only solid food she gnaws for the foreseeable future. I was interested in teaching her American Sign Language to help her communicate before she’s able to speak, but may now just focus on the International Sign for Choking.
And of course while all of this is unfolding and my MIL is not thrilled that we’re trying to choke her only granddaughter, we’re quoting what sounds like complete and utter horsehit from this book! Who are these people anyway? “Well, they say…” and “The book says…,” excuse me, Baby E, would you please gag more quietly, we’re trying to explain to Gran that this is all perfectly normal.
I can’t help but think this whole thing was invented by some lazy motherf*cker who didn’t want to puree everything.
kidstarter 