AIPL: the mysterious world of weaning


For obvious technical reasons, the natural way to share a year of leave is for mum to take the first half and dad the second half. This meant I was able to benefit from Mrs Tomsk's hard-won experience in many areas, but weaning would be a daddy-managed activity. Little did I realise how it would dominate proceedings.

The advice from on high these days is not to start weaning until your baby is six months old, a good couple of months later than used to be the case, and exactly the time I was due to take over. Elspedoodle had tried a few things before this time, most notably in the notorious Magnum chocolate accident, but also broccoli and a chip she reached out and grabbed when we weren't looking. So she was aware of the most important food groups, but making a concerted effort on her weaning fell to me. I am rather proud of navigating her from an essentially milk-only diet at the start of my leave to three meals a day by the end while somehow miraculously maintaining her growth percentile line throughout. I can't claim any special insight into how this was achieved and credit must also go to E for the small matter of learning how to eat, but I do feel the satisfaction of a job well done (perhaps because of all the time I spent cleaning up after her).

Anyone who has not had to come up with a weaning strategy may be terrified to learn that there are two competing ideologies to choose from: spoon-fed and baby-led weaning. Spoon feeding is considered more traditional and involves making up lots of purees in ice cube trays, which are delivered into baby by means of a spoon. Baby-led weaning is considered a bit trendy and involves making up lots of finger food, which is offered to baby to play with and then delivered by baby over a wide radius around their highchair.

Elspedoodle forced the issue by looking expectantly at our food and grabbing it whenever given a chance, so plunging us down the baby-led route. The concept was also appealing, the idea being that babies should discover food at their own pace and have fun with it so they don't feel that eating is a terrible way to be spending their time. E was started off on typical finger food like pears, cucumbers, well-boiled carrots and the like which she very much enjoyed throwing about and occasionally gummily chewing.We avoided mush as a rule but weren't zealots about it: the spoons came out for porridge, yoghurt, mash and so on. Like with most ideological clashes there is a happy medium somewhere between the two extremes.

E quickly developed some favourites, including a very Chorltonish pitta and hummus combo which I became adept at cleaning up on the move (it's surprising which things are easy and which are hard to clean up: hummus is straightforward, while broccoli is an absolute nightmare). We also benefitted from Mrs Tomsk's heroic baking efforts leading to plentiful reserves of quiche and mushroom rolls in the freezer.

E rarely refused to try new things but did have some unusual dislikes, bananas and strawberries surprisingly chief among them. These aversions were cured by Mrs Tomsk baking them into muffins, and Elspedoodle now loves strawberries so much she has stripped the garden bare of them. The muffin-disguise ploy could conceivably be used for any foodstuff up to and including sprouts. We've stocked up on muffin cases in preparation for the next bout of fussiness.

The hardest period was what I recall shudderingly as "peak weaning" when E was trying out 3 meals a day while still having all her bottled milk as well. I was effectively full-time chef, waiter, potwash, floor mopper and formula milk barista over that time. Thankfully her milk intake started to decline soon after, particularly after she got teeth. After that everything became a lot easier to eat, not to mention prepare. Her joy at being able to strip a cucumber down to the skin in mere seconds was something to behold.

The weaning experience has changed our diet too thanks to an obsession with minimising salt along with an increased commitment to cooking with fresh ingredients, which has kinda sorta lasted into the post-leave era. Now that E is past her first birthday the rules are a little relaxed and she's easier to cater for when we're out and about, but we still have interesting puzzles to work through in the evenings like how to make a curry that's suitable for all of us (usual answer: two pans). She's also less messy while eating, at least until she's had enough and decides to throw everything left over the side of her chair as a reminder of the early days, all the while smiling cheekily at us.

Comments

  1. We bought a cat. It already knew how to eat. Your move, reproductive drive.

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  2. Also, clearly all those years of preparing wuss chilli has turned out to be very useful when dealing with fussy eaters with tragically underdeveloped palettes. Who could have etc.

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  3. Very wise to get a pre-weaned dependent, just watch out for kittens...

    And indeed, the wuss chilli approach to cooking has been a great inspiration. We have yet to inflict a terror-me-su on her but it's only a matter of time.

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  4. That's the other advantage of cats over children; guilt-free neutering. She's not allowed outside, either, so she can't even bring us murdered birds, unless something goes very wrong (she does like taking down spiders, though).

    Ah yes, the terror-me-su. The problem there is you can never be sure whether you're performing aversion therapy or kick-starting a lifelong addiction.

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