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Thursday, April 07, 2005 - (see all news for this day)
finally eating solids - 10:23 PM
(filed under 'baby')
after trying & trying & trying since smiley was six months old & him just not being interested in the least in eating solid food just for him (as opposed to sharing some of our meals, but usually only a few mouthfuls) he's finally got into the solids.
.. & it happened when he was good & ready, just as i thought it would.
there were a few people, mostly family members i guess, who were worried that he was still mostly breastfed & hadn't taken to eating solids very often. it certainly wasn't for lack of trying.
initially, he took to solids really well. he loved it, but fairly quickly he would only take about two mouthfuls & that was it. there was no convincing him to have more. even shroom's mum, for whom he would normally eat a lot of solids, had trouble getting more than that into him.
i considered dropping a breastfeed so that he'd be hungry enough to want to eat more solids, but since he's only little for his age (which is not surprising since shroom & i are both very short), i didn't want to take away a really good form of nutrition from him which might cause him to be even smaller than he will most likely be anyway.
in the end, i pretty much gave up trying to give him his own food. most days he was quite keen to have some of whatever we'd be eating & we'd share as much with him as he wanted, whether it was just a taste or half our plate.
this past week he's been as keen as i've ever seen him to have anything other than breastmilk. for instance, today he ate part of an apple for a good ten minutes. with his little mouth it looks more like a large mouse attacked it, but he did well getting through the skin & all.
earlier today he ate about one & a half bananas & tonight he wanted another one & ate the whole lot minus two small bites for me.
when i've been making porridge for breakfast he's been having a really good share of it, not just a spoonful here & there .. & when i've had a tub of yoghurt, he's eaten about a third of it.
i was never terribly worried about him having mainly breastmilk, because it's a whole food & gives him a more balanced diet for each feed than if he was eating more solids, but when things were mentioned several times, i did start to wonder if perhaps i should try to force the issue with him.
in the end though, i can't force him to eat anything he doesn't want to eat. he was happy & healthy & growing with his diet consisting mainly of breastmilk, so i decided i should just wait until he was ready to eat other things .. & now he is .. & i was right not to worry. 
People constantly underestimate what comes out of those biological beverage dispensers. Ok, I know they dispense more just a beverage (my wife gives me a slug when I call them that), but what I'm saying is that he was probably getting more nutrition on just breast milk than most adults get on a daily basis.
People just get to frantic. On his own time---good philosophy. It's worked well for us.
As I've said before, my sister was breastfeeding her twins till they were 3 or so. Smiley was always gonna do it in his own time - he still has instincts at this young age to know what he needs.
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You're such a sensible, chilled-out mum. I hope I'm half as savvy as you are when I get round to having my own brood!