Muddling Through Motherhood The good, the bad and the guilt – through motherhood

We’ve recently joined the Soil Association and they sent a couple of free recipe books, including “The Organic Baby & Toddler Cookbook”. I was hoping it would be a sensible book, at least mentioning that there is no *need* to puree if you don’t want to, but no.

It mentions starting weaning at 4 months (although only ‘raw’ fruit and vegetable juices, but it is still NOT milk) and then talks about giving purees from 6-8 months, and introducing finger foods afterwards (although I haven’t read it cover to cover so might have missed something)

While lot of people will say that weaning at 4 months was fine ‘in my day’, guidelines now clearly state that food before 17 weeks (and most people will take 4 months as 16 weeks, I certainly did at that stage) is proven to be potentially harmful to your baby. Their gut matures (and is able to deal with digesting food rather than just milk) sometime between 17 and 26 weeks so the best thing is to wait until 26 weeks. (I didn’t quite but I will next time round!). The best piece of advice, whether you are pureeing or not, is to wait until your baby is sitting almost unaided in their highchair and can pick up food and bring it to their mouth.

I know people decide to wean earlier based on all sorts of advice from parents and friends and even health visitors – advice that they have every reason to believe, and I know that there are some very good medical reasons to wean before 26 weeks, but these are the facts. This is not a dig at parents, but a dig at people who should know better publishing books with incorrect advice.

Of course someone is now going to come along and tell me there is something different about ‘raw’ fruit and veg juice that actually makes it safe, but I’m pretty sure that is not the case!

Anyway, for information, the NHS weaning leaflet really gives the right advice on starting weaning :

At about six months babies are ready to be moved onto a mixed diet.
Try giving solid foods when your baby:
– can sit up
– wants to chew and is putting toys and other objects in their mouth
– reaches and grabs accurately.

It is normal for babies aged three to five months to begin waking in the night when they have previously slept through. It is not necessarily a sign of hunger and starting solids will not make your baby more likely to sleep through the night again.”
(You can read the whole leaflet here http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/documents/digitalasset/dh_084164.pdf: )

If you want to comment, you’ll have to do it on http://muddlingthroughmotherhood.co.uk as I’m still not bothering to check facebook and will eventually get round to taking my blog off there I expect.

Continue reading No, recommended weaning age is NOT 4 months

Its a bit late for these, but I’ve been doing ok on the challenges I set myself.

Tumble drier wise, we’ve been lucky with the weather lately and although it does get used for finishing off nappies, it is no longer full with whole loads we are too lazy to put out on the airer. Lets hope this continues when the weather starts to fail.

Supermarket wise, its been so-so. I’m not going to be able to stop shopping at ASDA without planning to the tiniest detail (and possibly bankrupting us in the process). While my planning is currently vastly improved (and I am starting to adjust plans as I go along, to prevent wastage) it is not at the stage where I can predict just how many bananas Rowan will want to eat in one day, so there will be times I will need to top up. Its not every day or anywhere near it any more though, and it is almost always with a list. I intend to carry on the way we’re going at the moment, trying to get as much fruit and veg from Abel and Cole (or alternative box scheme) because I can get in-season (if not exactly local) and British produce as well as foreign stuff that I know hasn’t been air-freighted.

And now I can’t remember what my other challenges were, if there were any.

I have a few challenges for October.

The first is a work one, which is to get our company accounts off to the accountant before the end of the month. This involves a fair bit of boring reconciliation which I have got behind on because of the accountants and our accounting software but I should be able to make a start on it next week.

Number 2 is to try to up my gym attendance to twice a week. I am pretty good at going on a Tuesday morning when Rowan is at nursery, but I need to try to find a way of fitting another session in. This won’t be easy with the amount that David is going to be away until Xmas.

The last one is to get a move on with my Xmas pressies. I need to find some good wool for the next one but the first half of the first present is almost done. My goal is to have 2 completed hat and scarf sets done by the end of the month.

Lets see how I manage with these!

Continue reading Update on some challenges

For various reasons I have cut down my online time quite significantly recently, including not checking facebook at all, and I’m finding that, at the moment I’m really making the most of those extra minutes (might blog more about that another day).

As I haven’t really missed facebook, I’m not going to go back on it until I do! My blogs will still appear on there as well as the muddlingthroughmotherhood site as I can’t be bothered to stop them, but I doubt i shall check in for a while yet, so if anyone wants me, email or text please

When I don’t have a book and a cup of tea waiting I shall write a bit more about what I’ve been up to lately.

Continue reading Switched off

And if not, why not? Do they eat the same thing as you? Have they always?

Rowan is a toddler that doesn’t want to sit down. As I understand it this is pretty common for toddlers and nothing to panic about. We’ve decided not to try to make him (unless we’re in a restaurant or somewhere and then only until we’ve finished eating). The one thing we do insist on is that we all (wherever humanly possible) sit down together at dinnertime. He doesn’t always stay sitting up (if he’s not slept properly during the day and is too tired this can happen) but David and I sit and eat our meals (sometimes he sits on our lap to eat, but that’s fine) before we do anything different.

We’ve always done this with him, even when we had to eat at 5pm! He’s always had the same dinner as us – we have adapted our dinners to suit his nutritional requirements (no salt) or motor skills (in chip shapes when he was younger) but we pretty much always eat the same thing.

I couldn’t stand the hassle of doing things separately – the cost and the effort, and I think its really important that a family sits down together at least once a day, preferably eating the same things! I strongly believe that children learn through observation much more easily than through being taught, and they love to copy us so much that really, eating has never been a problem for us with Rowan. Sometimes he doesn’t eat what we have and ends up with a piece of toast for dinner, but that’s fine because most of the time he does – from curry to stir fry.

I’m just genuinely baffled as to why people don’t arrange their days so they can all eat together (or at least as much of the family as possible). We’re constantly re-evaluating our arrangements to make sure everyone gets what they need (Rowan gets hungry at around 4.30 and if he’s hungry I feed him – normally something like a cracker and some raisins. This was making him not want his dinner so we moved it back to 6.30 and heh presto, those all important veggies get eaten again!)

I suspect some people will think I am smug because we haven’t yet hit one of those magic times where the older toddler suddenly starts refusing everything they ate before, but we have been through plenty of food phases with Rowan and I hope I can cook inventively enough to counter the worst of it, even if we change our menu somewhat to suit him. For example, Rowan has only recently gone back to eating meat in chunks, and oily fish – he ate them for about 6 months when first weaning then started to reject them. Brocolli used to be the infallible food and is now just averagely popular. He still won’t eat anything potato based that’s not a chip, and has to have his pasta cut up and mixed into his sauce. I know it will get worse at some point, but I think if we stay relaxed we’ll cope. If not, feel free to call me a smug cow

Of course I’m sure some people have some excellent reasons for doing so, but I bet quite a few could rearrange their timings so they all ate together, or at least cooked one thing for all the family then reheated it for the adults later! However, if you wish you could all eat together, I bet with a bit of inventiveness and flexibility, you could!

Continue reading Do you eat with your kids?

This week we’ve enjoyed our no-meat challenge, with 2 days left to go. I, of course, cheated and had a steak when I went out for dinner with friends on Wednesday but I’m not counting that as I still cooked bean chilli for David and Rowan. It was such a success that we’ve decided to limit our meat meals to 2 main meals a week (we’d struggle without spagbol and chilli and the odd roast dinner) and go for veggie options (preferably bean rather than cheese) the rest of the week. There will be the odd bit of meat in our lunches every now and again too, but on the whole I think we can eat a lot more veggie food, and if this week is anything to go by, enjoy it and feel better for it.

I’ve currently too excited about all these changes to stick to just one challenge every week – there are lots of things I am working on and thinking of, but am already getting started on. I’ll probably still do some weekly challenges but also with some long term things added in.

This week I have taught myself to knit again (thankyou internet) and have started work on an xmas present. I may add a photo of it so far as the person who it is for is unlikely to read this! I have ideas for presents for everyone (except Rowan, he’s getting carefully selected and limited new toys!) that are hand made, and potentially partially recycled, so I shall not be buying any tat this year, and will be asking other people not to buy me anything if its not something I really need (or to donate some money to favourite charities that I shall no doubt blog about later). I do, however, have a long wish list for the kitchen now I’ve started doing much more stuff for myself so perhaps people will pick from there if I haven’t spent all my pocket money on them before xmas!

My next challenge is going to take some work, and its a long term one. During the course of September I am going to aim to shop in supermarkets as little as possible. Shopping will be done from our local fruit farm, butchers, little health food shop and various other (probably online) places that I will be scouting out to fill all my needs. It will probably take all month to get sources for all the little things we take for granted from the supermarket, and we may not succeed with some things, but the less money those big bastards get from us, the better. I’m going to have to learn to cook more seasonally and inventively, and plan better and waste less to cover the fact that these places will cost more, but we’ll see if I can do it and stay in budget.

I really wanted to go away this weekend but I can’t face the thought of camping at the moment – its a lot of hassle – so we’ve got some fun things planned instead. Some cycling, swimming at a big place in Stoke (hopefully) and a bit of stuff around the house.

Continue reading Changes and challenges

As per this week’s challenge, I have been converting my lovely blackberries, collected from our garden and from ‘foraging’ expeditions near our home, into JAM!

I used this recipe to make my jam. I had 5lb (2.3kg) of blackberries and added about 1700g of sugar. Its a bit too sweet so I would cut this down quite a bit in future.

5lb of blackberries and some water

I clearly made far too much jam as we don’t really eat much of it (we’ll have to start now!) and as my saucepan wasn’t big enough to boil all the stuff properly – resulting in a boiling over incident near the beginning which knocked my confidence a bit.

My tester bits of jam didn’t seem to set ever, but as the boiled over stuff was starting to be jamlike I gave up after a while and jarred it, in the hope that it would set. Thanks to someone on freecycle I had enough jars, but I’m all out now

Jars of Jam!

This morning I found it did set and was quite tasty – a bit too sweet and quite strong, but definitely edible!

Little pot of jam

This morning, in my baking frenzy, I have made, among other things, jam tarts! (carrot and courgette scones pictured alongside)

Carrot and Courgette Scones and Jam Tarts

Baking frenzy complete, we have ended up with some multiseed bread and fruit shortbread in addition to the above. Yum.

Baking!

Continue reading In a bit of a Jam!

… and that’s always a dangerous thing.

Lots of general musings about life and the world and how I would ideally like things to be.

Having Rowan has really really made me consider things that had previously been unimportant to me, or ignorable. You can see evidence of this in my new interest in environmentally friendly things. While this thinking has left some big crazy ideas floating around in my head, in that direction I’m trying to take things slowly to prove to myself that I can keep up the changes we are making and that its not just a big fad – which I am prone to! (I’m ignoring the worries that the little I can do won’t make any difference to the big picture. I’m trying a bit of ‘Do as I do’ rather than ‘Do as I say’)

Anyway, I also read parenting books – mostly ‘alternative’ type ones and that makes me question the assumptions about bringing up kids – sometimes pretty substantial ones – that I had before a real life child appeared. I’m beginning to be able to consider different ways of doing things, questioning the ways I have settled into or will wander into as Rowan gets older.

As I’m trying to do more around the house and cook more from scratch I’m finding it hard to get stuff done – except while Rowan is asleep – as he doesn’t like me to be out in the kitchen. He’s happy playing on his own a lot of the time (so long as he’s not bored/tired etc) but as soon as I go in the kitchen (unless the TV is on) he’s in there, wanting to be picked up etc. I’ve tried convincing him to play in the safe half of the kitchen but he wants to have his hands in what I’m doing (or to take me away from it) which is a bad thing when I’m trying to cook.

I am going to try to see if it is just interest, and try some baking with him, but I’m not sure how to include him in the other things like chopping veg and washing up – at least not at his age. I want him to learn, early, that these are normal things to do and life’s not all about toy cars and stacking cups and 24hr attention. I want him to know that I am there but that sometimes I need to do other things. It’s a challenge but it’s increasingly important to me that I at least try to do things in the way I think is right. Small changes to our routine, but working towards the fuzzy ideas that are started to take shape in my brain about how we should be living.

Continue reading I’ve been thinking…