This week we tried spaghetti for the first time (definitely need to cut this up smaller for our next attempt as she really wasn’t happy about it!) and also tried fish, which Clara seemed to quite enjoy.
Weaning – week 8
This week we tried egg again, although we only used the yolk this time in order to determine if Clara will have an allergic reaction to it. I hard boiled it and then mashed it up with a bit of avocado and she loved it! No vomiting this time so we will test the egg white again soon to see if that sets her off, otherwise it may have been a false alarm which would be nice. We have also tried out buttered toast fingers, peanut butter, rice cakes, chicken and lamb for the first time so it has been a pretty adventurous week!
Our first A&E visit
Last night we had our first full blown panic over a potential choking session. Clara had just eaten red pesto chicken puree for dinner for the first time and just as she was finishing up she started to make a really strange coughing noise like there was something tickling her throat. We gave her a bit of water but she continued to do it and we couldn’t work out why.
Weaning – week 7
This week Clara continued to try new foods, including some Organix red pepper hearts corn puffs (which she loved, and were great as they completely disintegrated in her mouth so I was less paranoid about her choking on these!). She also tried Organix multigrain mini cereal puffs, although given that she is still struggling to get along with the porridge, I think this was a step too far as it is basically all of the lumps from the porridge taken out and combined in one packet! Definitely going to need a little bit more work with this one.
First night away
Yesterday Clara had her first night away from home and we had the opportunity to test out the travel cot properly and see how we got on with it. We went down to Selsey on the South Coast for Clara’s cousin’s 3rd birthday party and decided that it would be easier to stay the night in order to avoid having to set off early from home on the day of the party.
Taking a baby to a funeral?
Taking a baby to a funeral is apparently a topic of great contention on many online forums. Unfortunately, this week we had to make the decision of what side of the fence we stood on as my dad’s cousin Diane had passed away. I was quite close with her, so it seemed obvious that I was going to go along to the funeral and take Clara with me, but it wasn’t until I started to google what a baby should wear to a funeral that I realised that quite a few people online seem to frown upon a baby being present.
Weaning – week 6
This week we introduced kiwi to Clara as part of a kiwi-avocado combo, and she seemed to like it. I’ve heard that this can be a potential allergen but she didn’t have any symptoms after eating it so hopefully we are ok with this one. We will try it again soon just to make sure. We also gave Organix multigrain porridge a try for breakfast one morning, although Clara didn’t seem massively impressed with the texture or taste of this one so we will definitely need to keep trying it in order to try and get her used to it.
Weaning – week 5
Food this week consisted of three meals again for each day, and we also had our first attempt at finger food by giving Clara a mango stone to gnaw at for a little while. It was pretty slippery for her to keep in her hands so I have since purchased some wheatgerm that we can sprinkle on any other slippery foods in order to make them easier for her to hold, but in general she seemed to have fun with it! She did manage to break quite a large bit of fruit off from the stone at one point which scared us a bit as it could have been a choking hazard, so we called an end to it for the day, but I know that at some point we are going to have to learn to trust her to eat chunkier bits of food so hopefully the fear factor will ease off as time goes on!
Weaning – week 4
Food this week has been fun, and we have begun to introduce some common allergens to Clara’s diet to see how she gets on with them. She had baby rice and yoghurt with no sign of a reaction, but we introduced egg for the first time with more mixed success. On the plus side, Clara seemed to enjoy it, however, she threw up quite a bit afterwards so she may have an allergy – we will need to test this again at a later point. I read somewhere that yolks have a lower allergy risk than whites, so maybe next time we try egg we will just do the yolks and then reintroduce the whites again a bit later on.
New Schedule
This week we introduced a new schedule for Clara to try and reduce the number of milk feeds that she has and to help her sleep better at night as it was starting to get a bit ridiculous. I’ve been breastfeeding her on demand up until now but as she is so used to being fed whenever she cries, wakes or needs sleep, it has also resulted in her asking for food several times during the night as comfort more than anything and we are really starting to feel the strain from the broken sleep that we are getting each night.