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You are here: Home / FOOD / A year of food – how it all began

A year of food – how it all began

May 9, 2016 by Molly Leave a Comment

Weaning

It’s hard to believe, but Baby Girl’s now been chowing down on proper food for just over a year. Early stage weaning seems like both a lifetime and just a second ago, just like with everything kids and time related.

Early weaning with our second baby was a bit different to our first. With Frog, I read all the books, joined the forums and agonised over what to feed her and when. I had daily routines of feeding times written out on a little list on the fridge and I was a militant Baby-led Weaning mum.

Second time around I had no plan, there were no lists and weaning began very much as it continues – with me flying by the seat of my pants. Baby Girl has always been a far less reliable sleeper than her older sister. She was exclusively breastfed until weaning began, but we started to introduce food around a month earlier than we did with Frog, from five months old. At the time, this was a desperate attempt to see if we could get more than an hour’s sleep in a row. Sleep deprivation drove the decision to introduce food, as we thought she may be waking due to hunger.

As it happens, it turned out to be a good decision. Although it didn’t solve the sleep issue, it turned out our baby was more than ready to get stuck into something other than milk. We started off with spoonfeeding mush – pureed fruit and veg – but that quickly turned to offering finger food once bubs started stealing the scraps from her sister’s plate. We had no specific “approach” this time. We just winged it from day to day.

Weaning baby

One thing that was similar with early stage weaning with both girls was the fun (and the mess). I never worried about “how much” either girls were having, because I knew that as long as they had milk they wouldn’t go hungry. Gradually, as they learned to chew and swallow food, to get used to the different tastes and textures, it became a real part of their diet and they relied less on milk.

This could potentially be one of the hardest parts of weaning – trusting your baby’s own pace of discovering food and learning how to eat. After all, it’s not like they get a memo when they turn 6 months old that suddenly turns them into mini eating machines overnight. It’s easy to forget this at times.

Here’s a video we made just over a year ago, about those early day discoveries with food – including a tip for preparing banana as finger food. Seriously, the banana tip is life-changing…

If you’re about to start weaning there’s lots of advice on the Organix page, including a downloadable book packed with really useful information. Organix have been working with food expert Lucy Thomas to create a fun set of activities to make this potentially quite stressful early weaning stage fun. Fun is the key to a future love of food, I reckon, so I’m totally down with this.

My favourite activity that Lucy suggests is to hold a mirror in front of your baby so they can see themselves while they’re exploring the food. Lucy recommends putting out a mixture of purees and finger foods with different tastes and textures, then offering lots of smiley encouragement to get them going. Even better, invite some baby mates round so they can play with the food together, watching themselves watching each other in the mirror. This is the start of turning food into a fun and sociable experience. In these early days it’s about the learning and fun just as much (if not more so) than actually eating the food.

Here are some of my biggest tips if you’re about to start the weaning process:

  • Make it fun. Although it’s messy, try not to get too hung up on how much food your baby gets all over themselves and instead encourage that early day exploration.
  • Don’t get stressed about “how much they’re having”. Remember, as long as they’re still having their milk feeds then they’re still getting nutrition. Gradually, they’ll learn to eat the food and the milk feeds will decrease.
  • Invest in a big plastic sheet if you’ve got carpets and, in the summer, eat outside as much as possible (your house will thank you for it).
  • Make eating a sociable experience. Try to eat together as a family whenever possible – even if it’s only one meal a day. We tend to all eat breakfast together.

Are you just beginning the weaning process? Or maybe you’ve done it all before – if so, what tips would you add?

 

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Early stage weaning tips

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Disclosure: I’m an Organix brand ambassador. All opinions and word remain my own. For more information about how I work with brands check out my work with me page.

Filed Under: FOOD Tagged With: BLW, family food, weaning

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Hello and welcome! I'm Molly Forbes - podcaster, presenter and blogger with a passion for positivity, confidence and body image chat. Regularly writing and vlogging about empowering female issues from a motherhood angle, I also cover lifestyle and fashion topics for like-minded mums who want to rediscover themselves after having children. Thanks for stopping by! Read More…

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Dear PE teachers (and everyone), don’t do this 💔
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If you’re a PE teacher and you’re interested in engaging more kids in class then lose the diet culture and body shaming messaging - even if it’s meant in jest. Research shows kids who feel comfortable in their body are more likely to take part in sports, and movement is for ALL bodies, not just the kids with super athletic toned ones. 
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Want more insight and help with this stuff? Sign up to a Body Happy Kids workshop - we’ve got you. Oh, and read Train Happy by @tallyrye in the meantime.
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And parents - if your kids experience this type of messaging in their school setting absolutely challenge it. We’ve got a template letter on the #FreeFromDiets website you can tweak and a downloadable info pack about the workshops you can send to your school if you’d like them to sign up. Just hit the Workshops link in my bio and scroll down towards the bottom of the page.
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Creating a body happy setting can: 
⚡️increase engagement in class 
⚡️increase engagement in movement 
⚡️increase academic attainment 
⚡️increase happiness, confidence and overall wellbeing
⚡️help kids be more likely to engage in health promoting behaviours 
(And that’s just for starters).
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PS. I’m not coming for teachers - my husband is one. BUT research shows weight bias is often more common in PE teachers than other subject areas so this is a conversation worth having. 
#BodyHappyKids
I turn 37 in three weeks. When I was younger I use I turn 37 in three weeks. When I was younger I used to think 37 was old. It was “grown-up”, boring, over-the-hill. 
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By the time you were 37 you had your life figured out, wore sensible clothes and had waved goodbye to the fun stuff. 
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It’s no surprise I thought that really. Women aged 37 and over - particularly mums - were invisible. The only representations of older women on screen were the matriarchs. Ad campaigns and magazines featured young women in their “prime” (side note: 🤮 hate that phrase - what does “prime” even mean? We’re not cuts of meat. “Prime” baby making age? Is making babies all we’re good for?!)
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There was no space for any other version of women over 35. Women over 35 weren’t playful, fun, adventurous, sexual, curious. Women over 35 were Responsible, Sensible, Dutiful.
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Well that’s not what 37 is going to look like for me. Sure I do school runs and meet deadlines and wash smelly socks. But I also play and dance and adventure and enjoy my body. I feel like I’m just getting going to be honest. 
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37 is going to be a big year. I’m excited. I’m ready. And I’m certainly not invisible. Bring it on.
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#BirthdayCountdown #MumsGoneWild
Every year @GirlGuiding publishes something called Every year @GirlGuiding publishes something called the Girls’ Attitudes Survey. It’s a big piece of research into the thoughts and feelings of the girls in their community and gives an insight into some of the things that are important to girls and young women in the UK today. 
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The early findings of the 2020 survey have been released and the headline is (surprise, surprise) girls feel under intense pressure to look a certain way and it’s damaging their confidence and wellbeing. 
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Here are some of the stats:
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⚡️80% of girls and young women have considered changing how they look. 
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⚡️51% of girls aged 7-10 believe women are judged more on what they look like than what they can do (this figure is up from 35% in 2016).
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There’s also the finding that two thirds of girls support legislation to stop them seeing ads for diet products and weight loss clubs. 
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It makes for pretty devastating reading but is worth looking at, particularly if you have a daughter - I’ll link to the early findings in my Stories and the full report will be out next month.
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These girls are telling us not only do they feel this intense pressure to look a certain way, but that it’s causing them pain. They are telling us they don’t want the pressure, the ads, the constant barrage of negativity making them feel insecure about their appearance and their body. It’s costing them their wellbeing, confidence and health. 
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It’s time to listen.
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Sign the #FreeFromDiets petition. Tell your kids’ school about the Body Happy Kids Workshop for teachers. Call out diet culture when you see it (particularly when it comes for your kids). There are more resources in my bio as well as a post on media literacy further down my grid too. It doesn’t have to be this way. 💕✨ #BodyHappyKids
My babies started Year 1 & Year 6 today and as I w My babies started Year 1 & Year 6 today and as I waved them off to school after months of being home, it got me thinking about how my relationship with their first home has changed: my body. ❤️
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I have thin privilege but I’ve still often felt like my body was “wrong”. Why? Because like many of us I live in a society that taught me to fear fatness and idolise thinness from an early age. 
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Internalised fatphobia ran so deep that even after my body performed its most miraculous feat of my life - growing and birthing a human - I feared the softness of my belly.
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I justified the internalised fat phobia by telling myself it was about health, believing that health was a simplified concept I could control and monitor by a number on the scales. 
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And even when I started to suspect diets weren’t healthy I still failed to recognise the total system of oppression that diet culture is, how it harms so very many people including children, how it creates a culture where discriminating against people over their weight is seen as acceptable under the guise of health concern.
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I believe we will never end body-based oppression until we do the internal work too, rejecting diet culture & internalised fat phobia. Then we can challenge the health “facts” we’re sold by a multi billion £ industry, and investigate why we’re so ready to accept government diet culture infused health policy when we’re quick to question other policies.
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It starts with us showing body acceptance to our children, teaching them ALL bodies are good bodies, giving them the tools to question anyone who says otherwise. 
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This is not just about raising children at peace in their body. It’s about raising children who grow to challenge a system that harms us all, but particularly those in marginalised bodies. 
.
For me, it started with exploring my feelings about my babies’ first home. ❤️
A little story about 🩸periods🩸 and intuitive A little story about 🩸periods🩸 and intuitive movement and diet culture - here’s the headline: DIET CULTURE MESSES UP OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH OUR BODY AND THIS HARM RUNS DEEP.
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Let me explain. 
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This was me last week. We hiked up a hill and when we got to the top the sky turned a murky shade of grey. Within seconds we were being pelted by hail and rain. It was GLORIOUS. I felt ALIVE.
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Not so this week. Because this week I got my period. And instead of relaxing into it, being gentle with myself, I battled it. I got frustrated with myself when exhaustion hit and my brain felt soupy. I tried to dig deep to find my spark, my energy, I felt guilt at missing swim sessions I’d booked. 
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Why? Because diet culture runs deep. I examined it and realised I was feeling guilt at what I’d told myself I “should” be doing, rather than what my body *actually* needed. “No one regrets a workout! It’ll pep you up! Energise you!” Said the voice. But my body was bleeding and I was tired to my bones. I didn’t feel like it. And I felt like I was letting some invisible person down. 
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Last night I gave myself permission to be gentle. Cancelled all my swim sessions for a couple of days. Had a bath and put on my comfiest PJs. Turned off my laptop and phone, watched a film and had an early night. It’s what my body needed, and once I actually listened to it I felt so much better. 
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Embracing the seasons of my cycle and going with my natural energy levels is how I’m reclaiming my relationship with my body, I’ve decided. For me, this is the last internal bastion of rebellion against diet culture. And it’s (literally) bloody liberating 🩸⚡️💥
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#BodyHappyMum #JoyfulMovement #DevonIsHeaven #PeriodPower #WeBleed
No child comes fresh out the womb doubting their b No child comes fresh out the womb doubting their body. But, little by little, the messages come.
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Some of the messages may be from what they see online on TV and in magazines. Some of them may even come from the people who love and care for them - their friends, parents, grandparents, teachers and even doctors. Some of the messages are blatant and some are more insidious.
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It’s not hopeless though. Here are some things you can do, right now:
✨ Speak to yourself with kindness or use neutral language about your own body in front of your kids.
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✨Call out the messages when you see them - point them out and talk about what they’re promoting, and show your kids the other perspective. This is called media literacy and I’ve got a post further down my grid with lots more info on this.
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✨ Teach your kids that beauty and health don’t just look one way, and that regardless of the outside shell of our body all humans deserve respect, empathy and love - and that includes self-love. (Some mantras that I use with my kids to help drive this message home - ALL bodies are GOOD bodies 💕 It’s not your job to be pretty 💕 Your body is YOUR OWN.)
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✨ Seek out wider representation, whether that’s through books, social media accounts, positive TV shows and films, it all matters.
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✨ Set clear boundaries - if you have a family member or friend who constantly discusses diets, body shames themselves or makes comments about other people’s bodies (and maybe even your child’s) have a conversation with them about why this isn’t OK. Explain that little ears are always listening and you’re working hard to raise your kids to have a happy, healthy relationship with their body. 
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For more resources on this check out the links in my bio ❤️
#BodyHappyKids
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[📸 My one day old daughter’s foot in my hand, taken in 2010, by @carolinepalmerphoto]
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