I feel this is a good point to give a quick summary of Edward's eating to date. Initially like most mothers I planned to breastfeed, however as Edward was eight weeks premature things didn't quite work out. He was very small, only 4lbs, and found feeding quite tiring and difficult, and much easier from the bottle than the breast. I found breastfeeding very stressful as I worried that he was not getting enough and may become weak and unwell, so eventually decided to exclusively express my milk to feed him with.
This was also a good strategy as it meant Edward could still have my milk if I had to go into hospital and hopefully would be less confusing for him as he wouldn't have to keep switching between methods, I also hoped it would make my absence less distressing as he wouldn't be loosing his breast-feeding as well as him mummy.
Initially it worked well, and I stocked up enough spare milk that Edward was able to go completely without formula through my first course of IV's. However sadly my second course of IV's came so quickly after the 1st it hadn't been possible to stock up enough as so we had to start using formula. I also got a bad tummy bug that badly affected my milk supply so I was struggling to keep up with him.
Then finally at five months I moved Edward onto formula full time. I had to pour my milk away for most of month four due to my drugs, and then found out to my horror that the drugs wouldn't leave my system for another month. As I had planned to stop at six months (mainly due to pressure from my hospital team) I decided it was pointless to carry on, due to the amount of time and effort required.
I found it very hard to stop as despite the hassle involved I was incredibly proud of myself and my body, and given everything it's not often I get the chance to say that. However I do appreciate not having to do endless hours of milking any more, and I think overall my health has been better since I stopped, though this may be due to the doctors taking out an infected implant that I had which I think had been dragging me down for a few months.
Real food wise, untill today Edward's adventures have been limited. He licked a chocolate button about a month ago, and sucked some pitta-bread and some carrot the other day in the park, however today was the first time he properly ate something.
I cannot, and still have not made up my mind exactly how to go about weaning Edward. The two main methods on offer are purees which you gradually make more solid, or Baby Led Weaning (BLW) which skips out puree all together and goes straight for finger foods.
Both methods have aspects which appeal to me and others that don't. Puree is a hassle to do, however can be store bought in the lazy moments and in all instances stored conveniently. It is also the most common method and so wouldn't be hard for various baby-sitting friends and family to understand.
BLW is in my opinion more natural as it has the mentality that if a baby has the motor skills to get food to it's mouth it must be able to eat it, however it is difficult to store the small portions of food needed to do it in my opinion (eg. a slice of butternut squash what are you supposed to do with the rest of it?!)
So for now I'm messing about with both until I decide which I find most convenient. So I have pureed a bunch of butternut sqash, sweet potato and apple, aswell as buying a selection of baby rice's and cereals. I have also however bought some rusks and rice crackers as these are easy to store and should enable him to feed himself.
Despite having made all my puree's there wasn't really the right opportunity to feed them to Edward today, and so BLW won out and he got given a rusk, and here is what he did with it, his first ever meal other than milk :o)
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