ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

I'm 35 and I still haven't gotten over hating the car.

Wait, 34. Maybe 35 is my year.

Molly was a nightmare in the car too. Aidan was in an extended rear facing seat until 3.5 and I thought molly would be happier in that as it was higher and she could see out, but no. The only thing that made it better was front facing, much as I did't want to turn her, it was definitely safer as I couldn't concentrate on driving when she was screaming. Ah, the memories of driving up the M1 with her screaming most of the way. Aidan actually managed to sleep through the screaming but he's always loved the car and it always used to send him to sleep.

Congrats SM!

yall are making me feel pretty lucky atm (although that will change oh yes). michael just turned 9 mos, goes to bed at 9, mumbles and complains for an hour, sleeps straight through to 8:30 am (there are occasional exceptions but not many.) loves his backwards car seat - only had one car meltdown but of course that was on a long drive on christmas eve during the worst blizzard in a year with a shit ton of terrible blizzards. i thought i was going to die. teething sucks, and his milk intake is astounding, fortunately hes accepted one (and only one) brand of formula since mom literally cant keep up even with work pumping etc. down with real food, unless its butternut squash, which has been such an instant "fuck. you. dad." that i just stopped trying.

wrt the car seat, that softy flexible mirror you can hang on the backseat headrest is a LIFESAVER. little peeps can look at themselves, see you, you can see them in the rearview w/o turning around, tell when they are crashing out etc. i think its more for the mental health of the parents honestly, but christ we need it amirite.

also hes waving like a madman all of a sudden, but hilariously indiscriminately. he waved bye bye at the toaster this morning.

Michael OTM re: butternut squash

haha i agree as well

What were the first solid foods those of you with solid food eating babies tried?

I guess rice cereal is passé so I was thinking I'd try avocado, cut it up into squares and let her cram them in her mouth herself.

rice cereal is passe? we still did it, J liked it a lot. oatmeal was another good one. he never liked avocados, sadly, would've been great to have him eat such a good high-fat food. he would eat an entire banana in one sitting but then not want to look at one for a month.

with #1, rice cereal; with #2 & #3, whatever soft things we were eating.

my parenting life has been more or less "follow advice for #1, then do whatever is easy with subsequent kids". it seems to be working out just fine

avocado is def a level 2 food in my experience. first stuff has to be ultraliquid. we steamed and pureed the hell out of various stuff, mixed it with rice cereal initially, or breast milk. our doc recommended doing no more than one ingredient at a time initially, and doing it for a week straight so you can watch for allergic reactions and so on.

plus babies dont care abt complex flavors even a little bit initially (says the dude that blindly bought some backup organic pouch food and only later realized it was basil/kale/greek yogurt/etc. smells like v8, tastes like...nothing at all really)

first time around we pureed banana and avocado and did the rice cereal thing etc. 2nd time around = fuck it kid yr eating what everybody else is eating. has worked out pretty well so far tbh. "baby-led weaning"

I mean obviously we're not going to give him things he can't chew etc but once he had a couple teeth he was good to go on most foods

Different stuff I've been reading says that the current thinking is to start a baby off with something that has more nutritional value than rice cereal, since breast milk already has a lot of carbs so there's not much of a nutritional gain there. We aren't going to start with solids until after her six month pediatrician appointment (since she was born at not quite 35 weeks, she may not be ready yet although she was making chewing motions while watching me eat the other day) so we'll see what her doc says, too.

It's good to know what other people did so I can calibrate my "hippy nonsense meter" when it comes to various parenting websites, although one of the "no rice cereal" sources is Babycenter.

One thing I know for sure. Her first food should not be tacos.

Tamales.

Rice cereal tamales.

Are you still on an airplane?

Ha no

lemme tell you my kid's favorite food now approaching age 3 are tacos and he even likes chips and salsa. he wanted to try my margarita the other day and despite his recent unwillingness to nap i told him no.

our boy is down w quesedillas. and of course beans. haven't tried tamales yet.

when #1 was three we went to a mexican restaurant and she ordered a sour cream taco all by herself. yes, just sour cream. aside from the vileness of what she wanted we were thrilled that she was happy to talk directly to the wait staff.

now she's a teen and can be shy about that again. well, at least no more sour cream tacos

The rice cereal thing just kind of goes against common sense for me. It's not filling, it has no nutritional value, and it has no flavor. At risk of setting off hippie nonsense meters, it sounds like something dreamed up by the cereal industry. I've actually banned cereal from my household altogether, partly because it's something that I ate too much of throughout my childhood (during which I was fat) and still can't really stop myself from eating. It seems like a really easy and unfilling way to pack on calories.

We did loosely follow the "one food at a time" thing but moved her to what we were eating pretty quickly. The only food that seemed to give her an adverse reaction for some reason was spinach -- her face would always break out in a rash when she ate it.

K is now fond of saying "What we have to eat?" in this very earnest, almost adult-sounding tone that is hard to resist. She has definitely learned early that cute + polite = getting what you want more of the time.

It's not filling, it has no nutritional value, and it has no flavor.

as i understand it, during babies' first few months of eating solid foods (ages 6-9 mos approx), they do not need solid foods for their nutritional value. they are still getting everything they need from breastmilk, they don't actually "need" solid foods that early. the point is to prepare them to eat solids so that they are able to when they actually do need them. rice cereal is recommended as a first food, i believe, because it's easy to digest and has essentially no risk of provoking an allergic reaction.

other foods could fit that bill of course

like tacos, for example

I could never be a house guest in the Hurting 2 home. No cereal? That's like 25% of my diet.

there's not a lot of cereal in our house generally but #2 is at the age where having something small and bitesize that he can both play with (pour into bowls, stir around etc) and eat by the handful is a plus.

rice cereal is recommended as a first food, i believe, because it's easy to digest and has essentially no risk of provoking an allergic reaction.

Yeah, that's it. But the same things I've been reading about foregoing rice cereal are also saying that it's better to exposure kids to potentially allergenic foods early (sort of how kids with pets are less likely to have animal allergies when they are older (I often remind myself this when I pull cat hairs out of Ivy's mouth)), and that the old rules of no eggs or fish or nuts before one year are also no longer necessary.

re: hippie nonsense, I have to be vigilant because I am susceptible to certain strains of hippie nonsense. See last week when I stayed up an hour trying to find a definitive answer to the question of whether baby wipes are actually poisonous. I couldn't find anything that looked particularly rooted in scientific inquiry and the thought of washing piles of poopy cloth squares sounded exhausting so I went ahead and order the cheap as hell carton of Kirkland wipes from diapers.com.

are also saying that it's better to exposure kids to potentially allergenic foods early (sort of how kids with pets are less likely to have animal allergies when they are older

what i've heard as well. i remember hearing a couple years ago that peanut allergies are pretty much unknown in israel, and that the theory is bc Bamba is a popular snack for young children there.

A lot of the info on solid foods is here - http://kellymom.com/category/nutrition/starting-solids/

the relevant study for reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19000582

Early consumption of peanuts in infancy is associated with a low prevalence of peanut allergy.

Du Toit G1, Katz Y, Sasieni P, Mesher D, Maleki SJ, Fisher HR, Fox AT, Turcanu V, Amir T, Zadik-Mnuhin G, Cohen A, Livne I, Lack G.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:
Despite guidelines recommending avoidance of peanuts during infancy in the United Kingdom (UK), Australia, and, until recently, North America, peanut allergy (PA) continues to increase in these countries.

OBJECTIVE:
We sought to determine the prevalence of PA among Israeli and UK Jewish children and evaluate the relationship of PA to infant and maternal peanut consumption.

METHODS:
A clinically validated questionnaire determined the prevalence of PA among Jewish schoolchildren (5171 in the UK and 5615 in Israel). A second validated questionnaire assessed peanut consumption and weaning in Jewish infants (77 in the UK and 99 in Israel).

RESULTS:
The prevalence of PA in the UK was 1.85%, and the prevalence in Israel was 0.17% (P < .001). Despite accounting for atopy, the adjusted risk ratio for PA between countries was 9.8 (95% CI, 3.1-30.5) in primary school children. Peanut is introduced earlier and is eaten more frequently and in larger quantities in Israel than in the UK. The median monthly consumption of peanut in Israeli infants aged 8 to 14 months is 7.1 g of peanut protein, and it is 0 g in the UK (P < .001). The median number of times peanut is eaten per month was 8 in Israel and 0 in the UK (P < .0001).

CONCLUSIONS:
We demonstrate that Jewish children in the UK have a prevalence of PA that is 10-fold higher than that of Jewish children in Israel. This difference is not accounted for by differences in atopy, social class, genetic background, or peanut allergenicity. Israeli infants consume peanut in high quantities in the first year of life, whereas UK infants avoid peanuts. These findings raise the question of whether early introduction of peanut during infancy, rather than avoidance, will prevent the development of PA.

The use of "peanut" in the singular in that abstract is delighting me. Maybe that's how you're supposed to say it, like how fashion people always refer to "a pant" instead of "pants" but in this case, I like it ("pant" makes me IA).

Oh, I don't want to start a row or anything about what people feed their kids. It seems super personal and different things are going to work for different parents and different babies!!! Rice cereal, bananas, tacos... it's all good IMO. I was just really curious about what folks here chose to do, particularly since you all seem much smarter/more thoughtful than your average baby-centric message board poster.

FWIW I actually was briefly taken in by the "modified vaccine schedule" thing before the doctor assured me there was no evidence that it was beneficial (although she regularly implemented it for parents who wanted it). It's scary as fuck to have the job of keeping a little person alive sometimes, so I get why people have all kinds of unsubstantiated fears about products and food. I have had mild panics putting K in the bath and then briefly thinking that maybe the tub wasn't rinsed well enough after it was bleached and that I am now bleaching my child.

yea, we had some of those fears re: vaccines that were really just compounded by our reaction to the fragility of a newborn. they are just so small and vulnerable. i think once J got some fat on him we basically just went on the standard vaccine schedule. though we have skipped whatever hepatitis vaccine that prevents the sexually transmitted type, we can wait on that one till he's older.

UK used to advise against eating peanut in pregnancy but not any more. I guess it still stands for infancy tho.

I am just over here identifying strongly with the fear of not rinsing the tub well enough and other similar things.

This week my child discovered the joys of peeing in nature.

In the UK it's no peanuts before six months now (the NHS recommends no solids before six months anyway). Breast feeders eating peanuts is fine too.

the peanut/allergies thing fascinates me cuz I have (of course) interacted with adults w/kids with severe allergies and I'm like... how do you get over that? are you just going to avoid mustard/peanuts/whatever for the rest of their lives? I guess I don't understand the mechanism involved wherein exposure to allergens = less allergies.

What were the first solid foods those of you with solid food eating babies tried?

I guess rice cereal is passé so I was thinking I'd try avocado, cut it up into squares and let her cram them in her mouth herself.

― carl agatha, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 12:08 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we didnt do rice cereal ever, went right for avocado (mashed at first). banana and sweet potato were early foods. we did exclusive breastfeeding first 6 months, few solids from 6-9 months. didnt do a lot of purees, but we never needed to...the boy had teeth at 4 months...year later and he's got nearly a full set of chompers.

the peanut/allergies thing fascinates me cuz I have (of course) interacted with adults w/kids with severe allergies and I'm like... how do you get over that? are you just going to avoid mustard/peanuts/whatever for the rest of their lives? I guess I don't understand the mechanism involved wherein exposure to allergens = less allergies.

It's weird--I'm 38, and was always the freak kid growing up as I'm anaphylactically allergic to all nuts, and nobody had heard of such a thing. Now every second kid seems to have it. And yeah, you just have to avoid that nuts/pesto/most cakes/Thai restaurants the rest of your life.

We had Ella tested early in case she had inherited it, but the allergist was super reassuring. Apparently even in identical twins there's a really small chance of BOTh being allergic--the genetic factor is weak or non-existent--and he had us giving her little tiny bits of various allergenic foods from 6 months+, with no ill effects. So she can eat everything with no squinting at ingredient lists the rest of her life.

unless she becomes vegan later

lol last night my son took a shit in the bath, it was the first time he's done it. he reached back and picked it up, held it in his hand, and started crying. it occured to me that it was probably the first time he's really ever seen his own shit! all those diapers. he didn't really know what it was and he just got freaked out.

oh yeah that is a big deal "WHAT IS THIS COMING OUT OF MY BODY!", not hard to see how that would be alarming

however, kid I was referring to in the other thread was like 6

Haha, that's brilliant Marcos. A story to be trotted out on family occasions for decades to come.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-pros-and-cons-of-breastfeeding,36008/

^ making me LOL

yes, that was great