Feeding the baby - not as easy as you'd think

I wrote yesterday in Xander's 11-month post about how things have been hard and one big part of it is about feeding him.

A few weeks ago, he started to eat in earnest. Like, really eat. Before that he was experimenting and tasting food, but it did not make up any major part of his nutritional intake, and that was fine because he was still breastfeeding every 2-3 hours during the day and also a couple of times throughout the night. I was sure that he was getting everything he needed from my milk.

All of a sudden, seemingly overnight, he started to demand more food and was willing to let us feed him instead of insisting that he wanted to feed himself. Which was what he did before - snubbing the spoon and whatever we tried to put into his mouth would be either snatched away by him or he would just smack our hands away. At the same time, he started to refuse some of his regular feeds. He started cutting short his early morning feed so I had to start feeding him solids for breakfast to make up for it. His late morning (post-nap) feed was refused, so lunch was added. His afternoon (post-nap) feed was also refused, so we had to do dinner before his bath too.

It all happened very organically, without any pushing from me. In fact, it took me quite a few days to reconcile with the fact that he was cutting down on the number of nursing sessions with me - I just kept offering at the usual times, but no means no. A little sad actually :( It was as though he suddenly realised that he could be enjoying all the yummy foods that mama and papa are eating instead of just drinking mama's milk.

And because of all this, my already hectic and stressful daily routine was pushed up a notch or two. NOTHING (and I mean NOTHING) is as simple and straightforward as breastfeeding. Now all of a sudden, I had to add in 3 extra meals to prepare everyday, and sometimes even a snack or two for him. I'm not big on preparing food to be perfectly honest. I cook once a day for dinner. That's it. I make sure there is enough leftovers for lunch the next day, packed nicely into a lunch box and microwaved when I want to eat my lunch. Simple. Done and done. Breakfast would be biscuits, steamed buns, nutella sandwich, or something SUPER simple along those lines. And if I were to be completely truthful, my eating habits leave much to be desired and I really really want to avoid passing on those eating habits to Xander if I can help it.

In introducing and feeding Xander solids, I have a few rules that I try very very hard not to break most of the time:

1. No added salt
2. No added sugar
3. No preservatives
4. No artificial flavouring or colouring
5. No chemicals
6. Minimal refined carbohydrates and proteins
7. Well-balanced with vegetables, fruits, protein and simple carbs

I'm not a nazi about it and do occasionally break the rules. But only very rarely and in very very small amounts. I see it this way: he has a lifetime ahead of him to eat unhealthily and destroy his body, but while I have a say, I'm going to try my best to make sure he only gets what's best for him. I've done so much readings and research, and the overwhelming evidence states that the first 2 years of a child's life determines much of how healthy they are for the rest of it. And there is so much that can be done to at least give them a chance at a healthy life.

So that means preparing lots of fresh healthy food everyday, and planning our own meals around what he can and cannot eat. Using less (or none at all) salt, minimal soy sauce and oyster sauce and stuff like that in our own meals, ensures that he will be able to share our food with us, which he absolutely loves. Nothing is yummier than food that came off mama or papa's dinner plate ;) This is of course a wonderful thing for our own health and eating habits, cos we are eating less salt, less sugar, less processed foods, healthier whole grains and even "crunchy" stuff like quinoa and cous cous and barley, which I've never really cooked with before.

It is incredibly stressful to say the least. To demonstrate, here's a typical day's routine like for us:

6am - wake up (sometimes even earlier now that summer is approaching and the sun rises at 5.30am. I swear the kid's a freaking rooster)

6am to 7am - shower, wash up, diaper change

7am - breakfast

8am - play

8.30am - diaper change, breastfeed and prepare for nap

9am to 10am - morning nap

10am - wake up, diaper change, morning snack

10.30am - supermarket trip to buy groceries for dinner

11.30am - diaper change, prepare lunch

12pm to 1pm - lunch time

1pm - wash up, diaper change, breastfeed and prepare for nap

1.30pm to 2.30pm - afternoon nap

2.30pm - wake up, diaper change, play

3pm - afternoon snack

4pm - I cook dinner while he goes between whining and tugging at my pants and banging on pots and pans

5pm - daddy comes home from work

5.30pm - family dinner

6.30pm - we all take turns to take our showers, dress him for bed, breastfeed and prepare for bedtime

7.30pm - he falls asleep, we cuddle on the sofa in front of the TV and enjoy our fruits

Between 7.30 to 9.30pm, he wakes up every so often because he sees the light outside his room and wants in on the action. So we take turns going in to put him back to sleep, interrupting our TV shows and fruits :(

9.30pm - we turn in for the night

Throughout the night, he would wake maybe once or twice on a good night. Sometimes he needs a feed to go back to sleep, other times he just needs a snuggle with mama to fall asleep again. On bad nights, he's up every 2 hours and I end up sleeping next to him in his room all night.

Following day, rinse and repeat. Over and over again. Now intersperse incessant whining, fussing, screaming and crying  throughout the day, while I try and get things like laundry, dishes, folding clothes, cleaning up, done. Then there was the studying. And the potty time. And the racking of my brain to think up of foods to feed him that he would eat and would provide the right kinds of nutrition for him. Sigh.

Who knew that having a child meant taking on the role of dietician and nutritionist and cook all at the same time, amongst all the other hats we have to wear in our daily lives too. Teacher, entertainer, carer, nurse, doctor, etc etc etc.

Okay I digress - it's safe to say that I struggle with feeding him the right foods that is best for him, and is easy enough to prepare, and also not too expensive on our grocery budget. It's a learning process with a massively steep learning curve and it's daunting. But I'm slowly getting the hang of it. And now that my semester is over, I'm hoping to have more time on my hands to plan our meals and prepare them better for him and us. Perhaps I'll keep a note of all the recipes and stuff I feed him with here on my blog. It'll be good for reference - yeah? :)

My go-to quick meals for him include:
- oats + barley porridge with sultanas and sometimes fresh blueberries, flavoured with cinammon and nutmeg
- cooked barley (he eats the barley, we drink the barley water), mixed with vegetables like carrots, sweet potatoes, broccoli, spinach, peas, sweet corn, pumpkin, etc. Vegetables are usually pureed to make it easier for him to eat and digest, and sweetened with apples too
- basmati rice with roasted chicken or steamed fish and vegetables
- chopped, fresh seasonal fruits like watermelon, grapes and mangoes
- quinoa (organic because I can't find any non-organic quinoa here) with vegetable purees or scrambled eggs, flavoured with herbs and spices
- pasta with vegetable purees as sauce

And of course he eats some bread, biscuits, wholegrain Cheerios, and unflavoured rice crackers, but not on a regular basis.

I know the traditional Asian food to feed babies is rice porridge. But we've decided that white rice is useless carbohydrates and empty starch that does not provide any good nutrition whatsoever for a little growing person, except calories and refined sugars. And when they are flavoured with stock cubes and salt and MSG and soy sauce, it's a recipe for kidney-failure disaster. So we avoid that route as much as we can.

Feeding him is not just about nutrition, it's about introducing him to lifelong good eating habits and associating it with a positive self and body image. It's about trying to prevent picky eating and encourage adventurous food tasting. It's about teaching him to trust his own body and only consume what he needs to sustain his self. It's about fostering a healthy relationship with food to prevent binging and sweet cravings and salt obsessions and carb-addiction. And all that are paramount issues that he is depending on me entirely for. There's no one else who can do it for him. That's a huge responsibility, one that I constantly doubt my abilities and knowledge about, but am willing to try my best to fulfil.

This post has become longer than I planned. Oops. I'll be back! :)