Baby Food

This is the time when Ada begins trying food. She has shown the signs that she is ready: sitting up, grabbing everything and putting it in her mouth, gagging; these skills develop simultaneously in babies. Also, she just turned 6 months old, which is a common time for breastfed babies to start trying food.

This period is all about tasting. She eats very little. She plays with her food. This is baby-led weaning.

Ada has tried apples, grapefruit, lemon, carrot, squash, celery, tomato, and avocado. She is eager to taste anything. She puckered up when she tried lemon, but kept going back for more.

When appropriate, we give her whole chunks of food. Otherwise, as in the case of squash, we cook the food. We place the food in front of her and let her grab it and put it in her mouth. If she wants to grab the food but has trouble, we will either place it on a spoon and hand the spoon to her (when the food is mushy) or hold the food in front of her and let her guide our hands to her mouth (when the food is slippery or hard to handle).

Her two bottom teeth enable her to scrape off bits of the hard food (apples, celery, etc.). She works the food around in her mouth a bit, tasting it. Usually the food makes it way out her mouth again (that's a reflex that babies have). She swallows some food, somewhat by accident, and that passes through her without being digested.

Cup Feeding

Cup feeding is an alternative way to feed a baby. More information and instructions are here.

Parents resort to bottle feeding (either formula or pumped milk) for a variety of reasons, some of which are the following:

• Mother does not produce enough milk
  
• Baby has trouble latching and sucking, such as when Baby is premature
• Mother's nipples hurt too much
• Mother cannot always be available to feed Baby
• Convenience
  

In some of the cases above, parents may desire to return to breastfeeding once the problem has been fixed. However, it is difficult to return to breastfeeding after a baby adapts to bottle feeding. Eating from the bottle is easier and Baby will learn a new way to latch and suck that will not work for breastfeeding. Fortunately, Mother has another option.

One can cup feed Baby by holding a cup of liquid up to and below their lower lip and letting Baby lap it up with their tongue. It is particularly useful if breastfeeding is not currently an option but Mother wants to try breastfeeding later after the problem has been fixed. For example, one can cup feed a premature newborn until their latching and sucking abilities have developed.

We use the cup feeding technique to give Ada water that has been soaked in barley and fennel, a remedy for indigestion.

Farmer's Market

Today Erinne and I went to the farmer's market with Ada. She is 22 days old today, and this was our biggest outing with her so far. We bought peaches, basil, garlic, prunes, tomatoes, and a half flat of berries.

I was absolutely stunned to find heirloom tomatoes for $1/lb. That is filthy cheap. We bought 2.5 pounds; we should have bought more.

Ada slept in the wrap for the first half of the trip. We were nervous about nursing Ada in public, but Erinne was able to find some steps to sit on and nurse discreetly.

On the way home, I dropped the box of berries and they spilled all over the sidewalk and dirt! We picked up most of them, abandoning a few of the blueberries.

Pictures

Pictures from the pregnancy and birth are available here.

Baby Ada

Baby Ada was born 7/23, 10:43 PDT. She weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and was 20.5 inches long. I think her head circumference was 13.5 inches.

Erinne started having strong, frequent contractions at 11pm Monday night. From 11pm to 7am, her contractions were consistently 5 minutes apart, and we did not sleep Monday night. We were very disappointed when the contractions died down Tuesday morning. Erinne napped Tuesday. I slept a lot Tuesday night, though Erinne barely slept due to the contractions. On Wednesday night the contractions got even stronger, and Erinne was in significant pain. At 2am (Thursday morning) one of our midwives came to our apartment to check Erinne's progress. At 7am the same midwife picked us up and took us to the birthing center.

The labor was awful; Erinne had a hard time dealing with the pain. We spent a lot of the time in the tub. While in the tub, Ada's head started to show. It was difficult to get her past Erinne's pelvic bone. Erinne got out of the pool and started using a birthing stool. Ada shot out like a rocket. All three midwives and I screamed when it happened; we were not expecting it. There was something about the position she was in (not having her chin tucked down?) that caused her to come out all at once. At the beginning of the final push, all we could see was the hair on Ada's head, and then she came out all at once.

She has been very mellow in the first few hours of her life. She is quite active and alert, and can crawl on our tummies looking for food. She was able to latch onto Erinne within the first 10 minutes after being born, though she did not suck. The second time we tried to feed her, she latched on easily again and started sucking. We believe she was able to get some colostrum this time.

Breastfeeding in third world countries, and why we boycott Nestlé

The information below comes from this Wikipedia article, this web site, and research that Erinne did (some articles reeked of stupidity).

In less economically developed countries (LEDCs), using infant formula over breast milk contributes to health problems and deaths in infants for three major reasons:

• Loss of natural benefits from breast milk.
  
• Formula mixed with contaminated water.
• Formula over-diluted in order to save money.

Nestlé makes infant formula, and campaigned heavily to promote it in LEDCs as superior to breast milk. Mothers were duped. In just one generation, many towns were converted from being fed almost exclusively by breast milk to being fed almost exclusively by formula (this is something Erinne learned when researching this problem, but I do not have a citation).

New Belly Pics

From Baby

From Baby

hiccups

At this stage, the baby's central nervous is developed enough that she starts hiccuping in the womb. When it happens, it is very rhythmic.

Baby kicking videos

See our baby kicking here and here.

Baby belly

See Erinne's belly grow big here

Baby update

The baby has been squirming and kicking a lot over the past month. Her movements have been getting noticeably stronger each week, and she is now starting to cause Erinne some discomfort when she wiggles around in there.

Although the ultrasound technician said that the baby is definitely a girl, she wrote "probably girl" on the documents that she sent to our midwives. We have a lot of pink clothing that we are prepared to use, even if the baby turns out to be a boy!

Ultrasound pictures from several months ago are here.