Food, Finally!

Look at all those teeth! He has 4 teeth, soon to be 6 or 7 since the new ones are just about to pop through too!

 I've been slacking on the family blog lately (sorry Grandma!), but we've been a bit preoccupied with passing an awful cold/flu combo back and forth between Mitch, Simon and myself for the past few weeks. Luckily the big boys never got it, but it managed to take on practically every different type of incarnation it could between Mitch and I! Yuck! Mitch is finally feeling better after a course of antibiotics, and I'm on the upswing (slowly, but surely) after deciding to forego yet another expensive trip to urgent care in favor of just letting this thing run its course.

Anyway, blog slacking aside, we've pretty much just been up to the same old things around here. The biggest news of the week is that we finally got Simon to eat a bit of solids - yay! Sawyer and Sutton both loved baby food purees and finger foods, starting at around 5 months, and they were both greedy and eager eaters. Simon, not so much. He hates purees, and finger foods trigger his overactive gag reflex resulting in a vomit eruption of epic proportions every time. I figured he would just grow out of it in time, but since he's now 9.5 months old and still not eating I figured it was time to try some new tactics.

A few days ago a friend recommended that we try Baby Led Weaning, which (among other things) allows the baby to try larger pieces of food instead of purees and finger foods. The goal is that the baby will be able to learn their own gag limits (so we can expect some more vomiting in the beginning as he's testing it out, but it's to be expected) and then learn to take small bites and chew on their own instead of being spoon fed. Naturally, you have to watch them to make sure they don't end up with choking size pieces, but because a baby's gag reflax is much further forward on the tongue than an adults it's not really a huge concern as long as he is supervised. Luckily Simon has a mouth full of teeth already, so he's pretty keen on biting into things and chewing them up...we just need to work on the swallowing part.

On Saturday morning he looked pretty interested in the pancakes that I was making for Sawyer and Sutton, so I figured what the hell...let's give it a shot. 

I gave him his own whole pancake, and he went to town on it! At first the little bites he took made him gag,  but I sat next to him cheering him on and calming him down when the gagging started to freak him out a bit. After awhile he stopped gagging and actually started to chew and swallow little bites of his pancake! Most of the pancake ended up in small crumbs all over everything, but he definitely chewed and swallowed about 1/4 of it!

Success! Happy baby! :)

I decided to try to keep up the successful streak with a whole strawberry since he loves to gnaw on them in his mesh feeder. At first he wasn't sure what to do with it, but after inspecting it for awhile he put it in his mouth for a little taste test. I wish I had gotten a picture of the grin that he flashed when he realized what he was holding!

He managed to eat about half of the strawberry before he gagged himself and threw up all the strawberry and most of the pancake too. Oh well, it's to be expected as he's figuring out his limits. I'm just truly impressed that he managed to eat ANY of it in the first place!

We also tested it out last night with a slice of avocado at dinnertime, which he loved. He wasn't all that interested in holding on to the avocado (maybe because the texture is different?), so I held it and he bit it. He ate about 1/3 of a slice without throwing it up at all, so I'm calling that one a success too. Baby steps, right?

I truly feel so lucky to be one half of the team that gets to guide these sweet little guys through life. Every day they're growing, changing, learning new things and impressing me with how much they know. It's been an amazing journey already, and I can't wait to see wht the future has in store for us. ♥