Cookbooked

Little Man is too little to cook on his own. But the NY Times today has a good article about the ascendency of cookbooks aimed at kids.

But that is changing, as parents who have a keen interest in cooking encourage their young children to spend time in the kitchen and new titles take a more sophisticated approach to children’s food. Although no one tracks overall sales of cookbooks aimed at children, some retailers say that sales have shot up.

But Gillian Engberg isn’t too critical of overly ambitious books, because they represent a return to the kitchen. “We are seeing more of these because people are growing more knowledgeable about food,” she said. “Cooking together represents a pause, a chance for families to come together.”

This feels about right to me. As Little Man gets bigger and more mobile and more independent, there are fewer and fewer things I do exclusively. I find cooking for the baby extremely gratifying (as seen by the crazy amounts of time and food I prepare) and I think cooking with him, teaching him and (one day I hope) his sister the joy of food is an important way to spend time together, particularly in a world where I want to emphasize less TV.

Cooking for Baby

Let me preface this post with the fact that I'm on a diet. I eat an egg and toast for breakfast, then a salad with chicken for lunch and dinner.

I do cook for the baby though. To wit, some of his recent meals have included zucchini and millet with basil, mushrooms and barley, roasted red pepper and goat cheese, carrots and ginger with quinoa, asparagus and onions, pureed. He also gets grilled chicken (food milled to a consistency he can handle), occasional grilled steak, fresh strawberries, fresh blueberries.

The Cooking for Baby book from Williams-Sonoma has offered lots of good ideas, but it's surprisingly easy to cook for the little one.

I would love to have had the Bebea steamer/heater/chopper thing, but the truth remains that it's not that hard. We steam lots of vege for the boy. Depending on the texture I either food process or hand foodmill it and then we freeze it.

It's surprisingly satisfying. And, for the record, Little Man wholeheartedly approves of goat cheese. We can't wait to try Armenian String Cheese next.

Down Dog

Once a week, I try to go to Mommy and Me yoga. The instructor I like teaches at two different studios, one in a very affluent sort of mid-western feeling neighborhood and the other in a hipster "in the industry" up-and-coming neighborhood.

Mommy and Me yoga consists of Mommies trying to do yoga while the babies and toddlers play on blankets on the floor around them. It's kind of neat, because when a pose comes up that you don't want to do, the baby serves as an awesome excuse for a time out. Which, I guess, means it's not great yoga, but it's better than no yoga.

Now, I prefer going to the affluent neighborhood studio because I love that neighborhood: it calls to my aspirational nature and it's one of the few southern california places where I'd actually want to own a home because it's walkable and kids are out and about. And there's an adorable train station. But the Mommy and Me yoga for that studio is on Wednesday at 11:00 AM. In other words, it caters to the Stay at Home Mom. That's certainly not me.

I usually go to Saturday's class instead. But it's filled with extremely thin hipster women who name their children things like Luna or Anton. This is not my tribe. I'm more apt to wear a shirt with a logo about having no idea about what I'm doing than I am to be serene and confident.

Today, there were 5 of us. And everyone was nursing except for me. They whipped out a boobie and I whipped out a bottle and I could feel all of them looking askance at me. I was simultaneously defensive and then I felt like saying, "whatever." I will continue to go because it's good for me and it's nice for Little Man to have some parallel play time (Luna likes him lots!)

I might not breastfeed, but I have a beautiful handstand, an amazingly strong vinyasa and my open hips are legendary. So there.

Mmm... Mmmm... Good

I know. I'm obsessed with solids. It's partially because Little Man loves them so much. So far, we have tried: potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, rice cereal, barley, oatmeal, pears, kiwi, mango, avocado, apples, prunes, carrots, acorn squash. Soon enough it will be time to mix things up. So I'm thinking about recipes and what can be made.

Last night, I made a sweet potato risotto (and oh dear god it was tasty... appropriately creamy but not with the strong taste of squash or sage as I've had before with risotto). I'd highly recommend. This week, Little Man will also try peaches and green beans. But with things like avocado and sweet potatos, I've been making it for us and feeding some to him too. I like it because it integrates meal time into not just him and us, but all of us eating.

Weird, right?

Avocado

Little Man just had breakfast -- oatmeal with a side of avocado. Man, he loves avocado. This is going to be one of the foods we have to watch for an allergic reaction. But he ate it up, yum.

Nom Nom Nom

So, Little Man is eating solids. And he has definite preferences, but, like mother, like son, he's also somewhat of a pig about it.

The intro into solids proves what a lax mommy I am. We started with rice cereal, mostly as formula thickener in the bottle. Later, I read that one should NEVER give cereal in a bottle. Apparently it should always be done by spoon, even if the ratio of cereal to formula is 1:5. Why, though? Never found an explanation for that.

Then I was a careless mommy because I fed him more than one type of a food every day. Meaning I didn't wait for the allergy period to pass and I introduced more than one food per week. COME ON. Baby does not thrive by rice cereal (known as glop) alone.

Then I was bad mommy because I fed him mashed up food that was prepared for adults. Mashed potatoes? A problem because, GASP!, they had milk and butter. Dude, Little Man is on formula. Made from cow's milk already. And it has fat in it, just like butter.

And what made me stupid mommy is that I started with fruits and not vegetables. My day care provider, who I otherwise love, told me if I did that he will only want sweet and he will hate vegetables. Frankly, though, who wouldn't rather have apples than peas?

Even though I broke all of these rules, Little Man is thriving and eating the solids like a champ. Sure, we started early if you look at adjusted age (4 months) or late if you look at chronological age (7 months). I'm thinking it was just right because he has been having food in his gut since about a week after birth. And he seemed pretty into watching us to figure out how WE eat.

So, what have learned that he likes? He's a fan of sweet potatoes of all kinds. He's down with squash. Apples are good. Prunes (given to him by the day care provider, because honestly, I launder his diapers at home and I don't want to deal with that mess if I can avoid it) are fine. Bananas are yummy, but they aren't sweet potatoes. He'll take peas, though they aren't his favorite at all.

In terms of cereal, he thinks barley rocks (as does his Bad Mommy... my dinner last night was a bowl of barley cereal with warm apples... again, like baby like mommy). Rice cereal is meh. And Oatmeal? Untrustworthy.

To assauge my Bad Mommy guilt, I have been getting him the expensive, small batch made Homemade Baby Food from the refrigerated section at Whole Foods. It's like the baby food version of a microbrew. It also makes me feel less guilty for not being there all day, like if I give him the best, most organic food available he'll grow up healthy and hearty and fulfill his baby genius potential, in spite of being in day care 5 days a week and getting formula instead of breast milk. It's dumb, I know.

But it does make me feel better to give him food that is younger than he, that is more freshly made. Even though sometimes I throw it in the freezer myself. If I were a better mom, I'd be making it myself. But this is good enough.

And, frankly, I like the way the Homemade Baby Apples taste. One day, I'll have to take Little Man to the Baby Food Tasting Room.

Thanks, Mayo Clinic. I Appreciate Your Validation.

What am I thanking the Mayo Clinic for? Their esteemed opinion, of course, on the nursing controversy. Yes. The Nursing Controversy. Actually, I don't think there is one Nursing Controversy. The basics question goes: Breastfeed, Breastfeed + Supplement with Formula, Don't Breastfeed. From that comes all of the other issues.It's like there was a Nursing Controversy that mated with Judgmental Onlookers and they had an entire litter of mini Controversies with a side of Judginess thrown in.

Ahem. Not that I have issues around this or anything.

When I was pregnant, I was 100% on board with breastfeeding. I was all geared up to be Milk Jugged. I knew it was what I wanted. It was not only better for the twins' immune system, it was also a better way to bond and attach. And frankly, it was destined to be cheaper too. I was so on board with being Bessy that I didn't even think about supplementing with formula.



But oh, fate has a way of laughing at our plans. Little Man and Soybean were born early early. For the first few weeks, they were on TPN, which is nutrition via IV. After they were delivered, I was in a state of pain and confusion the likes of which can't really be described. I wasn't really able to process much, let alone whether or not to pursue breastfeeding. It was something I hadn't really thought about.

K, though, had. Not through any conscious decision of her own. While I was in my hospital bed in my demerol haze, she went to see the twins for the first time in the NICU. As she stood isolette-side with tears streaming down her face, Gary, the nurse bolstered her up the best he could. He got her moving with things we needed to do. NICU orientation. How to scrub before going into the nursery. And, pumping milk. He gave her a plastic bag with many bottles and labels for me and sent her back with a handbook.

When I woke the next morning, she told me that if we were going to do breast milk, I needed to start pumping. I called the lactation consultants and they brought the breast pump kit. The LC asked me if I could sit up (hell, I not only was in pain, I still had the goddamn catheter in) because pumping is a gravity related activity. And I got right to the business.

For the 4 days I remained in the hospital, I pumped every 3 hours, then walked my breast milk into the wing where the NICU was and left it with the nurse while I visited my babies. I did this religiously even though it would be a while before either baby was fed breast milk. Before I left the hospital, my mom helped me rent a pump for 3 months, an optimistic vision of how long it would take before the twins were discharged.

I pumped diligently for 6 months, amassing enough breast milk that we ended up buying a small chest-deep freezer to store it at home. There were bumps along the way, as both babies initially had difficulty digesting breast milk, which is surprisingly high in lactose. When Little Man was nearing discharge, we began to see if he would latch.

For lots of preemies who start bottle fed, the transition to breast is rough. Sometimes impossible. We tried nipple shields. We tried starting pumping first then having him latch. It was rough. And he was inconsistent about it, though I didn't really give up hope because he would latch. The problem was he would latch and nurse for a five minutes or so and then get bored or tired or just plain over it and stop. Apparently nursing was work, and like mother like son, when it comes to eating, Little Man was lazy. A silicone nipple flowed faster and freer than I ever would.

There were other smaller issues. Preemies start small. So my neonatalogists gave the babies a caloric boost by fortifying breast milk with formula to increase the calories from 20 per ounce to 24. This helps them, since preemies use more calories to breathe since their lungs are often underdeveloped. So, I knew that even if I could get Little Man to consistently latch, we'd still have the issue of making sure he still got a good dose of 24 calorie breast milk which I couldn't produce on my own.

The long and short of this meant that the pump became my new attached accessory. Those of you who are moms already can imagine what this meant. I'd change Little Man. Get him fed. Get him down for a nap and then hook myself to a pump. Lather rinse repeat every 3 hours.

I did feel righteous though. Even though this process sucked, quite literally, it meant that my baby was getting his nutrition from me (his twin sister? digestion problems that were great enough that after the first few initial tries at breast milk, she got no more. In fact, for long weeks after her brother had been discharged, she was fed only via TPN and IV nutrition. She is still on special pre-digested formula). It was almost like we were breastfeeding for real, except without the nursing part and with way more time wasted.

Which would have been okay. Except I had to go back to work. That's when this system became somewhat insustainable. That and my dwindling supply. Believe it or not, it's hard to maintain supply when a baby refuses to nurse and you only use a pump.

After 4 months of being on exclusive expressed fortified breast milk, I broke out the formula samples that we had been given when Little Man was discharged and began to do some formula- some breast milk. Finally we dwindled to all formula with a little bit of breast milk each day. Thanks to the 6 months of pumping, it's several months later and we still have about a month's supply left that we dole out sparingly. However, Little Man made it clear this AM that he prefers the formula, where before he loved the breast milk enough that he would take it even cold. I tried not to take it personally.


Anyhow, all of this is to say that some days I feel proud that I made it as long as I did. And other days, most days, I feel guilt for not toughing it out. Like I cheated my son of something. On parenting sites, I get all twitchy when I read about people's transcendent nursing experiences and I see little jabby questions like, "why would you want to put junior on formula?" as if using formula is going to turn a potential Nobel Prize winner into a sniveling normal person who works a 9-5 in a soul sucking job for the rest of his life (oops projecting again). I usually want to bitchslap someone and say, "listen. I didn't want to have preemies who needed special high calorie breast milk. Nor did I really want to go back to work where pumping every 2-3 hours to maintain supply would be difficult. But I did the best I could, so back off."

This morning in looking up info on organic baby food vs. regular baby food, I ran into this article at the Mayo Clinic site. From the link

How should mothers who choose not to breast-feed handle feelings of guilt or inadequacy?

Guilt has no place in a thoughtful decision about breast-feeding. Instead, focus on your baby. Nurture your baby, and make sure he or she is well nourished. Don't feel guilty for doing what makes the most sense for you and your baby — whether it's combining breast-feeding and formula-feeding or using formula exclusively. If you're struggling with your decision not to breast-feed, it may help to share your feelings with your baby's doctor or another caring and knowledgeable person.

I have such mixed feelings. Sure I feel guilty about not breastfeeding. And I know I made the right decision as every doctor who sees Little Man is surprised by his weight, his happy, non-fussy demeanor and his seemingly good health. My ego about being UberMother was secondary, maybe even tertiary to the needs of my baby and the needs of my sanity and that's why he gets yummy formula instead of yummy expressed breast milk.

I wish instead of being asked to deal with feeling inadequate that I wouldn't have to deal with it at all. A lot of that sense of inadequacy comes from some internal place that is reacting to a sense of being judged by others. Which is self-involved because how many people really notice or give a shit about how I feed my child. Probably not many. But those who do need to, again, back off.

What would ease my way more than a mantra about making good decisions etc. etc., is an ability to overlook the way people stare at me when I whip out a bottle instead of a boob. I'm not foregoing breastfeeding just so I can diet or drink a nightly glass of red wine (which, now that I think of it is not a bad idea), but because my son's nutritional needs were greater than I could provide. I'll feel less guilty if others would be less judgey.