Rites of passage

Hi Marjorie!

You have asked what first foods I gave to my own baby, and when I introduced oils and spices. Memories fade so quickly -- I had to go back and look at his baby journal (if you can even call it that!). I wish I had had the time and scrap-booking talent to produce a detailed archive of his infancy, but it is just a plain notebook with absentmindedly jotted down entries every month or so. It seems like he ate mostly avocado, spinach and sweet potatoes from age 6 to 8 months. Then I slowly introduced chopped up foods that we were eating, with the chili heat level dialed down. During his big teething time around 8 to 9 months, I gave him a chicken leg bone (with the sharp pin bone removed) that had some meat on it, and let him chomp away. You have to be careful, though, because sometimes he gnawed so hard he got the cartilage off. All of this is not to say that solid foods were a big part of his life. Up to about 9 months old, only ate them once or twice a day, and largely subsisted on nursing. It seems like your little one might switch over to a larger proportion of solids much more quickly -- he ate a quarter cup on his first go, after all!

I loved hearing about the first taste of food! It made me so sad that I can't be there to see your adorable little guy guzzling down some Delicata squash or prunes. The feeding of babies is something that EVERYONE wants to participate in -- having just passed Thanksgiving, I remembered back to my son's first holiday. He wasn't eating solids, but several people wanted to give him a taste of pumpkin pie or whipped cream. Even the more laid-back folks really wanted to watch, if not offer tastes. As a mom, it stressed me out to say no and I remember wishing that I could just feed my kid the way I wanted to feed him, privately. Now, as an honorary aunt to your son, I am really burning to watch you feed him a little taste of something and watch his reaction. I love him and you, and it is so interesting to observe first experiences! Now I have more sympathy for my Thanksgiving family.

This dilemma of public/private feeding can be hard to negotiate. My husband and I felt really strongly that we wanted some experiences to be ours and ours alone with our son (the birth, the first feeding, certain celebrations). Sometimes, I felt selfish excluding people in our lives, especially grandparents, but I also wasn't comfortable with an expectation that loving family members somehow get an all-access pass to every experience. I wanted to treasure these fleeting moments, not feel pressure as a hostess or walk the minefield of well-intentioned but sometimes unwelcome advice. How to balance all of this? I do want to honor the community that is helping to raise my child, and include them in the celebration of his growth.

Two ideas for a public celebration have emerged in my research, one from Sudan and one from India. My Sudanese colleague described how, on the occasion of the emergence of a first tooth, an infant's family brings a large dish of a special rice pudding to the local temple. Usually the mother or grandmother prepares the dish. So when a family at the mosque is eating or sharing rice pudding, the members of the community always ask who has cut their first teeth. There is no exact recipe, but it is usually rice simmered with milk, sugar, and raisins. Nuts and coconut are optional based on the family's taste. This seems like a sweet and easy way to involve the larger community in an important event in a baby's life.

Another idea is the Bengali tradition of annaprasan, the ritual first feeding of rice. Usually this occurs when a child is 6 months old, while sitting on a grandparents lap. I need to investigate further whether this is truly a first feeding of solids, or just a ritual "first feeding". I suspect the latter. This rite of passage has been on my research radar screen for a while -- and then just this past week, Jhumpa Lahiri wrote a small piece on the topic in the New Yorker (here's the link to the piece) There are myriad instructions out there on the web as to how the ritual is performed, and what recipe to use for the rice. One of my favorite discussion threads (here's the link), states that part of the tradition is to offer the child different objects, representing future endeavors (i.e. if he touches the pen, he will be a poet). This ritual is the part of a larger cultural and religious practice, and certainly I am not proposing that we all adopt this tradition wholesale. But the idea behind it is charming, and gives an organized way for the larger community to observe a baby's milestone. I know I would have loved to participate in your son's annaprasan, or some version thereof.

Love, Abbie

Our First Solid Food Experience

Hi Abbie!

I really enjoyed reading about the rich, early flavor experiences you described in your last post. It gives me hope for so many of us young parents who were ourselves brought up during the jarred baby food craze and who are now on a hunt to rediscover another way - from another time or another place - something more real. Thank you for sharing some of your little one's early favorites; I can't wait to try them out when my guy is a bit farther along!

For weeks, we've been watching our four-month-old eye our meals greedily while bringing whatever he had in his hand to his mouth for a "taste." At last, it was time, and we presented him with his very own helping of steamed, pureed delicata squash. It took him one messy attempt to get the hang of opening his mouth wide for the spoon, and we had to cut him off after he'd downed a quarter of a cup, because I wasn't sure how his insides would take to so much of a new substance. A rousing success! We waited a couple of days before introducing our next choice, avocado, the cost of which is normally prohibitive in our neck of the woods, but which were miraculously three for two dollars this week at our co-op. Alas, its sophisticated subtlety was lost on him, and I was forced to eat most of it.

Peas and prunes followed in close succession. (Because my son drinks soy formula, he tends to get constipated. My midwife suggested we stick to the letter "P," like peas, pears, prunes. I am wondering about oatmeal? Do you have any other suggestions? I know he'll love bananas, but I'm scared about their constipating tendency...). We steamed and pureed the peas much like the squash, with a little extra water. For the prunes - we roughly chopped organic, unsulfurated prunes, added a little water and cooked them in a sauce pan for a few minutes, until their skins had softened. In order to avoid making a very sticky, thick paste, the prunes required substantially more water than the other foods we had prepared. Our son enjoyed the peas and warmed up to the prunes after some initial sour/perplexed expressions. We froze the surplus (except for the avocado) in ice cube trays overnight and popped them out the next morning into a freezer bag.

My husband, son, and I have had lots of fun with this first solid food experience. Even though we still have many new "plain" flavors to try, I am already wondering things like, "when are spices OK?" and "How much solid in addition to his soy milk is reasonable - like how many times a day, etc.?" For now, we plan to stick with single foods for a few more staples, like carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples,green beans, etc., but I know that very soon I will want our son to try squash prepared our grown-up way with ginger, a little sugar, and a little oil. Having started solids at four months and three days, he is on the young end of the currently-preached-in-the-USA spectrum, so I do have concerns about the readiness of his digestive system for all of this...I am wondering how long I should wait before introducing him to something more involved, like your saag panir recipe from the last post.

Another concern I have about making my own baby food stems from a section of the pamphlet I referenced last time from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Starting Solid Foods (revised 2008). They warn, "Do not feed your baby home-prepared beets, turnips, carrots, spinach, or collard greens in the first year of life. In some parts of the country, these vegetables have large amounts of nitrates, chemicals that can cause an unusual type of anemia in young babies. Baby food companies are aware of this problem and screen the produce they buy for nitrates. They also avoid buying these vegetables in parts of the country where nitrates have been found. Thus it is safer to use commercially prepared forms of these foods during the first year of life." As I looked into this issue more thoroughly, it seems that the problem has little to do with commercial vs. homemade baby food, but more to do with the maturity of a baby's digestive system and its ability to destroy certain bacteria that change nitrates into nitrites, which impair hemoglobin's ability to carry oxygen. An article I found very helpful in clarifying the phenomenon can be found at http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/nitratearticle.htm. The consensus from this and other sources seems to be that if a baby is over three months old, their digestive system is advanced enough to handle the naturally occurring nitrates which are found in a number of foods. Interesting issue that could be confusing for the home-baby food chef.

I would love to hear about some of your very early, just-started-solids experiences, like when you introduced oils, salts, spices, etc. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

Marjorie

Picky eating? Nah!

Hi Marjorie!

Your post really summed up the challenges we have been discussing. In stark contrast, I spent yesterday afternoon with a young father from Yemen who has a 6 month old. With Grandma's guidance, the baby had been eating pureed vegetable soup for the past few months (Amazing, isn't it, how vegetable-based soups seem to be emerging in our research as an an almost universal first food?). This Friday is an important Muslim holiday, and Grandma is baking a whole lamb, stuffed with rice, herbs and ground meat. He was looking forward to the baby tasting the meat. When I mentioned your discovery of the concern over the "strong flavor" of meat, he snickered. He said any baby in his family better get used to strong flavor -- that's what their food is all about. "No picky eaters!" He declared. "That's very American!"

With my own son, 8 to 12 months was a magic window, when he greedily ate any thing "strongly flavored" that came his way. I thought maybe that was just a quirk, but then this past Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran a food column by Pete Wells (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15food-t-000.html?_r=1&ref=dining). He discussed his young son Dexter and how amazed his family was to see how open Dexter was to new flavors when he was an infant of 7 to 8 months. Then, writes Wells, Dexter began turning against previously well-loved foods:

"He discovered things not to like in experiences that previously brought him only pleasure. A lot of parents call this picky eating. I think it was just the birth of that consciousness that, for the rest of his life, will shadow his joys with the knowledge that nothing is as ever good as it could be".

I was really moved by this idea, as well as by Well's suggestion that the movie "Ratatouille" taught his then-toddler how to appreciate new flavors and new taste combinations once again. We will get it from Netflix soon!

Here are two favorite recipes from the period of my son's early openness to new flavors. This is not to say he then rejected all of his favorite early foods. Green peas stirred into a meaty bolognese sauce, a staple of that period, remains his favorite meal. The sauce is loaded with garlic, herbs, tomatoes, and Italian sausage. Now we add pasta for him, but initially it was just peas and sauce (incidentally, one of his first word combinations as well). Note that one of the following recipes has nuts: take it or leave it. I fed it to him by mistake, and he didn't have any reaction. He loved it so much, I kept feeding it to him. I know, I know. Call the allergy police. I'm sure horror stories abound, and thankfully it didn't happen to me. Every mom can make her own decision on this one.

Farro and Porcini Risotto: http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.aced15a43a1d10e593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=a2e76f3988f09110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=0dd9349d52e38110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=print&currentslide=1&page=1

Saag Panir (adapted from Suneeta Vaswani's Complete Book of Indian Cooking)

2 Tbsp oil
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 Tbsp minced or grated ginger
pinch of red chili flakes (optional -- best to leave it out the first time)
2 Tbsp coriander powder
1 tsp turmeric
2 10-oz packages frozen spinach, thawed
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup nonfat milk or soy milk
2 cups plain yogurt
2 tsp cornstarch
1 package of panir (bland Indian cheese -- if you can't find it, use firm tofu, cut into cubes

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onions, ginger and chili flakes, if using, and saute over medium heat until soft and pale golden.

2. Stir in coriander and turmeric and saute, stirring well, 2-3 minutes.

3. Add spinach and salt. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. In a blender, puree spinach with milk and return mixture to pot; alternatively, add milk to pot and puree with a blender stick.

4. Place pot over low heat. Stir yogurt and cornstarch together than add to spinach mixture. Add panir and mix gently. Covered and simmer until heated through, about 10 minutes.

A Disappointing Meeting

Hi Abbie!

Trust your instincts as a mother (and as a cook) - that is good advice. Last week, I went to a talk with the promising title "Starting First Foods and the Family Table" at our local Women's Center. The audience was filled with first-time moms eager for guidance and hanging on every word of the clearly unprepared nutritionist leading the discussion. It broke my heart to see moms asking questions like, "Will I being doing harm to my six-month-old baby by offering him a sip of water from my glass if he is curious about it?" or "We've been giving my son cereal exclusively for a month and a half, but he hates it so much he cries when he sees the bowl. Is it OK to try something different even though he isn't seven months yet?"

Despite my lack of expertise, I wanted to hijack the meeting and turn it into a pep-talk for embracing our inner mothering instincts. I wanted to remind everyone that our great-great-great-great-great grandmothers somehow made this motherhood thing work without much of the "expert" advice we have at our fingertips today and that we can do it too. My husband calls this my "in the wild" argument and correctly points out that infant mortality rates were much higher in the past. (I concede - modern technology often signifies forward progress. My own sweet son wouldn't have made it without much medical intervention at birth and for his first couple of months). But still! There is a time and place for strict rules and guidelines, and cooking and eating ain't it!

Everyone at the meeting received some literature with suggested times to introduce certain foods. One pamphlet, "Starting Solid Foods," put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics (revised in 2008), seemed refreshingly permissive compared to most other sources I have read, including the other handouts we received at the talk and the nutritionist's own advice. The pamphlet gave a generous age range for starting solids ("generally between 4 and 6 months"), and emphasized taking cues from your individual baby. As for types of foods offered:

"for most babies it does not matter what the first solid foods are. By tradition, single-grain cereals are usually introduced first. However, there is no medical evidence that introducing solid foods in any particular order has an advantage for your baby. Though many pediatricians will recommend starting vegetables before fruits, there is no evidence that your baby will develop a dislike for vegetables if fruit is given first...Many pediatricians recommend against giving eggs and fish in the first year of life because of allergic reactions, but there is no evidence that introducing these nutrient-dense foods after four to six months of age determines whether your baby will be allergic to them...Within a few months of starting solid foods, your baby's daily diet should include a variety of foods each day that may include the following:"
- breast milk and/or formula
- meats
- cereal
- vegetables
- fruits
- eggs and fish

This list covers a lot of food! In contrast, a different handout from the same meeting banned eggs and fish until after three years of age and advised against serving anything other than cereal until your baby is eating a half a cup of cereal at a time. (!?). The nutritionist cautioned against introducing meats for the first few months of eating solids due to their "strong flavor." I plan on adopting the "try it and see" approach myself...

We also received some recipes at the meeting. I have mixed feelings about them. The majority involve pureeing two or three foods together in strange ("cute?") combinations unlikely to be encountered in "adult" recipes (like "Blue Mash" - a blend of blue potatoes and purple cauliflower and "Banana-cado Puree" - you guessed it, banana and avocado). On the other hand, I think it is wonderful to encourage parents to experiment with cooking for their babies instead of just combing the baby aisle at Stop and Shop. If having these recipes in hand gives them the confidence to do that, great.

I am looking forward to some of your favorite recipes!
Marjorie

Intuition versus science?

Hi Margie!



The excerpts from the book make me laugh out loud. Your post made me think about our own future granddaughters....will they read our reference books, like What to Expect or Dr. Sears, and laugh at our generational "wisdom"? I completely agree with your concerns about moms being treated as "non-experts", forced to ignore --or perhaps never cultivate -- their own maternal instincts. There is a commercial undercurrent to a lot of this: if we are made to be afraid of our lack of knowledge, then we will buy the book, or put aside the homemade food in favor of "safe" prepared foods. Much of this fear-mongering is done in the name of public health and "science" and it is hard to sift out fact from fiction. I don't want my child to get botulism from honey, but nor do I want to avoid raw vegetables until he is four just because some expert says they could choke him.

The sad fact of our ongoing investigation into maternal food wisdom and child feeding practices is that much of it has already been lost. How many mothers have we spoken to from other countries, other local cultures, even other generations, and all they can remember is Gerber and rice cereal? Is this authentic food wisdom, or just effective marketing? What happened before baby food was a commodity? It has been such a challenge for both of us to find mothers who remember a different way. What heartens me are the many current mothers who are curious about this project, or ask these questions themselves. And this curiosity is not a new phenomenon: I have my mother's crunchy "back-to-the-land" 1970's books that talk about whole foods and purees for babies. Still, they are printed books with "recipes", not a tradition of maternal practice handed from one generation to the next.

Instinct and intuition are traditionally framed as a "female" way of knowing, versus "male" scientific authority. So many of the women in our socioeconomic class have "succeeded" by adapting to these traditionally male values. Does this become a liability when we move into the maternal role? I talk to many women who are assertive in the classroom and confident in their careers, but are cowed into asking the doctor "permission" to give their child a taste of table food. Is it because we think the doctor knows better? Is it because we are afraid to fail? Have we really been convinced we are a potential danger to our child at every stage of development? I think there are complex issues at play, but much has to do with the privileging of the scientific over the instinctual in our culture.

I mentioned Dr. Sears and his oeuvre at the beginning of this post, and while I am already rolling my eyes at some of his earnest methods, I doubt our granddaughters will be snickering at the heart of his message: watch your baby. If you are aware and attached to your child, you will know what is best for them and your family. Trust yourself as a parent. To this, I would add, trust yourself as a cook.

Abbie

p.s. I love our philosophical discussions -- but I'm hungry for some RECIPES! Next post, I'm going to give some of our current favorites!

Advice from the 1930s

Hi Abbie!

Thanks for the great post! Many of the things you brought up, especially the idea of sharing a family meal, really resonated with me. It's hard to sort through all of the disparate information out there about first foods, and I feel like it sets up new parents for at least a confusing (if not downright stressful) start to what should be an exciting journey of taste exploration. It seems like our society, with good intentions, has conditioned us to tiptoe around many aspects of child-bearing and rearing, with food introduction being no exception. We're made to feel that as "non experts," we need to rely on "expert" advice and push our own instincts aside.

A book on child-rearing from an old family collection, Infants and Children: Their Feeding and Growth by Frederic H. Bartlett, M.D., (NY: 1932), brought this concept into sharp focus for me earlier this week. The whole thing is a treasure and a hoot, with passages like, "I think everyone will agree that babies and children should never be kissed on the mouth." (p.209), and "The training for a regular bowel movement may begin at a very early age, often in the second or third month...If you can, start training your infant to have a bowel movement in the chamber each morning, at the age of 1 month...It is unnecessary to say that if you can establish this habit during infancy and childhood so that it can be carried on by the child when he gets older, it will be one of the greatest boons of his life." (p. 231 & 234). !! Like they won't learn to poop otherwise?!

But, I digress... I meant to share the advice about early foods offered by this book, just for some interesting comparisons with other information we can scrounge up. One thing that made a big impression was the overwhelming amount of advice about precisely how and when to feed a baby at every age. Schedules, including the omission of nightly feedings (I should say "the 2AM feeding") starting at 2 weeks (!), and detailed cooking instructions are outlined to an extent that I haven't seen in current advice tomes. (Maybe we have actually simplified as a society since then!) In the interest of space, I will keep to the basics for this post.

From the chapter titled "Food in Addition to Breast or Bottle":

"At 2 weeks of age, you will begin to give you baby cod liver oil.
At 1 month, orange juice.
At 3 months, cereal.
At 4 months, egg yolk.
At 5 months, vegetables.
At 6 months, stewed fruit.
As a matter of fact, you could give any of these foods at 1 month of age, if small enough quantities were used to start with, but that is more stunt feeding than it is advisable feeding." (p. 47).

The cereals recommended are oatmeal and cornmeal. The egg preparation is to boil for 15 minutes and remove the white. The vegetables listed are spinach, cauliflower, tomatoes, carrots, turnips (yellow or white), broccoli, green peas, asparagus, string beans, squash (yellow or white), celery, onions, lettuce, cabbage, and beet tops. Prep for the veggies is to cook, put through a course strainer, and season with a little butter. Canned vegetables are fine, but "don't pour away the juice that comes with them in the can. Serve some of it with the vegetable as it contains nutritious salts." (p. 60). "Perhaps the safest fruits to start with are apples and prunes. These should be cooked as they would be for grown-ups, except that spices should not be used, and only as little sugar as possible." (p. 60).

I could go on and on, but my baby of 2009 needs his bath...

Enjoy!
Marjorie