The Yoghurt Experience - with photos.

Today I tried Tabitha with yoghurt for the first time.  If they are having dairy, babies are supposed to eat whole milk, unsweetened natural yoghurt - it's full of great things like active cultures, protein and calcium, and it's best to get them used to the taste of healthy natural yoghurt, rather than those scary 'baby yoghurts' with cartoons all over them and loads of sugar inside them.

Natural yoghurt is definitely an acquired taste - I am thankful that my mother fed me lots of it as a baby and child, because even though I still find it quite sour, I do enjoy the taste.  For myself, I mix it with some mashed banana and honey, or some fresh berries and a sprinkle of muesli.  For Tabitha, I gave it to her plain to start with, just to see what she thinks!  She found it a little sour, pulling some funny faces ("Erm, Mumma, are you sure about this?  Am I supposed to eat it?  It is so sour!"), but she had the same reaction with ripe nectarines and peaches.  Even though she made a few faces, she kept pulling the spoon back to her mouth for more.

She had some rice cake with almond butter to eat, feeding herself, and I offered spoonfuls of yoghurt as she was eating her rice cake.  The baby led weaning approach says that spoon feeding is okay, as long as it isn't the main part of their diet, and as long as you carefully watch the baby for cues - while they are opening their mouth and seeming keen, keep offering, but as soon as they stop or turn away, stop with the spooning.  She probably had around 6 small teaspoonfuls of yoghurt - I was pretty impressed!

Typical Tabitha - needs a bit of food in both hands!

Mouth full, bottom lip out with a Thinking Face:

Whatchu lookin' at?!

Oooh!  This is strange but I LIKE it!

Chewing on a mouthful of yoghurt AND rice cake:

Yay!  Yoghurt!

Craming a bit too much in her mouth...

Hahahaha, old man face...

Sour face :)  But she did like it!

The yoghurt we eat is Elgaar Farm organic full cream yoghurt - it is EXCELLENT!  We get out milk from Elgaar Farm too, because it tastes amazing, is not homogenised, and most importantly, the cows are looked after so beautifully - they keep the calves with their mothers until they are old enough to wean, and when the cows are too old to produce milk, they retire them to a lovely herd of senior cows, on the same verdant Tasmanian farm, to live out their days eating grass and just being a cow.