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.

Sleep School

This week, we are at the O'Connell Family Centre in Canterbury, which is the Mercy hospital's early childhood / sleep centre.  We are working on Tabitha's sleeping, since she is still waking 1 - 3 hourly all night.  She doesn't even want to be fed every time she wakes up - rather, she is just having trouble getting back to sleep when she rouses.

The O'Connell FC is wonderful - they do not do controlled crying (most 'sleep schools' do), rather they work on reading the baby's cues and responding accordingly.  The philosphy here is pretty much what we have been doing at home - i.e. if Tabitha is 'grizzling' in her cot, we leave her, but if she becomes distressed, we go in and comfort her until she is completely calm.  We use the techniques from Safe Sleep Space (we had this woman come to our home for a half day late last year, which was great).  This has been working brilliantly with her daytime sleeps, and putting her to bed at night - I can now just put her in her sleeping bag, give her her special 'lamby' soft toy, walk out, and she will grizzle for a minute or two and then go to sleep, normally.

However, overnight, she is waking a LOT, and can't get back to sleep without being put to the breast - sometimes she feeds, but often she just latches on and goes instantly back to sleep.  So, I would like her to be able to get back to sleep on her own, or even better, to not be waking all night at all!  I think she is tired from all her night waking - she yawns a lot and rubs her eyes in the mornings - so hopefully if she sleeps for longer, she will be better rested.  So will I!

We arrived this afternoon, and we will be staying until Friday morning.  The nurses are GREAT, really kind and responsive to the babies, and do not advocate any sort of controlled crying.  Another wonderful part of our stay is that, for the week, I am solely focussed on Tabitha and her sleeps - no rushing around, no cleaning, not even cooking, because all of our meals are prepared for us!  For dinner tonight, we had a nice vegetable pasta, with passionfruit cheesecake for dessert, and Tabitha had steamed veggies and cooked apple.  She made MUCH more mess than the other babies here, because of the baby led weaning, but all the nurses commented on how happy she is at mealtime, and how much she enjoys her food.

The main downside of our stay here is that there are lots of other babies, all with sleep issues, so there is a fair amount of crying.  I imagine it will be difficult overnight - just as she is getting back to sleep, she may be woken by another crying baby.  Frustrating!

Overall, I am optimistic about her learning to sleep for longer stretches, but I am not under any illusions that she will start 'sleeping through the night'.  I am still perfectly happy to be feeding her once overnight (e.g. feeds at 6pm, 10pm, 2am and 6am when she wakes), but at the moment it's closer to 6, 7:30, 9, 10:30, 12, 2, 3:30, 5:30 and 6:30.