Going with the flow...

It's now March, and this month Baby Seal will turn one.

Before Baby Seal was born, I said to anyone who asked that I would "give breastfeeding a try, but if it didn't work out, I would feed formula with pride and joy." After she was born, and I astonished myself with being about to actually, like, produce milk from my own body with next to no problems, I decided to breastfeed for "at least six months... maybe nine." Nine months came and went, and I realized with a jolt that I only had three months or so left. Then I realized with another jolt that I didn't actually "have" to wean her at 12 months. I could keep right on going, just as long as I wanted to.

It was a strange moment. It wasn't that I had ever thought of nursing past 12 months as being improper or icky (I've been in too many parts of the world where women will flip an entire tit out to feed a toddler to be under such delusions). It's just that I never, ever thought of "extended nursing" (even now, it seems so odd to see those words applied to myself!) as something that people like me did. Extended nursing was for mothers who gave birth in paddling pools and kept their babies in slings on a permanent basis (except, of course, when in the Family Bed). Or for women in poor countries who had to nurse for years on end. Not for normal developed-world mothers like me, who do paid employment for The Man and who told their obstetricians that during labor they wanted to be as high as a ****ing kite throughout.

For this change in attitude, I have my beloved knitting website, Ravelry (aka "Facebook for knitters") to thank in part. It's crunchy-ish, but not insanely crunchy, and above all does seem to have a lot of "mothers who think"(well, we are knitters/crocheters, after all). And there are lots of women who nurse past 12 months over there. Call it "peer orientation" or whatever you will, but just being around mothers who nurse for longer really does make it seem less of a freakish thing to do.

The flip side of websites and forums that supported extended nursing is that in general, they can't limit themselves to supporting extended nursing; rather, they tend to foster an atmosphere that pushes it on every woman. Ravelry, thank God, is largely free from overt pressure in this respect... unlike, say, Kellymom or Mothering, where a mother asking for tips on how to get her 12-month-old to accept cow's milk so that she can wean her will get responses ranging from outright criticism to "Could you explain why you are weaning her right now?" In that polite tone of voice that tells you so much more than the words themselves.

There was recently a post on one of the Ravelry groups where the posters were discussing the scientific case for nursing past 12 months. All the usual sources were cited in favor--Kellymom, the World Health Organization, that bloody Gulick study. I kept quiet, as I suspected that my own opinion might not be too popular--my opinion being that in developed countries, the benefits of extended nursing are likely to be extremely small for the child (ironically, there is probably better scientific evidence for extended breastfeeding's benefits for the mother, in the form of a slightly lowered risk of certain cancers).

As for the fact that the WHO recommends breastfeeding to two years or more, I am afraid I really could not care less. The WHO is the World Health Organization, and as such it (reasonably enough) tailors its advice primarily to those most in need of it: poor parts of the world with high infant and child mortality rates. If you are living in a community with no clean water, no pasteurized animal milks, not a lot of nutritious food for toddlers and no birth control for mum, then breastfeeding for years genuinely does raise children's survival rates. If you are living in the developed world, breastfeeding for years is more on the level of taking your child to Mommy and Me classes; it's harmless and a pleasant thing to do if that's your thing. It's not remotely necessary for producing a surviving, thriving child.

However, I am going to shut up now, since Good Enough Mum has discussed all this far more eloquently than I could ever do.

While I'm glad whenever I see the You Must Wean At 12 Months, Because Nursing After Then Suddenly Becomes Icky attitude being questioned, I'm not sure how much of an improvement it is if this just gets replaced with You Must Breastfeed Until Two Otherwise Your Child Is Being Deprived (especially when the claims as to why are so scientifically dodgy). Just a modest proposal, but how about a different idea; the idea of just stopping when you damn well want to... for whatever reason? No plans, no dates or deadlines (in either direction), no pressure. Just you and your child and whatever feels "right" for both of you. The more I think about this idea, the more I like it. Just stepping into the water and letting the current take you, and seeing where you end up. Going with the flow.

So why am I going to keep going for a while? Well, mostly because we both enjoy it and I see no reason to stop. Plus--can I be honest?--it's a convenient lifestyle tool for me, because nursing time is increasingly my internet time! The to-wean-or-not-to-wean question has come up recently in my due date club, and all I can say is that there seems to be a very strong correlation between babies' distractability and mothers' weaning intentions: those of us who were planning to keep going were all saying things like "It's our relaxation time, he blisses out at the breast while I catch up on Facebook," while those who were stopping or planning to stop shared stories about how their babies were so distractible that nursing has become a fight and a bore, and they were taking this is a signal that He's Just Not That Into You any more. An example of "seeing where the current takes you," and a very good one.

By the way, this is another reason why I'm so wary of the increasing pressure found in some quarters to breastfeed until two as a maternal duty. Extended nursers may enthuse loudly about how nursing an older baby or toddler makes parenting a toddler more convenient, but it would be truer perhaps to say "No, nursing your particular child makes life more convenient for you." Increasing pressure on all mothers to breastfeed for two years no matter what will inevitably mean that many women will feel obliged to keep struggling away with nursing even when their particular circumstances or child means that this is not convenient or a tool that makes parenting easier; for example, even if their child is so distractible that the only way to nurse is to shut yourself and baby away in a darkened room, or even if they get pregnant again and are in pain and resenting their child. As if that's not bad enough, there seems to be more and more cases of advice along the lines of "If you [give bottles regularly/spoonfeed solids/nightwean/don't allow access to the breast at all times] your baby is likely to self-wean early" (which then means you are breaking those all-important finger-wagging WHO guidelines). "Nurse to two years no matter what" thus easily becomes a tool for frightening or guilting mothers into practicing certain mothering styles which they may or may not be comfortable with. Not good.

That said, since I am fortunate enough to have a baby who is prepared to ignore my flickering PC screen during milky time, and since we both still enjoy the closeness of nursing, I am going to "go with the flow" and take full advantage of this, and nurse until I feel like stopping.

I even had nursing to thank for getting me through a hellish day last week when my childcare provider cancelled on me on a day when I had several deadlines to meet--somehow the day's work got done, though a mixture of making the most of naptimes and letting Baby Seal hang out at the milk bar as much as possible while I typed with one hand. Oh, and Peppa Pig on DVD, if I'm honest. And letting her pull things out of cupboards and strew them all over the room and destroy the baby gate, as demonstrated above. Such is the life of a freelance worker with a small child. Bring on Year 12-24 Months--I'm ready!

Cups: the new bottles

This morning, I've been packing up Baby Seal's teeny-tiny baby stuff to give to a friend-of-a-friend who is expecting twins. Oh, the little tiny shirts and babygrows (could she really have ever fitted inside those?). The Miracle Blanket I could never figure out how to use. The Japanese diaper covers that I innocently used with the tabs the wrong way round for the first month.

And then there were the bottles--unused, because these were the ones I had bought in a fit of desperation when she was three months old and had decided that bottles were evil. "Buy lots of different bottles and try them out," I was advised when I posted online for tips. I did. She refused to let any of them near her mouth. After a few sessions that felt more like attempts at waterboarding than anything else, I gave up, encouraged by online voices pointing out that you could spoonfeed breastmilk in the meantime, and that babies could take cups as early as six months. My mother, however, was dismayed when I said I was going straight to cups. "They don't drink as much from cups. And babies need to suck; it's a comfort thing for them." Hmmm... my baby seemed to find bottlefeeding more of a battleground than a comfort zone, but there you are...

Of course, babies being what they are, when I took Baby Seal back to my parents' place for a visit at 9 months old she found a dusty old bottle lying at the back of a drawer and started sucking on it, whereupon my mother filled it up with water and gave it to her. "Look, she's drinking from a bottle!" said my mother triumphantly. "Bit pointless now, though," I pointed out, since she was getting towards the age when you are supposed to be getting them off the bottle anyway. "Nonsense," said my mother. "Babies like bottles! Look at your sister's kids--they continued to have a bottle as part of the bedtime ritual till they were over two! I don't know why you girls nowadays seem to want to get rid of the bottles in such a hurry."

There does seem to be more a move nowadays towards nixing bottles early or skipping them altogether and moving to sippy cups within the first year--not necessarily out of dire necessity because baby is a bottle-hater, but as a choice among formula feeders and breastfeeders whose babies take bottles happily. I wonder why that is. Maybe sippies are better designed nowadays--the soft-spout ones, for example, are less intimidating to a younger baby. I suppose many parents are also attracted by the unspoken rule that you need to sterilize bottles but not sippies.

But perhaps another reason is the kind of vague stigma that seems to have attached itself to bottles in general. Take, for example, the bizarre outcry in New Zealand over All Black player Piri Wipu appearing in a public health advert in which he hed his six-month-old from a bottle; the fact that we don't even know what's in the bottle, the fact that men can't breastfeed, dammit, the fact that the baby was six months old and most breastfed babies that age are having at least the occasional bottle or sippy, didn't stop the NZ La Leche League spazzing over the fact that a (dum dum DAHHH) bottle was being shown in an advert.

There's no doubt that among some of the more extreme lactivist circles, bottles themselves seem to be regarded with deep suspicion, hedged about with lots of "Well, if you absolutely must abandon your precious infant to some boobless freak of a co-parent leave baby with your husband..." and talk about the wonders of cup-, syringe-, dropper-, finger- or spoon-feeding breastmilk into baby's mouth instead (the funny thing is that many of the same people who are adamantly opposed to spoonfeeding solid food are convinced that this is a superior way to administer breastmilk). All these methods certainly have a place as a temporary way to feed a baby while you are getting breastfeeding established, or as a last resort if your baby is convinced that bottles are instruments of torture (raises hand), but I've seen more than one lactivist advocate using these feeding methods long-term, as an alternative to the bottle. As someone who had to ask her long-suffering mother-in-law to mess around with spoon-feeding and cup-feeding breastmilk, all I can say is that the advantages of such methods can be overstated <Yours Truly pauses to black out hideous memories of her screaming baby thrashing about demonically and knocking containers of painstakingly expressed liquid gold all over the floor>. Can you imagine finding a non-family member willing to do this?

Of course, the inefficiency of such methods is probably the whole point, since the basic thinking of Jack Newman and his ilk seems to be that preferably your baby will be consuming almost nothing at daycare anyway, and making up for it by nursing all night long instead, but that's a subject for another post. Given that the Jack Newman page I linked to also suggests a movie theater for an ideal first outing with baby (good Gawd), and hints grimly that if your teenager is surly about spending time with the rest of the family it's probably because you left her with a babysitter and a bottle to go to a wedding or something when she was a few months old, I'll be taking his views with a pinch of salt.... and advising my new friend-of-a-friend that whatever feeding method she chooses for her twinsies, getting them used to a bottle early on is a good idea.

Just don't call it a Hooter Hider

So, just in time for the recent Support With Integrity pledge about judgment-free breastfeeding, here's a post about nursing covers.

I recently came across this post on nursing covers, by Birth Without Fear blogger Rixxa. In a nutshell, Rixxa is Not In Favor of nursing covers (Fair enough. I'm not in favor of giving birth unassisted to a blue baby in a bathtub and then telling everybody that this is a great example of how to deliver a child, but that's beside the point). It would appear from this post from PhD in Parenting and other writers that she is in good company*. Who would want to envelop themselves in a "giant floral apron like a granny apron gone wrong," as someone on one of my favorite online forums put it?

Well... I would, as a matter of fact. I mean, I'm beyond caring whether other mothers use a nursing cover, and I also get majorly pissed off at people (generally to be found in the comments sections of online news articles, for some reason) who say that mothers should use nursing covers in public or that it's indecent not to use one. But for me, I have to say that my Bebe au Lait has proven to be one of the best purchases I've made.

Not that I would have believed you on the day when my husband dragged me to a corner of the baby store and said "Look!!! See these? I'm going to get you one!" "Whatever," I thought contemptuously; what's wrong with just using a blanket like I was already doing? When I actually tried the Bebe au Lait nursing cover, I discovered that this was much, much better than a blanket. The defining feature of most nursing covers is the stiffened half-hoop threaded through the upper edge, which causes the thing to stand off your chest, giving the baby fresh air and you a way to check what's going on down there. Also, if I was honest, the blanket kept sliding off my shoulders. The Bebe au Lait stayed on, thanks to the strap that kept it round my neck. Yes, I could probably have run one up on a sewing machine for a fraction of the cost... but let's face it, that was never going to happen, was it?

As the commentators linked to above have correctly pointed out, it is indeed perfectly possible to nurse "discreetly" without a cover; this post here, for example, has a whole list of ideas: wearing nursing friendly clothes (tops loose enough to put baby underneath, basically, plus trousers or a skirt), practicing in front of a mirror, leaning back when you nurse to make those awkward popping-off-the-breast moments less obvious, holding baby in positions which--hopefully--make baby less likely to pop off in the first place, or somehow figuring out how to nurse a baby in a sling.

I'm sure all these ideas are great. But the problem is, I just can't be bothered with doing all this. The thing about nursing covers is: once you have chucked the thing over your front, you can basically be as indiscreet as you like underneath: you can wear what you like (even tight-fitting tops or zip-up-the-back dresses are possible; just loosen the zip a little bit and slide the dress down a few inches), you can (should you wish) pull your breast out of the top of your clothing instead of scooting baby under the bottom edge of your shirt, you can hold baby how you like or just let her hang out on your lap, and you can let baby get on with latching on and off as she pleases, rather than feeling like you have to "keep her on the breast" and that it's a problem if she decides to take a break. Leaving you free to relax and enjoy whatever you're doing. Stopping the baby from rubbernecking everything that's going on is, of course, another reason why some mothers like to use covers--I've been known to get mine out in the sitting room at home for precisely this reason.

Some of the arguments why nursing covers are "bad" do seem rather lacking in logic. You often see people pointing out that "a nursing cover will draw attention to what you are doing more than if you just slipped the kid under your shirt!" Probably true, but then most mothers who use covers aren't doing so because they are trying to disguise the fact that they are breastfeeding, as if it were some kind of grim secret. They just don't want strangers to glimpse their breasts, which is not the same thing at all. Also, isn't it a bit odd to say that "if you nurse without a cover, nobody will twig what you're doing anyway!" but then go on to insist that "It's important for women to nurse without covers, because doing so will help to normalize breastfeeding!" How does it normalize breastfeeding if indeed nobody can actually tell that that's what you're doing? I certainly don't mean that that is a reason why women should use covers; I'm just saying the argument doesn't make a lot of sense. Oh, and it seems a bit odd that while many breastfeeding advocates dislike nursing covers, they are all for learning how to nurse a baby in a sling. Hate to tell ya this, but you are still covering up, so philosphically it's not clear what the difference is, and judging by the eleventy billion threads on The Babywearer in which posters share tips on how to winch, tweak and adjust your sling to get this trick to work, it sounds like an awful lot of work compared with just flinging a cover over yourself and getting back to your cappuccino.

To be honest, though, I'm convinced that quite a lot of the reason why some breastfeeding advocates turn their nose up at nursing covers is the God-awful names that certain manufacturers insist on giving to these items. Hooter Hider? Udder Cover? Seriously, somebody needs to fire their Product Branding department. Better names, please, nursing cover manufacturers.

*Although to be fair, it appears from Annie's comments in this post that her views have changed somewhat over time.

Nightweaning thoughts (3) (or, "Dreamfeeding, not screamfeeding")

OK, I think we're done. First I cut down on the nighttime feeding, then I stopped, we had screaming all night, we had screaming some of the night, we had brief nightwakings with no screaming, we had one brief nightwaking per night with no screaming, and then it stopped altogether. Baby Seal has been sleeping through the night from 7.30pm to 6.30am (apart from a quick dreamfeed at 10.30) 90% of the time for the last month or so. Yours truly is a happy mummy.

Now...I suppose this is the point where I am supposed to talk in heartbroken tones for a bit about how I am going to miss those lovely middle-of-the-night-quality-moments, the way Dr Sears, the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and every last flippin' poster on Kellymom and Mothering.com talk about when they are doling out the usual bullshit-bingocard advice to mothers who are cracking under the strain of sleep deprivation: "They're only little once, mama! Treasure these golden moments when you can snuggle them in the middle of the night for the 14th time! You'll miss it one day! [insert annoying dancing and blinking huggy emoticons]" Well, as a matter of fact, I don't. Not one little bit. I have never understood why the experience of being woken up from a sound sleep by a wailing human being is supposed to fill you with a sort of golden glow of motherly love, especially when the wakings go on and on all night. Yes, there is snuggling involved, but snuggling together is something you can do any time of the day, without compromising your sleep--or, alternatively, you can do what I'm doing now and enjoy some middle-of-the-night snuggles on your terms, and without any interruption to your sleep, in the form of a dreamfeed.

Oh dreamfeed, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Baby gets milk and sleeps soundly. Mummy has her breasts emptied just when she needs it and gets lovely post-nursing sleepy hormones as well. As someone who has always had trouble dropping off to sleep, I have to say that there is nothing to beat the feeling of falling asleep after the dreamfeed--like sinking into a warm milky bath. Screamfeedings suck. Dreamfeedings are where those golden glowy motherly love feelings are to be found.

Only question now is, what on earth am I going to do when Baby Seal outgrows dreamfeeding? ("Mum, I know breastmilk's good for my immunities and all, but this dreamfeeding business is starting to get in the way of my A-level studies...") Perhaps this could be the answer to the mystery of why women in some parts of Papua New Guinea used to adopt and nurse pet piglets when their children grew past nursing age. Wonder if our Russian Blue cat Otto would be interested....

Oh No, She Didn't! The "Time to Stop Suckling" post in Slate

As any blogger will tell you, when you can't think of anything to blog about, find a news story related to your blogging topic, and comment away. Not that I'm doing that or anything (looks around sheepishly).

But there's been some comment by The Feminist Breeder and others on their Facebook pages/blogs about a certain piece of advice given by Slate's Dear Prudence to a lady disconcerted by her sister-in-law breastfeeding her five-year-old son at the table at Grandpa's 80th birthday bash. Cue the usual bingocard lactivist outrage about how this just shows how meeeeaaaan the world is breastfeeding mothers. Lots of the usual comments on TFB's Facebook page about how the global average age of weaning is four years (oh no it isn't), except that for some reason the bidding has now gone up to five years.

To be honest, though, I think the age is less an issue than the boundaries, and the fact that a schoolboy is still using his mother's body like a drinks bar. If one is going to nurse a child at such an advanced age, I think it's time to make it a discreet, private thing. This is not achieved by whipping your boob out in front of a family gathering. I can't think of a single reason why a child that age would need to nurse rightthisverysecond at a party (why can't he just get a glass of water?); even if he needs the milk for nutritional reasons due to allergies (an odd claim since many cultures do not drink cow's milk), presumably that can wait too.

There are social implications here; the outside world is not going to be kind to this child. Sooner or later he will realize that other kids his age don't nurse and will stop asking, but the problem is that by that point he will probably already have become a target of teasing and ridicule. I don't think the mother in question is thinking of her son's welfare at all; I think she is thinking of herself and her identity as the One Crunchy Mum To Rule Them All. Getting critical comments is, I suspect, all part of the agenda (perhaps she failed to get any when feeding her son in public as a baby and is nursing--haha--a little secret disappointment?) There is a certain type of mother who thrives on feeling that her mothering choices make her a persecuted minority.

Bullshitometer: Baby led weaning/Gill Rapley

Baby led weaning, a term invented by British health visitor Gill Rapley, may not be "breastfeeding" as such, but it's so popular on breastfeeding-centered boards and blogs that it's worth a little scrutiny. Confusingly for North Americans, BLW is not about weaning from the breast; rather, it refers to a method of solid food introduction which consists (roughly) of forgoing the traditional spoonfeeding of purees, and instead giving the baby large-ish pieces of table food to self-feed... or chuck on the floor if they are so disposed, the idea being that this is about "following the baby's lead" in terms of what and how much solid food they eat. BLWers usually wait at least six months--sometimes later--before starting solids, and BLW is typically characterized by a much slower shift towards solids than the spoonfeeding approach, with babies not infrequently getting little in the way of solids until they approach a year old.


Definitions
Because BLW has become quite fashionable, everyone seems to have started using the term and you will often hear people using it to describe what is more traditionally called "finger foods" ("We're doing some purees with a spoon, and also some BLW"). However, people who take BLW Very Very Seriously--I'm going to refer to them as the BLW purists--scoff at such approaches, saying that you can't do BLW by halves. The whole philosophy of bona fide BLW, you see, is based on the idea that babies should be entirely in charge of the feeding process; once you start doing any spoonfeeding, the whole weaning process becomes... like... not BLW. In this respect, the purists actually go even further than Rapley herself, who admits that a bit of spoonfeeding may be okay if you really have to. Gill Rapley's philosophy of BLW is set out in her book;  however, aficionados tend to say that this weaning method is as old as time itself ("What do you think people did before blenders?") and that by contrast, puree-based spoonfeeding is a new invention, necessitated by the invention of infant formula and pushed on parents by the babyfood industry, which has a vested interest in getting parents to give solids more and earlier than is natural for babies.

Finger foods are not the subject of this Bulshitometer post--everyone does finger foods and all pediatricians recommend them, including my parents' 1970-something Dr Spock book if I remember rightly. What I am scrutinizing is BLW as per the second definition, and the claims that have been made for it by Gill Rapley and her fans--namely, that there is a particular virtue in avoiding pureed/mashed foods and spoonfeeding, and that forgoing these things will lead to children with better eating habits, that parent-led feeding will make children more prone to obesity or pickiness, that children allowed to self-feed everything will gain better motor skills and instinctively avoid things they are allergic to, that pureed foods cause constipation, and that BLW is the "natural" way and represents the biological and historical norm for human babies.


Better eaters
Less obesity! Better eating habits! Children who eat vegetables without complaining! Rapley could hardly have come up with a more appealing laundry list of points with which to entice 21st century parents engaged in that very modern pursuit of worrying about food. Based on her 20-odd years as a health visitor, "Rapley believes that babies allowed to feed themselves tend to become less picky, develop better hand control more quickly and to avoid foods to which they are later found to be intolerant."

I'm sure she does believe all this. Similarly, people in the 17th century apparently believed that bloodletting cured all manner of ills and that fever could be cured by taking live pigeons to bed with you. All together now: "The plural of anecdote is not evidence."

Considering the fervor that BLW inspires in some of its devotees, it's striking how little evidence there is to support its claims--"little" as in basically "none." Rapley's book's claim that BLW will result in less picky eaters rests upon a single experiment conducted before WWII--a trial for which almost no data was ever presented and which can never be replicated for ethical reasons. Rapley also includes a study she conducted among a small group of babies which proved, not very excitingly, that if you present babies with a variety of table foods, by nine months they will be... eating a variety of table foods. So yes, if you want to skip the purees and go slower on solids, it's probably fine. But none of this provides any evidence for Rapley's other claims of less picky eaters or magic allergy avoidance.

The other "evidence" provided by the book consists largely of proud parents saying things like "I'm doing BLW with my nine-month-old and she's eating broccoli! See? BLW totes works!" No. Your child is eating green veggies with gusto because she is a baby. Come back when she's two and we'll talk. Two is generally when the food fussies kick in, probably for evolutionary reasons related to the fact that toddlers in neolithic societies were at real risk of being poisoned by unknown plants found in their environment. The BLW site's toddler forum is full of parents moaning that their two- and three-year-olds have suddenly started rejecting foods they used to eat with relish.

Other parents compare the fact that their BLW-ed younger child is a better eater than their traditionally weaned older child--a comparison which, on the individual level, tells us precisely nothing, given that in any pair of siblings, even those weaned in exactly the same way, one will typically be a better eater than the other simply because genes play a powerful role in our eating preferences.This is Bad Science 101--seriously, I could use exactly the same approach to "prove" the efficacy of homeopathy (or the live pigeon treatment, for that matter).

I mean, I do get that obesity and the dreaded "kiddie food" culture of bland junk foods are worries for parents; but these are problems that have become acute only in the last half-century, so it seems a bit odd to blame them on parent-led feeding of mashed foods, which has gone on for millennia (see below). Cross-culturally too, it's hard to see any patterns; as one poster notes here (with thinly disguised annoyance), French babies get bland mush on a spoon and cereal in their formula bottles, and still seem to end up better eaters than British and American children. So do Japanese kids, for that manner, in spite of their parents Doin It Rong in terms of first foods (spoon-fed gluey rice porridge, since you asked).


Better motor skills
Manipulating finger foods doubtless is indeed a way for babies to practice their fine motor skills, but in Rapley's claims that BLW results in better motor skills, I detect the whiff of a burning straw man; I don't think many people actually do wean babies on nothing but spoonfed mushes. Most parents have always given finger foods in addition to spoonfeeding, and it's hard to see how the benefits of finger food practice get magically erased as soon as you give the kid a bit of mashed potato on a spoon. As for the vague parental claims that their BLWed babies have better motor skills, see above comments about anecdotes vs evidence.


Purees cause constipation
There is no reason why pureed foods should cause constipation any more than non-pureed foods. A quick visit to Ask the Dietitian confirms that pureeing or even blenderizing foods leaves their fiber intact--although anyone who regularly consumes fruit smoothies can testify to their, ahem, bowel loosening effect without the need to go online. Perhaps Rapley is confusing pureeing with juicing, a very different process? Constipation is a common temporary effect of solids-introduction as the baby's gut tries to get used to new foods; if it is less noticeable with BLW, a simpler explanation is that if you are hardcore about the baby only eating what he/she can self-feed, it will probably take a while before they actually eat enough to have any effect on the digestive tract.


Tradition/"naturalness"
BLW is popularly considered to be more "natural" than feeding purees or mashes. Now..... trying to define what is "natural" for human beings is always a bit of a philosophical headache. However, it's not clear on what grounds BLW qualifies.

The whole "What Would Cavemama Do" approach to childrearing gets a bit daft, but for the sake of arguing.... Rapley's book states that prior to the 20th century, most babies didn't start solids till they were "eight or nine months old" (she gives no source for this alleged fact). It's surprisingly hard to find proper sources on solids introduction in pre-industrialized societies; from those which can be found, what kind of picture emerges? Well.... surprisingly, lots of mush, lots of parent-led feeding, and lots of starch, to be honest (see here, here, here and here, for example... if you don't want to wade through the last one, there is a summary here). Feeding babies foods that have been mashed in some way--between two rocks, your fingers or even your own jaws--has a long history, and no, you don't need a spoon or a blender (slummy mummies like me could have told you that already, though).

Do babies in "traditional" societies also self-feed? Probably: the casual nature of such culinary encounters is such that they probably aren't going to make it into an anthropologist's report, but given how grabby older babies are it would be surprising if this didn't happen. In other words, throughout human history, most babies most likely have received a mixture of parent-fed mushy things and larger pieces for self-feeding.... which, funnily enough, is pretty much what most parents in industrialized societies also end up doing.

What I can say is that I could not, in all my researches, come across any "traditional" societies that do solids-introduction the way Gill Rapley sets out (no parent-led feeding, baby only eats what baby self-feeds, blah blah). Not one. To be honest, I'm not even sure how Rapley-esque weaning would really work in a traditional society. For a start, I can't see women in a food-poor environment being cool with a baby throwing good food all over the floor in the name of play and exploration. They don't really do the whole "child-centered" thing in traditional societies.

Curiously, Rapley also mentions pre-chewing in her book, and says that she thinks it is fine; she does not, however, clarify how this differs from spoon-feeding (on which she blames for everything from gagging to pickiness to overeating).


Convenience
Rapley's devotees insist that BLW is the most convenient way of giving solids. I am not sure I agree. I think the most convenient way, for most people, is to do some finger foods and some parent-led feeding, depending on the food, the situation and what seems to suit you and your child best (unless you end up with one of those kids who simply refuses to be spoonfed at all). After all, traditional weaning has always included finger foods; Rapley's innovation is largely to say that pureeing and spoonfeeding should be ruled out. Ruling stuff out rarely makes the whole childrearing thing easier.

For example, giving baby an apple chunk/loaded spoon to nibble at (so you can eat your dinner) is one of the first things you learn in Mum School... it makes sense, especially, in the evening, since both baby and clothes will soon be going in the wash anyway. But when you are in a restaurant, it may not be very convenient (or polite) to basically allow your child to throw food everywhere--make no mistake, self-feeding is messy, and while you don't have to spend time mashing or feeding, you will probably spend about as much time cleaning up, changing clothes and getting food out of the kid's hair. One hears of hardcore BLWers carting splash mats and portable highchairs around with them, leaving honking tips for waiters to make up for the blizzard of mess, or sticking to "child-friendly" restaurants, rather than subject young Sparkleigh to the dreaded sp00nfeeding of d00m. One has to ask, would it not be easier to just sit Junior on your lap and offer them something mushed up on a spoon or finger?

Similarly, if you have to get to the doctor's at 2pm, it makes more sense to quickly and neatly spoon kiddo a bit of food, and then DONE. Rather than hang around waiting while the child thoughtfully pushes avocado chunks around on a food tray, then change clothes and wipe down the floor/bumbo/baby, and then have to stop on the way to nurse again, because the kid didn't actually get more a mouthful of food inside them.

Because that is the other thing about true, purist BLW; if your baby really does only eat what he or she is able to self-feed, most likely he or she will take to solids as a pretty slow pace--in some cases very slow (on crunchy forums one is constantly reading about children who are 12, 15, 18 months old and still almost completely breastfed). This may or may not suit your agenda. I can see it being convenient, maybe, for a SAHM who loves breastfeeding. But if you are working, you will have to pump (and sterilize and set up pumps, and store and defrost) more milk... unless you are happy to give formula as well. And I strongly suspect that nightweaning, and moving away from nursing to sleep and constant comfort feeding are psychologically easier to see through if you are seeing your baby put away a certain consistent amount of solids every day, so that you are not constantly fighting the voice in the back of your head that says "But what if she's still HUNGRY??"

Then there is the conundrum of what to do with foods that beg to be spoonfed (preloading spoons for the baby to self-feed with doesn't always work). As one poster here put it, "If we're eating pasta or noodles or a roast dinner DD eats with her hands. If it's soup or yoghurt or mash I use a spoon. Common sense. A friend went to such great lengths to avoid a spoon it was comedy. Chunks of pear dipped in yoghurt (which got chucked on the floor), toast dipped in porridge, yum! It's just a spoon FFS!" Some BLW purists apparently try to facilitate self-feeding by circumcising bananas with scissors (Freud'd have a field day with that one), lovingly rolling slippery foods in crushed cheerios, or snipping them up with crinkle cutters.  All good fun, no doubt, but it's unclear how any of this is actually less work than just offering said food on a spoon. Anyway, I'm pretty sure cavemama didn't have crinkle-cutters.

Finally, I LOLed at Rapley's suggestion that parents should get round the whole salt issue by simply not using any salt in their own cooking. Are there parents who actually do this... for everything they cook? Remind me never to eat at their houses. A stir-fry, a curry, a pasta sauce simply will not taste as tasty without a certain minimal amount of salt. I like eating tasty food. Sorry.

The nutrition thing
Many babies take to self-feeding early and easily--indeed, these babies often reject spoon-feeding altogether and clearly it makes sense to just let them get on with it. But other babies, particularly those whose motor skills are slower to develop, will not be able to self-feed useful amounts of food until they are much older than six months; if you really do have this strict rule about Baby Must Only Eat What Baby Puts In Own Mouth, it could be a really long time before they are able to actually eat more than minuscule amounts of food (as evidenced by all those non-eating older babies and toddlers on BLW forums). However, as I discuss here, once babies get much past six months they do start to need more nutrients than they can realistically need from breastmilk. The "food before one is just for fun" thing is one aspect of BLW that I just can't agree with. The Maternal and Child Nutrition Journal has expressed similar views, by the way--suggesting that while many babies will do OK with self-feeding alone, some could be put at risk of micronutrient deficiency if their parents are hardcore about not doing any spoon-feeding. I personally feel that offering foods in different ways and being flexible is probably the best approach.


Bullshitometer verdict
I have a confession: I actually really, really like most of the ideas found in BLW. I like the idea of giving children table foods where possible, including spicy and unusual things; I agree that babies can generally start finger foods as early as six months; I particularly like the idea of using BLW as a motivation for improving the food that the family eats as a whole. I just think it's a shame that Rapley had to spoil some sensible ideas with silly claims about purees being constipating and parent-led weaning causing bad eating habits, none of which is backed up by any data.

I think BLW was in some ways a necessary corrective to bossy Gina Ford types lecturing people about introducing the "right" foods in the "right order" and the "right amounts," and baby food manufacturers going on about "stages," causing parents whose babies didn't respond well to this to feel a lot of stress. But it's not much of an improvement if we just exchange that for all the self-conscious agonizing seen among many posters on BLW boards (debating about whether using a mesh feeder is "real" BLW weaning, whether we are "allowed" to hold food up to their mouths or is that helping them too much, blah blah), with parents fretting that if they break any of the "rules" their children will end up obese, terrible eaters or what have you.

I hereby propose the Breastfeeding Without Bullshit Patented Bone Idle Can't Be Bothered Weaning Method, which consists of trying out lots of things (finger foods, cereal, puree, finger feeding, mesh feeder, feeding them with a spoon, handing them loaded spoons, giving them pieces to self-feed, holding up bits for them to take a bit out, whatever) and doing what you and your child enjoy most and find the least hassle. Because at the end of the day it isn't going to make any long-term difference anyway.

Finally: if any mother, online or in real life, spends her time banging on to other mothers about how her proposed weaning "system" (BLW, gourmet-meals-in-an-icecube-tray or whatever) is inherently superior and guaranteed to produce a marvelous eater, the laws of karma dictate that her baby will grow into one of those toddlers who refuses to eat anything except luminous orange macaroni cheese. You Have Been Warned.

Further reading
Weaning Made Easy by Rana Conway. I discovered this book after writing this post; Conway discusses some of the ideas talked about here, with a good run-down of some of the advantages and potential issues with puree-only or "pure" baby led weaning approach, and recommends a mixed and flexible approach to feeding as being the best suited to the majority of parents and babies.

Nightweaning thoughts (2)

The nightweaning process continues. I posted before on my attempts to wean Cecile from the breast at night by un-latching her after just a few minutes... the idea being that she would then start to shift her calorie intake around to the day.

It worked... sort of. By the third night the protests every time I unlatched her and attempted to put her back to bed were getting less and less, and she did seem to eat a little more in the daytime. Trouble is, the number of nightwakings were not diminishing; in fact, she went from two wakeups to three, leading me to suspect that the feeds were enough to tease her but not enough to satisfy. I was having problems going back to sleep each time too--maybe because I wasn't getting the sleepy hormones that kick in towards the end of a feed for both mummy and baby. Not good. I mean the whole point of nightweaning is for both parties to sleep more, right?

Soooo... I decided to simply stop. Just not breastfeed at night any more, period. Line in the sand and all that. I hadn't been planning to do this for a couple more months, but something had to change. So I gritted my teeth, reminded myself that she was a big girl, was having solid foods and had actually slept nine hours at a stretch for a while at four months old (before we went to the UK on a visit and ruined it all), and decided to go for it. If she woke up, I would comfort her in other ways, but no nursing.

First night: Dreamfeed at 10:30, wakeup at 12:30, wakeup at 3:30. Wailed inconsolably for a LONG time before finally collapsing in exhaustion.

Second night: Same thing but fell asleep after a few minutes each time.

Third night: Dreamfeed at 10:30, then ONE wakeup at 4:40!!! Progress at last!

Part of me wonders at how sensible it was to embark on this when she is teething... her lovey Sophie the Giraffe is getting a right gnawing these days. But the fact that I've recently been having thoughts of continuing nursing past 12 months (providing we're both willing) has actually made me more determined to start setting some limits on nursing now. I want to make sure that "the ball's in my court" by the time she becomes a tantrumming, manipulating toddler. I've been warned by several other mums that it's a lot harder to change things once they are older!