Updates on introducing solids

We’ve been feeding Xiang Ying Healthy Times brown rice cereal mixed with breastmilk since last Sat/Sun (16/17th Jan). Weekday evening was a mad rush for us so we stopped her for few days till Thurs where we re-introduced cereal for her again. It took 5 meal times before she mastered the skills of swallowing and showed interest in eating. Now she opens her mouth readily whenever the spoon goes near her. Quite a fast learner I think. She is not so messy nowadays. In fact the new rubber bib is often un-dirtied even after use. As mentioned before in my previous post, the recommended age to start on solids is 6 months. However, due to Bean often has hunger pangs (waking up at 1-2am for milk), we decided to start her earlier. Instead of following the guideline strictly, we do our own judgment whether she’s ready by observing her cues. After having cereal for dinner (about 730pm) and last milk at about 10pm, she is able to sleep till about 6-7am, no longer waking up at 1am for milk. This is good news for her Daddy since he is the one doing shift now. Eversince Xiang Ying “unlatched” herself from Mummy, I no longer have the “signal” to detect to her calls. I sleep till my alarm wakes me.

Besides Healthy Times brown rice cereal, I also started her on Heinz Vanilla Custard on Sunday morning for breakfast. She loves it. Silly me later on realized that this should be served as dessert instead of a main meal. She finished up 2 heaped tablespoons mixed with 60ml breastmilk and drank another 50ml in her new training cup. That’s how much she loves it haha. Anyway I tried a small dip of the Vanilla Custard. Don’t say it’s disgusting of me to do it ok. If I don’t taste it how I know what she’s eating. Tasted kinda sweet and um… artificial to me. XY must be attracted to the sweetness since she probably can’t tell what’s artificial or not. We are giving her all organic cereal right now though I’m not sure how long we can keep this up and how exactly good is that gonna be. Don’t care lah since everyone said organic is good then it must be good right?

The next thing now is that she is taking in less milk. I’m not sure if this is a potential problem or I’m worrying myself unduly but I would have much preferred that she takes her milk as usual. Not to boast or anything but since the last post I mentioned about insufficient supply and supplementing with formula milk, my supply has gradually increased and now that she consumes even lesser milk than before. Current “problem” is the open can of NAN HA1 we opened for a little over a week which she rejected at first and we had to mix with breastmilk and “force” her to drink it. I think in total she drank less than 5 times. Few times we pour it away as by the time we made the formula milk, she already fell asleep. Since my supply is enough for her nowadays, we do not supplement with formula milk anymore. We would eventually have to throw the can away after 28 days opening. *Sigh* This would be the second can of milk powder we are discarding. First can was discarded at week 6 as that was the time I was producing enough milk. Should be happy that she’s getting the benefits of breastmilk but at the same time I find it wasteful. Each can costs a whopping $38 before the price raised. Current retail price is $41.70. Another concern is the bottles of EBM in the fridge. She consumes so little nowadays that we almost run out of bottles to store them. Just for info, we use two 250ml Medela bottles and two 260ml Avent bottles to store in fridge and three of them are almost always full. Again, not boasting but this is quite a hindrance as milk has to be consumed within 3 days. I’m not freezing it anymore. Not that the volume is worth freezing and anyway XY doesn’t like thawed milk taste. That’s my little fussy-girl Princess for you. I have onhand 1 box Lansinoh (50 count), 2 boxes Blue Egg (25 count) and 1 box half used Lansinoh milk bags. Any takers???

The atas feeding tools from Combi