What and when do you feed your baby? Part 1/2

Isabelle enjoying her food!

Isabelle has been exclusively breast feed for 5 and half months and has always been on the 95 percentile for her weight and height..  I hope and plan to  continue breastfeeding Isabelle for at least 18 months, and I feel that breast milk contains such important antibodies for our growing children, its natures miracle juice!

At 5 and half months Isabelle had started all the tell tale signs of wanting to try food, as a larger baby I thought that her natural instincts of wanting to give some food a go my sign for letting her. BUT....

What do I feed Isabelle as her first foods?  

Do I need to cook her foods?
Can i just give her raw vegies? 
Where do I get the information from?
Who do I believe? 

These were just some of the questions I had as a first time mum, but there were so many more.. so I went about doing a lot of research and have found and read many books, researched on the internet asked other mummas about the topic of which foods first and why?  

What I plan to share with you is the information I found. I don't intend to offer any nutritional advice or even assume that what I am doing is right! 

These are the books and websites I have consulted with and I would recommend mums to have a look at. I will add to the list as I read more;

• Well Adjusted Babies
• Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine by Dr Gabriel Cousens 
• Baby Greens by Michaela Lynn
• Creating Healthy Children by Karen Ranzi
• Evie’s Kitchen by Shazzie
• wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com

What I have found in did find in my research was  A LOT of conflicting information on when and what foods to introduce at certain ages.  In my travels of researching this information I would higly recommend Well Adjusted Babies. This book is one of the most balanced books I have found on raising healthy children. It covers the topics of which foods and why? The importance of calcium, iron but not in the conventional sense, Dr Jennifer Barham-Floreani makes aware that cows milk is not the answer and infact leafy greens provide far more nutrients that our main stream conventional foods would like you to think they do! She talks about Immunisation, pregnany and it goes on!




The next book I would recommend is Creating healthy Children - Another fantastic book which looks at attachment parenting, the importance of raw food in our children's diet and so much more! 

And then there is Baby Led Weaning, Do I do that or do I offer pureed foods. Personally we will do both.


But back to the topic :) ... So with all this conflicting information I decided to put together a chart that lists three authors time lines of the introduction of food into a char (I have omitted their names - If you would like this information please contact me personally and I will let you know who they are)  by looking at this chart you can see there are a lot of different stages that they say to introduce foods.  I will update a spreadsheet in the next week or so which highlights the foods we have decided to introduce to Isabelle and when and why!

So why is there so much conflicting information out there?  How are we as first time mums supposed to filter through all of this information and know what is right. 


As you can see in the below charts some people recommend foods at different stages! Some experts say to introduce cauliflower and Broccoli at 7 months others at a later stage. Some say Carrots at 4 months others say 9 months. 


It wasn't until I put all the information ( and there are more experts out there but I chose three that I actually like) that I could see how confusing this all can be!

Download chart by clicking here

Why is there so much conflicting information out there?
This I don't have the information for. But what I do have is motherly instinct on what is right for my child..  this is one of the main reasons why I put together a food chart which allowed me to see all the conflicting information and also the correlations.


When did I introduce Solids to Isabelle?
We decided to introduce solids to Issy when she was looking at food and asking for it. For Isabelle this was just before six months. Isabelle is a big baby and her cues were saying to me mum id like some of that!  She lets us know when she is not hungry, I strongly believe that breast milk is the most important meal of all. And she is breastfeed before all meals to ensure that she is getting the essential nutrients first.


Which Foods do we introduce first?
We decided to introduce banana and avocado as her first foods. Why? These are natural encased pureed foods perfect for little bubbas.


Do I steam her foods or just blend her foods.. Surely blending foods is ok?
I found out that steaming foods is not the same as blending, steaming babies foods breaks down the cellulose structure of food is to hard for a babies system to digest. You could say here is your answer as to why not to introduce babies food at all if you look at it from a RAW perspective and some mothers may not. But this is what we decided to do.


Why don't we just do baby lead weaning?
For us we do a little bit of both. I found that as Isabelle is a bigger baby wanting more food and really asking for it we found that giving her some pureed food and in conjunction with Baby Led weaning was right for us. For more information on Baby Lead Weaning this is great website http://www.babyledweaning.com/

So when do we plan to introduce Raw foods to Isabelle?
We will probably do a blend of both with Isabelle... being high raw and also warming her foods. 

Along with Baby Lead weaning we believe in the Ayrvadic method for raising children. That means that for the first two years of a babies life we will warm Isabelle's food, in conjunction with Baby lead weaning we will also offer raw fruit.


Babies and children have a unique constitutional type. According to the Ayurvedic theory of doshas everything in the universe is comprised of different proportions of space, air, fire, water and earth.


Babies tend to dislike the cold or being exposed to windy conditions. On the whole they have low, delicate appetites and love sweet, warm food. Gabriel Cousens talks about this in his book Rainbow Green Live Food see link here

Hopefully some of this information may be useful for you?  And if you have any information on raising healthy children we would love to hear from you!

Isabelle is now 6 months and she has had her first taste of  a Green Smoothie and I will continue to keep this up. We do intend to raise her as a Vegan at the moment, as she continues to grow this might change to vegetarian but her diet will contain a very high percentage and on most occasions Raw Food.

If you know of any authors who have some great information out there! please let us know we can share this information on our face book page! In out world its all about learning and sharing the information we find!

In my next post on this topic part 2 - I will explain a little further why certain foods are introduced at certain ages, and I will also put up a spreadsheet showing you which foods we plan to introduce and when.


Sarah :) and Issy! 








 

Raw Tips when Travelling

I thought I would share a few of the lessons we have learnt since traveling and trying to maintain a raw diet. I know a lot of people ask us how do you do it? Isnt it hard work? What about when your travelling, how do you maintain your raw diet!

Well the answer to be honest is to be organised and flexible and where you can make the best choice you can!

Isabelle All rugged up while we were camping!

Travelling to NZ saw some new challenges for us as didnt have our trusty Harry the Hiace Van we couldnt pack what we wanted into the Van and off we would go! Instead we had to find local produce, and sometimes not Organic. As we see it its not the end of the world:)  Isabelle had also just started solids and I certainly didnt have the equipment to make her food from scratch so we compromised with Organic packaged baby food, and tried to feed her food which comes in its own natural wrapper, like Banana's, advocado, natures own baby food!

Some of the tips I have though are.

• Make your meal before you get on the plane and take it with you!  We made a big salad and packed it on the plane! Even international flights will allow you to take food on the plane you just cant take it through customs. So just make sure you eat all the fresh food up before you go through customs!
• When you land ask the locals for the closest health food store or organic food store! We found a great wholefood store in New Zealand and we bought up big! We purchased all our nuts, herbs, seeds, seaweed, sprulina at the one store.  This meant we had everything in a big box and didnt need to keep finding health stores every few days! It lasted the whole three weeks while we were there!
• Find an OP Shop! When we landed we headed straight to an op shop and bought a big salad bowl, some knives and forks some cups etc.. Its cheap its recylcing and when we left we took them straight back to the Op Shop!
• Try and purchase your produce from stalls on the side of the road. New Zealand was littered with road side fruit and vegetable stalls! often not organic but if you can get organic its the best option.
• Be Flexible!  We were often asked out for lunch and sometimes there is just not the option to eat Raw food.  Our attitude is to enjoy what has been offered (we always try and eat Vegan and then Vegetarian) if its not Raw the Raw police are not going to come knocking at your door! I feel its more healthy to enjoy the company your in, and know that you will eat another raw meal the next meal.
• If traveling with a baby make sure you take your baby backpack (we use the Ergo Baby Carrier) on board with on the plane! You often don't know how long it will take to get through customs! Landing back in Australia I had never seen such a cue before to get through customs! It took us three hours. And I was so thankfull that we had carried out Ergo Baby Carrier on with us!  Isabelle was none the wise and our arms thanked us.  It also meant she could sleep as all we had to do  was pull the little head flap over and all the stimulus of all those people was shut out. I cant imagine how tired Isabelle would have been if she was in our arms and couldnt sleep!
• Co - Sleeping Hamish and I don't practice Co-Sleeping with Isabelle when at home and we also have a Porta Cot for traveling with. However what you plan is not always the case. We found that as we were away from our home Isabelle wanted to be even closer to us!  So more often than not Isabelle was in bed with us for the night.  We actually went away with some family for the weekend and even our nephew was up in the middle of the night and hoped into bed with mum. Kids whatever age love to feel secure with their parents when in a strange place! Especially babies.  Although I personally dont get much sleep when Isabelle is in bed with us I certainly got the best cuddles and snuggles and enjoyed it thoroughly! Now we are back home she is loving sleeping in her bed!

New Zealand Raw Adventures

So we are back from New Zealand and had the most amazing time!  Such a beautiful country with rolling hills and such breath taking untouched paradise!

Our New Zealand Adventures

Our trip started with Isabelle's First plane trip! I will post some tips when travelling with a baby in another blog, But it was only a short flight from Australia 3 hours so a few little sleeps for her and we were fine!  We started in Auckland, not knowing where we could get organic produce on our arrival, we compromised (we often buy conventional on our arrival at places if we cant get our hands on Organic food straight away!)  From Auckland we made our way up to Lake Taupo where we were to meet Hamish's family for a few days of camping, we also found our Organic Food supply, and an Op shop for a few plates, some knives and forks and a big salad bowl.

Now having never been camping with Isabelle before it was pretty interesting!  At night we would put her to sleep in the pram and then move her to the porta cot.  This worked a treat until she woke up and wouldnt settle in her porta cot, she just wanted to snuggle with her mum! Can you blame the little one!  She was in such new surroundings that a mums cuddle was all she needed. So for the most of our trip she actually co-sleeped with us. I will write more on that in another post!

View from our house In Mahia (about an hour south of Gisborne in the North Island of New Zealand!)

For our dinners we often keep it very simple when Travelling, a simple Salad made from local ingredients is the easiest way to eat when travelling.  Corn was in season and we ate sooo much of it!  It's interesting a lot of people are shocked when we eat Raw Corn, we often just say try it its soo sweet why would you cook it? and when they try it they are pleasantly surprised at how tasty and sweet it is!

We didnt have a blender with us either for the first week so we couldnt make our normal Nut milks for breakfast and green smoothies.  So for breakfast we would have some raw muesli and some soy milk.  Lunch I would have some local organic bread with some salad, Hamish would often have a huge salad. Dinner would another big Salad, and I often had some cooked Barley (Travelling while breastfeeding and not having access to our normal food supply I often eat cooked carboyhdrates - Hamish is raw though).  And Fruit fruit fruit! Natures energy snacks.
I will post some recipes we used when traveling on another post.

Hamish had a sneaky water ski too in Lake Taupo ( thanks to family with a ski boat) But Lake Taupo is actually a crater from a volcano - weird when you think about it! From Lake Taupo we headed to Hawkes Bay!

Hamish water skiing on Lake Taupo

When leading a raw lifestyle it is amazing how many of our friends and family were interested in what we eat. So I will post some recipes we spoke to people about in another post! Everyone loved Hamish's raw pate, and simply raw sushi is so easy to make for people at their homes!

To be honest we didnt really have the time to check out if there was any reall strong raw movement going on in New Zealand. But we did find some great health stores which we frequented often.
Chantelle's in Napier New Zealand is a must to visit. Raw of not.. the food was delicious and wholesome (I feel in life that we need to be flexible and there are times when eating some cooked food is not going to kill you! unlike all the threats you hear in the Raw Community, you are not going to end up in hospital after eating some cooked food if you have been raw for a year!)

Chantelles! Wholefood and Eatery Napier, New Zealand!

Hawkes Bay is known as thethe fruit bowl of New Zealand, so every where you look you will find stores selling local fruit and Veg (I dont think I have seen so many fruit and Veg stores) and the quality was fantastic! Fresh and straight from the grower it cant get better than that!

Local Fruit and Vegetable Shops. There is one about every minute!

One of our favorite places that we visited was Mahia! Such beautiful untouched Paradise.  Hamish and I both got a few surfs in as well which was nice!

Isabelle playing on the beach in NZ.. just look at the scenery 

 

 

So that was basically our trip to NZ.. we had such an amazing time. I will post some more in detailed posts about travelling with a baby, raw recipes we use when travelling, Co-sleeping. And I am also going to post some information about feeding Issy and the information I have found and what we are doing!