Personal Updates: Baby Bea is 6 months old, Baby Led Weaning, and Mama's Progress!
Hello, Friend! Happy Tuesday!
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Hi! I haven’t done many personal updates lately, but you can trust that things have been busy! ; )
Baby Beatrix is going to be SIX months old this week!! It feels both like she’s been here forever and also that I can’t believe it’s been that long already. Happy 1/2 birthday, baby!
She’s getting so big and it’s amazing to watch her learn things! She’s mastered rolling over, is crushing nighttime sleep, loves jumping in her jumper, and has the cutest laugh!
She’s started eating real food, too! We’re practicing Baby Led Weaning! That’s where you offer babies “real food” as opposed to purees or traditional baby food. You offer them big pieces of food that they can hold, pre-loaded spoonfuls of foods, or just place bowls of foods onto their trays to let them dive into. They then practice bringing food to their mouth to gnaw/ “chew” on! It’s super messy, but allows her to start eating real food and learning the skills of self feeding and identifying fullness right away. So far she’s had 16 new foods including oatmeal, apples, eggs, pear, Greek yogurt, sweet potato, and peanut butter!
Part of the idea of Baby Led Weaning is to have kids start eating family meals from Day 1. This way, they eat what you’re eating (with some reasonable adjustments to suit their needs and abilities) and you don’t have to prepare a whole bunch of meals. This strategy is also supposed to decrease pickiness and reliance on “kid foods.” Obviously, we’ve only got 2 weeks of this under our belt at this point, but that’s the hope!
As a nutrition coach, I certainly care about my family’s food intake and quality, and I do care about that for Bea, but at this point her eating is more practice than actually filling a nutritional void. Who knows how much food she’s actually eating anyway, compared with how much ends up on her. Her primary food is still breastmilk, but my hope is that this is building a foundation of health, food balance, and eating together that will serve us and her into the future.
(Side Note: If this Baby Led Weaning info is relevant to you, I highly suggest checking out classes on it so you can learn the “rules” about which foods fit for babies, choking hazards, how to distinguish choking from gagging, and how to prepare foods for baby. I checked out Feeding Littles and Solid Starts and liked them both!)
And a little about me!
I’m finally starting to feel more like myself after having Bea. I didn’t think it would take this long to feel comfortable moving around, fitnessing, and operating as myself, but alas. That’s not a complaint really, just a noticing.
I’m still hanging on to a few extra pounds, and am working on getting more muscle back, but I’m confident those things will happen over time with consistency. I do just still feel heavier and more awkward, but I’m still getting my workouts and walks in 5x per week. Workouts themselves can be hit or miss with how good they feel. I guess that’s just part of getting back into things though. I’ll keep working!
Also exciting: We just added an 80 pound sandbag to our home gym equipment list, so I’m excited to do some workouts using that. Please send me your favorite workouts with a moderate weight sandbag!
What are your thoughts on Baby Led Weaning? Any advice for me with my soon-to-be-6-month-old?? And for real, what are some good sandbag workouts?? Share in the comments, or email me at sara@nutritionforlifeproject.com!
As always, thank you for reading!
xoxo,
Sara