The Weekend Review: Little Dish purees

It's been a while now since the babies started eating proper solid food, but not long before we gave up purees, we were sent some puree pouches from Little Dish to try. What I liked about these sachets was that they used fresh ingredients - they had to be kept in the fridge and used within a couple of days. Made from 100% fresh fruit and vegetables, they tasted like you would expect, rather than other readymade purees that don't taste as fresh. Ez and Fonz were fussy with their purees, and rejected every readymade sachet I tried, so I wasn't sure how the Little Dish pouches would go down.

We gave Ez and Fonz the Blackberry, Apple & Banana puree first, and they gobbled it down cold for dessert. A hit! Mango & Banana was the next flavour we tried, and again it was well-received, though quite runny so a little difficult to spoonfeed. We mixed the Butternut Squash, Carrot & Apple puree with baby rice, and again the babies ate every last spoonful without any fuss. Strawberry & Apple worked well spoonfed as a pudding, but we also spread it on toast like jam. This one was definitely Ez and Fonz's favourite, and although we've left purees behind now, I would still buy this to use on bread or to add to yoghurt for dessert. And I'll definitely be giving the Little Dish natural meals a go - great for when time is tight.

A few weeks after the purees arrived, Little Dish sent us their cookbook to try too. Unfortunately I've been rather busy of late, so we haven't had a chance to cook up any of the delicious-sounding recipes, but we've got the Creamy Chicken Curry bookmarked for next week.

Goodbye purees

I'm going to start this post with a reminder - The Artist Formerly Known As Miss E will now be known as Ez, and The Artist Formally Known As Mr A, will go by the name Fonz. Still nicknames (obviously, I hope), but somehow they feel more like real people with these names, and they feel much more natural when I'm writing or vlogging about them.

As I mentioned in my Vlogging Diary this week, we've been having some problems with Fonz and Ez's feeding for the last week or so. I know it's normal for babies to go off their food when teething, but we just couldn't seem to get back on track when Fonz's tooth finally came through. And Ez was being equally challenging at mealtimes, even though she wasn't teething. I began to suspect that it was pureed food that was the problem. They just didn't seem that interested anymore.

We started traditional weaning at six months, having been advised to wait until then, and also to go for traditional weaning, I think because they were born early, and had always been on the small side. Having been given this advice from a healthcare professional that I really trusted, I was happy to do this and so we began pureeing food in massive quantities to meet Fonz and Ez's rapidly increasing appetites!

As soon as they showed interest, we also gave them finger foods, and both Fonz and Ez have chowed down on a large variety of different foods, from roast chicken to French toast. The amount of finger foods they have wanted has been growing recently and I realised that they are more interested in feeding themselves than taking purees off a spoon. So we made the decision. No more purees.

Today, with great trepidation, I served up cheesy chicken pasta bake instead of puree. I needn't have worried because both babies shovelled it down at a rate of knots. I was amazed, both by their enthusiasm, and by the amount of food they ate, and I got such a buzz to see them happily feed themselves.

Weaning's been a really hard slog. It's never been straightforward and I have often found mealtimes incredibly stressful as I'm faced with one or both babies screaming because they're not happy with what's on offer. I blogged back in January about my anxiety about feeding when I was still breastfeeding, and it's never really gone away. The emergency feeding regime the babies were put on after losing too much of their birthweight in the first couple of days really took its toll emotionally and their size and weight has been a sensitive issue for me since then. And still is, if I'm honest.

Maybe we should have chosen baby led weaning over traditional weaning. Maybe we should have moved on from purees months ago. Maybe mealtimes would have been less stressful if we had. But we didn't, and there's no point worrying about it now.

Today was a good day. I feel excited and relieved that Ez and Fonz are ready to move on. It's a sign they're developing, and I'm all for encouraging their independence. I have no doubt that we'll have good days, and we'll have bad days. But through them all I've got to remember that I'm doing my best, and my babies are healthy and happy. Because that's what's really important.

A fond farewell to breastfeeding?

The babies at around three weeks old

I think we're on week four of solids (I should really know this, shouldn't I? Best check..) and after a promising start I'm finding it quite tough-going now. Trying to give each baby a bit of milk, then some food, then the rest of their milk, especially when one is breastfed (Miss E) and one is bottle-fed (Mr A), is a challenge on my own, even on the best of days.

It was becoming impossible so I made the decision to take the boob out of the equation and give both babies a bottle at their main feed (11am). This has made things marginally easier, but I'm noticing that Miss E may actually prefer a bottle at all of her feeds. At dinner-time, when I try to breastfeed her she's extremely fussy, which I normally put down to tiredness. The last couple of days I have tried offering her a bottle instead and she's guzzled it down so she's obviously hungry but for whatever reason (low milk supply, feeling tired etc) she's not happy to breastfeed.

So have I reached the point where I call time on the boob? God knows it would make my life easier to have them both on the bottle (tandem feeding will become an option once again), and I guess it would offer me a bit more freedom to leave them for longer periods, but my number one concern is what makes Miss E happiest. If that's the boob, then fine, but if it's a bottle then that's cool too.

Breastfeeding has definitely had its ups and its downs for me and I've written about the difficult feeding decisions I've had to make. I tandem breastfed for the first six weeks, but then we had a long period of both babies (and me) getting very distressed while feeding (for reasons that are still unclear) and Mr A was a much happier baby when we switched him onto bottles.We turned a corner with Miss E at around 14 weeks, and so I have managed to enjoy a few lovely months of breastfeeding, though I have always retained some anxiety about it.

I don't know why I was so determined to breastfeed. It had always been part and parcel of my image of motherhood, although few people expected me to do it once I knew I was having twins. I think in a way I was going out of my way to prove people wrong. That I could breastfeed twins. I felt an odd sense of pride (and maybe smugness too if I'm totally honest) telling people I was breastfeeding them. I wanted to be seen as Superwoman. But before long I lost the sense of conceit and just wanted my little ones to be content.

And as for the breast v bottle debate, I reckon I'm well-equipped to comment, having babies that have done both. I feel no greater bond with Miss E than with Mr A. We probably end up spending more time together, because when Young Daddy is around he feeds Mr A, but my feelings for each baby are no different. I suspect that Young Daddy may naturally feel a bit closer to Mr A because he's been able to share the feeding duties but this will change as he can take more of a role in feeding Miss E. The babies have had the same number of colds, their sleeping patterns are pretty similar, and both have taken to solid food well. So it seems to me that the differences between breastfed and bottle-fed babies are minimal.

So how do I know when it time to sound 'last orders' at the boob? Is there a right time to do it? Do I just bite the bullet and go for it, or do I phase it out one feed at a time? I'm ready to let it go. I don't doubt I'll feel slightly sad when I stop, but I'm also excited about the next stage of our journey together...

Carrots and rice and all things nice...

Miss E and Mr A have now spent their first week sampling the delights of solid food. We got off to a slow start - baby rice wasn't greeted with huge enthusiasm, with both babies pretty apathetic about the whole experience. I was not relishing the prospect of continuing with weaning alone on Monday when I added pear to the baby rice. But some monumental metamorphosis had obviously happened overnight because Mr A could not get enough. I literally couldn't get the spoonfuls into his mouth fast enough he was gobbling so heartily. Miss E also seemed to be enjoying it, albeit at a slightly more refined pace than her little (or not so little!) brother.

Oompa Loompa Doompadee Dah

If you're not greedy you will go far

You will live in happiness too

Like the Oompa Loompa doompadee do

We have since also introduced the twins to carrot and sweet potato and they are both still going full steam ahead.

Spot the difference...

One thing I did notice though.... the stuff gets everywhere. And pureed carrot should come with a warning! After Mr A's first portion of carrot I was covered from head to toe in carrot splatters (think I could do with some windscreen wipers on my specs). And boy does it stain. I had two small orange-faced babies smiling at me for the rest of the day. I reckon the Oompa Loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would welcome them into Loompaland with open arms...

Moving onto the hard stuff

This is Mr A (top) and Miss E on their third day of solid food. Well, I say solid food, it's actually far from solid, being just a thicker version of milk in my opinion. We've been trying to get them to swallow baby rice (pureed rice with milk) since Saturday but nothing went down until yesterday. Feeding twins is, for me, the most stressful part of the day - if they're both hungry at the same time you often have to feed one while the other is screaming. I've found Baby Einstein DVDs really useful as a distraction method at feeding time, and I've also learned that generally, Miss E is more happy to wait than Mr A.

The first spoonfuls of baby rice on Saturday were the most anticlimactic event so far in the twins' life as far as I'm concerned! All this build-up, just to spend a few minutes spooning it into their mouths, only for them to immediately spit it back out again. In true diva-style, Miss E had a little gag at the first mouthful, but that was the dramatic highlight of the whole episode.

It was the same story on Sunday - I don't think anything was swallowed at all. So I was not feeling very enthusiastic about tackling it again yesterday, this time on my own. I changed tactics slightly to make life easier for myself and rather than transferring them into their new highchairs for their solid food, I just stayed in our little snug upstairs with them in their bouncy chairs. Mr A was screaming for food so I gave him some of his bottle and then whipped out the baby rice. Amazingly the first spoonful I gave him didn't reappear! Or the second, or the third, and by the time he was reaching out for the spoon he'd finished the bowl and I had to rush downstairs to make some more. Miss E is taking things slower, but even she managed to swallow at least one spoonful.

It's amazing the sense of exhilaration and achievement that just a few spoonfuls of sloppy baby food could make me feel!