Does eating solids help baby sleep through the night?

Ahh, the eternal question of how to get your baby to sleep through the night... I've been pondering it for months now. E has always been a bad sleeper. Well, not always. She started sleeping through the night (from 11pm to 6am) at about a month old. And as is typical for babies that age, she had no problem falling asleep during the day, although I remember her mostly napping in my arms. Around three months old, she started waking up twice a night. Since then her typical night is to fall asleep between 7:30 and 8pm, wake up between 11 and 1 and then again anywhere from 3 to 5 and then up for the day around 7:30 or 8am. A lot of interrupted sleep for mommy and baby (and daddy, too). Her napping has gotten progressively worse, too. A 30 minute nap is the norm, when I can get her to nap at all.

When you have a baby that doesn't sleep, you get a lot of "advice" on how to get her to sleep. One very common piece of advice is to feed the baby rice cereal or table food to "satisfy" her. The phrasing of that one really gets my goat. But, as much as I hate to admit it, the past two nights, E has been sleeping much better. First she woke at 2 and 6:30 (at which point she was up for the day), and last night she only woke once, at 5:15 (and went back to sleep for another 2 hours!). No significant improvement on the nap front, but a well-rested mommy can handle a nap-free day much better than an exhausted one.

 We'll see how it goes from here. Who knows? Maybe the last two nights have been a fluke, or maybe just a coincidence. But I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that, whatever the cause, she continues to sleep well at night.

Squeaches

Now that E has a few foods in her repertoire, I've started mixing fruits and veggies together. My reasons are several: 1. Variety 2. She seems to be more receptive to some flavors when they're mixed with flavors she's already familiar with.

This morning we tried peaches on their own. No go. So I gave her peach and banana with rice cereal, which she was happy to eat. Tonight for dinner, she was supposed to have butternut squash with rice cereal... I think now is a good time to remind any other parents making their own baby food to LABEL EVERYTHING. Lots of purees look alike, especially the orange ones. This is, of course, my way of saying that I grabbed the peaches instead of the squash. But that's not all, folks. I grabbed the squash, too, thinking I had two containers of the same thing. And mixed them both into the rice. Only when I noticed the different colors did I realize what I'd done. Since it was already mixed together, I figured I'd see what happened. Magic, that's what happened. She LOVED her squeaches and rice.

First foods

It's been six long months, but little E has finally started solid foods! In preparation for the big day, I bought an 11-cup food processor and a bunch of freezer trays with lids. My plan was/is to make a new food as close to every night as possible. So every night I steam or bake up a new fruit or veggie, puree it and freeze it. The next day, I put the frozen food in a freezer bag, labeled with food and the date. The freezer trays get washed and I make the next batch.

So far I've made:
- Sweet Potato
- Butternut Squash
- Carrot (notice a color scheme?)
- Apple
- Pear
- Peaches

Up next:
- Peas
- Blueberries

The one thing they don't seem to tell you in any of the make-your-own-food resources I've seen is the consistency for first foods. So after a terribly failed attempt at sweet potatoes (waaaaaay too thick), I went to the store to see what jarred baby food looks like. Turns out, it's super watery. I also tried giving her rice cereal (the one thing I've not made on my own), which had a serving suggestion for baby's first meal. The ratio was 3:1 water to rice. Once I got the consistency down I started mixing one veggie or fruit with the cereal. Success!

I've also started taking notes when I see jars of baby food for flavor combination to try at home. But more on that later.

Peanut butter and 'naner sandwich

I often eat breakfast on the go while pushing E in her stroller. Muffins and bagels fare well, but we had none of either in the house this morning and I wanted to save the cash on picking something up while we were out. Naturally my mind went to peanut butter and jelly (or peanut butter and jam, or simply "pubbers" as it's known in my house). But when I got to the fridge I realized we were out of jam. Now what? Thankfully I'd read a back-to-school article in Newsday the other day which had all kinds of lunch ideas - takeoffs on regular sandwiches. One of the ideas was peanut butter with bananas and honey. I don't keep honey in the house, but I sure do have agave nectar, which works as a perfect substitute. So one slice of bread got a schmear of smooth peanut butter and then covered in slices of ripe banana. The other slice of bread got a quick squirt of agave before I put it all together and threw it into a zip-top bag. Into the diaper bag it went and we were off!

One-hand meals

When I was pregnant, I filled my freezer with as much food as I could to keep myself nourished when my baby prevented me from cooking. I made ziti, soup and muffins - the foods I know freeze well and are easy to make in large batches. I had no idea how smart I was with the muffins. While in the hospital, they would bring E in at 6:30 am and visitors couldn't come until 8am. I had a hard time getting out of bed to put her in the bassinet, so I would end up holding my baby for an hour and a half while starving. So I learned to eat the things I could with one hand. While opening a banana with my teeth, I realized how unintentionally genius it was to have four batches of muffins in my freezer.

In addition to muffins, I've started scrounging up ideas for other one-hand meals that I can prepare ahead of time and leave in easy-to-reach places (which does not include any shelf in the fridge except the top one, for fear of leaning over too far and dropping E on her head or the freezer, for fear of hard, frozen things falling on us). Baby carrots, cut up fresh fruit and pb&j sandwiches top the list. Extra points for anything that won't stain if I spill it on myself, because it's pretty much a given that I will spill it on myself. These things also end up in zip-top bags thrown into the diaper bag when E and I take our morning walk (at which point they become diaper bag snacks). Keep posted to the blog for new and exciting one-hand meals and diaper bag snacks and share your ideas in the comments section!

Samosa Potato casserole and "round two" breakfast

Note the "New Mommy" mug, compliments of my sister-in-law

One of my favorite cookbooks, Veganomicon, has a recipe for Samosa Baked Potatoes, which is basically twice-baked potatoes with samosa-inspired spices (mustard seeds, coriander, garlic, ginger, cumin and turmeric) and veggies (onion, carrot and peas). I've made it a bunch of times before and always love it, but always seem to forget about it. I recently remembered it and decided to make it, but with a twist - instead of going through the hassle of scooping out and restuffing the potato skins, I decided to just coarsely chop the potatoes and cook it in a casserole dish. And to finish the meal off, I went with the book's suggestion and tried the Spinach and Tomatoes, which is simply diced tomatoes and spinach cooked up in some of the same flavors as the potatoes. Served up side-by-side they made a tasty, light meal.

There were plenty of leftovers, so a day or two later I threw some of the leftovers (potatoes and veggies) in a pan and made Indian hash browns. Served over a toasted English muffin it made for a quick hot breakfast for a mom sick of cereal and out of freezer muffins.

Yummy Mummy Meals

(Originally posted on Eat Well and Prosper, June, 2010)

I hope in the name of all that is good in this world that by the time anyone reads this I will have my baby in my arms and no time to cook. In preparation for this trying time in my life, I have prepared what I like to call "Yummy Mummy Meals." Over the past few weeks, my freezer and pantry been filling up with easy-to-reheat and easy-to-cook meals and ingredients.



So far we have:
Two Baked Zitis, cut into individual servings

One batch of Banana Muffins

One batch of Bakery-Style Berry Muffins from Vegan Brunch

One batch of Corn Muffins from The Joy of Vegan Baking.


One batch of jam-filled bran muffins (some raspberry, some strawberry), also from The Joy of Vegan Baking.

One batch of Blueberry Pancakes with added flax for added yumminess

One batch of Cinnamon Rolls (although they're kind of sad, because the yeast didn't do it's thing... pretty sure I accidentally killed it)

Ready-to-bake chocolate chip cookie dough (Is it possible I've never blogged about my famous chocolate chip cookies? I'll rectify that soon enough, but suffice it to say, I made a big ol' batch of dough, rolled it into cookie-sized balls and froze said balls. Plan is to pop a few in the oven when I'm in the mood for a cookie.)

Tons of veggie broth (My "recipe": 1-2 onions, 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks all roughly chopped, 2-4 cloves of garlic, dill and any other spices that seem good at the moment with as much water as my biggest pot can hold. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer and cook, covered, for at least an hour.)

A variety of cooked beans

Homemade pizza dough (I currently have enough for 4 pizzas)

Lentil Soup

Pita bread, tortillas & bagels (store-bought)

Three pints of my grandma's delicious veggie soup.



And my pantry is filled with pasta, dried beans, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, cous cous, rice, flour and all the usual suspects.