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Who Told the Baby About Food?!

I know pediatricians get a bad rap. They’re always trying to get you to conform to immunizations and formula and making your baby sleep on his/her back.

But my Pediatrician is pretty cool. He has teenage sons and PERSPECTIVE. So when I tell him I don’t want to do baby cereal, he’s like “That’s fine.” And when I tell him crunchy moms scare me, he says, “I understand.” And when I tell him I want to use coconut oil on my baby’s skin, he’s like, “Sounds good.”

So at Enoch’s 4 month appointment, when he said I could start feeding him baby food, I was OK with listening (even though it went against everything I believe in), because he’s not the crazy “Have your baby drink juice! Put infant cereal in his bottles!” kind of doctor.

He told me that the allergy people (whoever they are) now say early exposure to foods is what prevents allergies. Just like babies that have pets in the home are rarely allergic to them.

It kind of made sense, or at least made me think it doesn’t matter all that much. Enoch was already living on formula (horrors!) anyway, so from the “healthy” perspective, how much worse could it get?

So we let him start tasting fruits and vegetables. I thought he’d do the normal baby thing and act all shocked and “What evil thing have you just put in my mouth?!”

No.

Enoch thought real food was the greatest thing ever. No spit-it-out vetting process. He knew exactly how to get that goodness down into his tummy.

Once he got going, he cried for more in between each bite. And grabbed the spoon to “help” get the food into his mouth faster. Score one for baby-led feeding, I guess.

The problem is, now he knows.

He knows about food.

He doesn’t say much if it’s at home and just one person is eating.

But restaurants are a different story. For some reason, he’s decided that when everyone else at the table has a plate, he’s entitled to have one too. He’s fairly vocal about this opinion.

When we were attending Mom’s Day at the big kids’ school, they gave us a snack of an apple and an orange juice. (They used to give out donuts, but somebody got the idea that we need to eat healthy.)

Enoch decided that the school cafeteria was pretty much a restaurant and that he needed food like everyone else. Of course, I had no food for him.

My brain decided the best solution was to let him attempt to sip juice from the cardboard carton and suck on my apple, after I got some peal off. You can imagine how clean and neat this was.

It may have been very bad parenting. I’m really unsure at this point. But Enoch was sticky and happy, and his big brother and sister thought the whole situation was highly entertaining.

But it’s official. My days of having an oblivious baby are definitely over.

 

Here is Enoch, trying some of his first bites of real food. Please pardon my vertical video and his siblings making derogatory comments about dinner:

 

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