PREM milk bank is 2 years old

I’m not sure if they had an offical celebration, but the PREM human milk bank at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth recently turned 2 years old. finisterre.minti.com

Last year they held a first birthday party and invited all the babies who had benefitted from donated milk, including my daughter Talia. It was only a small gathering, but a big event for us as Talia was only 6 weeks corrected and I vary rarely took her further than a few blocks from our house at that point.

The Perth PREM Milk bank celebrates its first year

I was aware of the milk bank’s existence before Talia was born. I must have read about it when I visited KEMH for an antenatal appointment, and I remember thinking it would be nice to be able to donate milk to help other mothers. I had no idea that I would end up on the receiving end!

My milk came in very slowly, and without the assistance of medication would never have been enough to sustain a baby. However, before the medication kicked in, Talia’s requirements, minimal though they were, outstripped my feeble supply. One afternoon I received a call from the NICU asking if we would be prefer to use formula or donor milk. We had no hesitation in accepting donor milk, knowing it is much better for babies in almost any circumstance, and particularly when the baby has an immature gut. Talia received donor milk for about a week before my own supply caught up and I was able to take over myself.

I have read articles in magazines and online where women react to the idea of giving their milk to another baby (or having their baby drink another mother’s milk) with revulsion. However I can’t imagine they would respond that way if their own baby really needed that help.

The irony is that in the not-so-distant past, it was quite common for women to share their milk, without any worries about disease (which is carefully screened out in the donor milk bank). A lady I know, now in her 60s, told me that when one of her own children was just born she had abundant supply and would go to the hospital nursery and pump - and they would use her milk to feed all the babies in the nursery!  How times have changed.

Return of the spoon!

Talia has been doing very well eating only finger food, but at some point she will need to graduate to cutlery.  I decided it’s time I relaxed enough to let her practice using a spoon and not stress if it goes everywhere. She’s been putting a toothbrush into her mouth for the last week or two, and I figured a spoon shouldn’t be any more difficult.

So on Friday I let her loose with 2 spoons and a limited amount of yogurt in one of those suction-cup bowls. And it went really well! I was helping her load up the spoons, but she was putting them in her mouth herself (she really doesn’t like me trying to do it) and a surprising amount of yogurt actually went in and stayed in.

The next morning I tried the same thing and she threw the spoons on the floor - yogurt-o-rama!  Fortunately our sealed cork floors are very forgiving and easy to clean. Then in the evening we visited my parents, and I shared some dessert with Talia by passing small spoonfuls of icecream and lemon pudding, and she did a much better job.  (If you’re reading this Mum, please email me the recipe, it was delicious!)  

So I think we’ll be doing spoon training every day or two until she gets the hang of it, although I think the challenge will be more the food than the spoon!

Café Finisterre - finger food for the fussy

First, the good news: we’ve broken the 8kg barrier! Talia weighed in at 8.165kg this morning. She is 14.5 months (11.5 months corrected). It has taken her 3 months to put on this most recent kilogram, which is exactly how long it took her to put on her first kilogram after leaving hospital. Fortunately, although not without it’s challenges, these past three months have not been anywhere near as stressful as those first three months.

It has been ages since I posted about what Talia is eating, and I’m sure to forget if I don’t write it down. Since the Great Spoon Strike began in April, I’ve had to come up with a wide range of finger food to cater to Little Miss Picky’s culinary whims. Food can now be categorised as follows:

Almost always acceptable as food and eaten regularly: avocado, beef sausage, dates, cooked veges (peas, mushroom, carrot, potato, sweet potato, celery), yogurt coated sultanas, fish (usually served crumbed)

Might be eaten, might not, depends on the day and there’s no way of telling in advance:
Part A (slightly more likely) omelette, pikelets, cheerios, sultanas, rice, meatball, matzah ball, muffin, pasta, red & white beans, corn, capsicum, grapes, chicken, biscuit
Part B (slightly less likely) cheese, banana, pumpkin, dried apricot, apple, rice cracker

Was a hit but we don’t dish it up every day: sushi, cake, prawn, cheesecake, hot chips, smoked salmon

Used to be popular but not at the moment: wholemeal toast (spread with avocado or peanut butter), fruit toast (spread with butter), cruskits (without or without avocado)

Oh seriously, there is no way I am going to eat that: mandarin, strawberry, anything on a spoon (eg weetbix, yogurt)

Things we haven’t fed her yet: chocolate, ice cream, jelly, tomato, salad greens

John West has the last laugh

Daddyfeatures suggested we rename Talia “John West”, in keeping with the quantity of food being rejected at the moment.

There is a lot of discussion on the forum about how to deal with babies who don’t want to eat.  Some mothers see it as a fight but we are pretty determined not to take that path.  Some mothers are concerned about feeding disorders but I think our issues are merely a combination of small appetite (not much we can do about that), teething (ditto) and early onset of rampant I’ll-do-it-my-way individualism (no comment really!!)

I decided today I would take before and after photos, as Talia has been doing some impressive rearranging and redistribution of food from highchair tray to floor.  So I laid out and photographed a beautiful little bento box of nibblies in an ice cube tray and put it on the high chair. And do you know what? The little imp either ate the contents or left it exactly where it was. Out of the entire spread she dropped a single cheerio over the edge. So there was no aftermath to photograph.

Some days I swear she must be able to read my mind.

The great spoon strike of April ‘08

Since she figured out solids at the end of last year, Talia has been fantastic, eating all sorts of homecooked meat and veg.  She had started to catch up with her weight and all was going well… until now.

A week or maybe a little longer ago, she started objecting to receiving food on a spoon, pushing it away with her hands and turning her head to the side.  With a bit of ingenuity (”say aaah Talia!”) I could get a spoonful in, and after carefully digesting this first mouthful with all the seriousness of a wine connoisseur judging expensive shiraz (up to but not including the spitting out stage), she would then allow me to feed her the rest of the meal.

I thought I had it all under control until the beginning of this week, when she decided that not even the first spoonful would be considered acceptable, under any circumstances.  It has been very difficult to deal with, as I don’t want mealtimes to be a fight, but I can’t let her go without a healthy diet.  It’s not that she won’t eat - just that she won’t allow herself to be fed.  It wouldn’t matter so much if she was older and able to use a spoon, but at the moment she will only accept a limited range of finger foods - and they are subject to change without warning.  Savoury pikelets were a hit on Tuesday but thrown out of the high chair on Wednesday.  Raisin toast has come back into favour, as have avocado finger sandwiches, but baked ricotta is now out and her acceptance of random veges appears to depend entirely on her mood, the phase of the moon and whether or not the wind is blowing from the west.

This is the sort of point where you realise that being a mother is a full time job and then some.