I've had my suspicions for a while that Master C has been rather hungry. Firstly he went from sleeping 6 or 7 hours at night through to at worst waking every 90 minutes for a feed. And it was only a feed he needed in the night as he would go back to sleep as soon as he'd had some and general comforting wouldn't have any effect at all. His feeds were also starting to last longer and longer and this was accompanied by chewing on his own hands and anything else that he managed to get into his mouth. When I took him along to my weekly knitting group he'd sit there completely mesmorised by everyone in the cafe eating cake.
Through complete exhaustion I decided to start giving him bottles in addition to breastfeeding him and that helped a little bit – possibly because I went for the forumula designed for hungry babies – but we were still getting quite a few night time wake ups for more milk. On the advice of health visitors I was trying to hold out for the "magical" 17 weeks before introducing solids as I did with Little Miss C. I caved in last week thought at 16 and a half weeks although Master C wasnt too delighted with his first meal of baby rice. I just kept getting this slightly dispairing look as if to say "well that's fine, but where's the cake?"
On day two I moved on to fruit and chose to try some of the pouches of pureed fruit from Ella's Kitchen and wow what a response. We started with just half a pouch of apple on the first day, followed by apple and banana purees on day two. By the time day five came along on Monday he'd had baby porridge mixed with banana for breakfast, pear for lunch and apple for tea – three meals in just the one day! His milk intake for the day was the same as usual and he was also trying to grab the spoon from me to feed himself.
I'm blown away by how much he's eating already. I thought LMC took to food quickly but I'm sure it was at least a month before she was up to three meals a day. I'm really hoping it's a step in the right direction though, especially as after that first day of three meals he also managed to sleep from 10.45pm through until 6.30 the next morning. It may be a complete coincidence, but I think it quite likely he was just a hungry little boy. I'm certainly intrigued to see what his weight does this week as a result of all the extra that he's taking in.
I don't think it will be long before he's trying to take cake off the women in my knitting group – watch out ladies!
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