 When life changes, so does eating. Having a new baby definitely changes everything in your house. If you also have a toddler or older kid at home, don't be surprised if the addition of a sibling causes disruption at mealtime. You may find yourself serving crackers and milk for lunch. We want to be the first to tell you this: it's ok. How can you make mealtime a little better with a newborn and an older kid - or multiple kids?
  It’s so important for YOU to eat when you have a new baby! Whether you’re breastfeeding, formula feeding, exclusively or partially pumping or using a feeding tube, whether your baby came to you via your own birth, surrogacy, fostering or adoption, YOU NEED TO EAT TOO! Taking care of a baby, no matter your circumstance, is physically grueling, and fuel is required to make it happen. Of course, some days that fuel is coffee and candy. We wanted to provide you with some ideas to help keep yourself fed:
We know that feeding a baby is emotional, especially in those early months. Hugs those of you struggling with your feeding experience. We are sending you a big virtual high five for the amazing job you’re doing! Look below to see photos from some members of our Clients Only Group on Facebook as they feed themselves in various way. Notice food dropped on babywearing babies, dads rocking the bottle (or getting their grub on), combo feeding mamas sneaking in a few bites of food while they feed baby a bottle after a breast feed, new moms finally eating after birth, it’s all wonderful and it all represents our own unique stories as parents. Thank you to the hundreds of parents who contributed photos - what a fun thread to read! It was such a great reminder that we are all doing our best and are all in it together!!    One of our lovely followers asked us to put together some filling, nourishing snack ideas for pregnant and breastfeeding moms, but these snacks are also perfect adults of all ages and stages. Note: if you’re sharing these snacks with a kiddo under 4 there are some choking hazards shown (since these are geared toward adults). Soften the baby carrots, use thinly spread cashew butter instead of whole cashews, and soften/shred the apples. Let's talk about real-life balance for a moment. Your postpartum snack might be a handful of chocolate chips and lukewarm coffee. That is OK. It’s about grace and survival! Your diet won’t - and really shouldn’t - be 100% perfect. Obsession is not productive. Also, we realize that not every postpartum mama can or chooses to breastfeed. There are some additional considerations for breastfeeding (like more protein, more water), but please remember that whenever we are talking about how you feed your baby we are coming from a place of inclusiveness and love - not segregation or judgement. These snacks are for everyone! What makes a snack great? Protein, produce (fiber!) and something that’s simple to grab - most of these are just wash and eat! (Yours probably won’t be presented this carefully - what matters is getting it in your belly.) About the food:
  Oh, the things we learn when we become parents, right? As feeding professionals who have worked with thousands of families - and moms ourselves - we have both learned a lot more about food than we ever learned in school. Fortunately, there is still so much more to learn and more ways to grow in our understanding...but here are some things we know to be true right now"
Need more help? Our online courses are here to help you navigate feeding your kids under age 7! The infant course is appropriate for new eaters and babies who haven’t learned to self-feed; our toddler course is best for kids 10 months - 6 years.   Easy ideas to try when kids are overly tired.Anyone else have a case of the Mondays recently? This was my almost 3-year-old after her first day of full-day preschool school (9-3) during which she refused to nap. I took her sleepy body out of the car at home, set her on her feet, and when I turned around after unloading the car she was passed out on the floor.  Can we talk about feeding overtired children? As you have probably learned, kids don’t eat spectacularly well when they’re tired. Even young babies struggle to focus on a feed when they haven’t had enough sleep. So, what’s a tired (and frustrated) parent to do when your child is crazy and overtired but needs to eat?
The overall goal is that we have family meals *most of the time* and serve our kids what we eat *most of the time* (maybe with some special considerations), but we’re also real parents with real kids who sometimes just need a full tummy and a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow will be a better day. Get that sweet babe to bed and get down with some mindless TV or a good book, because you deserve to celebrate surviving a day with an overtired, adorable little lunatic!   Music adds ambience and fun to dinnertime.In our Toddler Course we talk about the importance of minimizing distractions, including TV and devices, during mealtime. Some of us like the TV on while we eat for some background noise, but you may have noticed that young eaters become easily distracted when the television is on. Music can provide low level sound and some wonderful ambiance while not being distracting. Turning on music at the beginning of a meal can be a fun pre-meal ritual that directs your child’s focus from play to eating. Plus, listening to music in childhood helps your child develop language skills and learn about rhythm and sound. Make sure that the music isn’t too loud or jarring while you eat or it will feel distracting. For many people, high-energy, fast songs don’t work well for family meals, but do what works for your family. Sharing your favorite music with your child can be a powerful way to connect. You can sing and dance together now when they’re little and go to concerts together when they get older...and one day they’ll think fondly of you and those memories whenever they hear that special song. We decided to share some of our favorite mealtime songs with you below. As music lovers and big concert-goers, our selection here is a little bit eclectic. This list could go on forever. What matters is picking music YOU enjoy to create a positive environment for your family. Check out the Spotify playlist we created with these songs. Judy's Favorites:
Megan's Favorites:
  Mealtime is about more than food.Meals with young kids can feel chaotic and stressful. It can be a serious struggle. We work with thousands of families who are at the end of their rope (Friends, please consider our toddler course if this is you!) Sometimes it’s important to take a step back and think about what you want mealtime to feel like 5, 10, 20 years from now with your kids. What associations do you want them to have with food? What do you want them to remember? Mealtime is oftentimes the only time of day that we get to sit and connect with each other, hence why we can have such vivid memories of how it felt when we were kids. Here are some simple ways to build positive traditions that your kids will remember:
One day they’ll use these memories to create traditions with their own kids. It’s hard when we’re in the thick of it...but we’re going to miss this, friends! We promise.   Enjoy those sweet snuggles!As World Breastfeeding Week comes to a close, we wanted to share the story of this nursery chair. Megan here. To most people this is a simple gray rocking chair. To me, this chair represented the beginning of my journey into motherhood. I gave it away last year to a mama who really needed something special for her new baby, and I was surprised at how emotional I was when parting with it. This chair was by far the most utilized piece of furniture in my oldest child’s nursery {shown here in our living room}. It represented all things baby to me - nights filled with broken sleep, intoxicating baby breath and gummy smiles, sweet snuggles as you feel their body relax and drift off to dream land, quiet nursing sessions where nothing else exists. This chair also saw us through teething and ear infections and strep throat the night before her first birthday and SO MANY FEEDINGS (including the painful ones). In this chair, we read books, sang silly songs, and held each other close. I know I cried many times in this chair, begging for sleep or simply asking the universe to keep my baby young just a little bit longer. This chair represented my motherhood journey, and for me that journey included breastfeeding. Your journey may include breastfeeding for one hour, one day, one month, one year+...or not at all. You see, these journeys teach us things. They humble us and mold us and impart beautiful lessons. Maybe your experience breastfeeding was overall amazing. Maybe it was really hard. Maybe thinking about it brings back wonderful memories. Maybe it brings pain. These experiences are all unique to YOUR journey, and you learned from them. You grew. Celebrate your journey, whatever it looks like. Be proud of the times you spent in your cozy chair feeding your baby the best way you could. Know that your breastfeeding and early feeding experiences don’t define you as a mother - they teach you valuable lessons of resilience and grace. One day that chair won’t have a place in your house. Those early morning feeding sessions will be a very distant memory. But you’ll still be the strong, rockstar mama you’ve always been.   What I wish I would have told myself.This is me, age 29, with my husband and first baby Hannah. I didn’t cry when she was born...I cried when she latched for the first time, which happened moments before this image was captured. This photo, taken by Doula Dianne, means so much to me now because it was the beginning of my feeding journey. It’s also the true start down a path that led me to knowing all of you wonderful humans and getting to live out my passion with my amazing business partner Judy. I appear giddy and joyous here, but I was also so anxious about breastfeeding. I put SO much pressure on myself to breastfeed, and fortunately after a TON of pain and latch issues (we later realized she had a severe tongue and lip tie), I had a great breastfeeding experience. Not always easy, but great. I wish I had told myself that no matter what, it would all be ok. When we started baby-led weaning at 6 months on the nose, my eldest took to it like a champ. My second daughter was even more of a foodie and was demanding to take part of every meal we ate once she started with solid foods. I have been fortunate to have the wisdom of Judy and what would eventually become our online infant and toddler courses to help me navigate any challenges that came up. I know I am lucky. I know from the clients I see every day that not all feeding journeys go this way, that mine may seem especially easy. Judy and I work with feeding and nutrition challenges every day - we listen to and comfort sweet mamas as they cry, mourning the loss of an experience they so wish they had. We celebrate even the tiniest of successes and offer our professional and mama-to-mama support when things get tough. We adore meeting such wonderful, diverse, passionate families and witnessing new parents evolve into the fiercely protective people they never knew they were. Feeding and nutrition are SO emotional, so personal. Everyone does it differently, because everyone is different. We are grateful to be part of your journey. Thank you for being part of ours too!   You are worthy.You are worthy of enjoying food, of finding joy in the eating process, of eating when your body - no matter what size it is - says it’s hungry! Your body size does not define your worthiness as a partner, as a mother, as a woman, as a human. Don’t let your life pass you by as you strive to be something, someone else. Yes, taking care of yourself and moving in a way that feels good to your body is important, but so many times we self-sabotage because we don’t feel like we are worthy of the same love we give to everyone else, including our kids whom we adore. You are worthy! If you need help with this, please check out “Intuitive Eating" by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole. I trained under Elyse in graduate school and the Intuitive Eating philosophy completely changed my life and the course of my career. This book is a complete game changer. Judy and I hope to teach you how to navigate food with your kids so they grow up seeing food as just food - delicious, enjoyable, and yet just food. Let’s break the cycle of chronic dieting, body bashing and shame surrounding food so our kids don’t have to struggle as well. If you're looking for a more step-by-step approach to this with your little ones, check out our Toddler Course.  |
AuthorsMegan and Judy, co-owners of Feeding Littles, bring you helpful info on food, nutrition, picky eating, and feeding young children. Megan McNamee MPH, RDN is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Judy Delaware, OTR/L is an Occupational Therapist specializing in feeding therapy with children 3 and under in Boulder, Colorado. Megan and Judy are both moms of two and love helping families develop a healthy appetite for all foods!
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