You’d asked earlier about whether I’d noticed any difference in practices changing? Not so much with the breastfeeding but I had noticed that in the case of when you wean your child onto solid foods, with my son it was sixteen weeks was the recommended time, and with my daughter it was six months, and I fed her until the six months, at five and a half months I think maybe she was waking up during the night but I just, I fed her more often just, I wanted to wait until the, until the six months, which my husband found quite amusing, you know, six months to the date that’s when she got her solid food.

Did she take to it all right at that stage?

She took to it fine.

What did you give her to start off with?

Baby rice just, and then we progressed on to pureed vegetables and stuck more with the vegetables rather than introducing fruit because I wanted her to get the savoury feel rather than the sweet feel. And she was nearly, fed different things a lot quicker than my son was, when I started to wean him, he got the pureed carrot and to make sure he didn’t react to it, or that I knew that would be the only thing he would react to, he got fed pureed carrot for a few days before I changed him onto anything else and I fed, it was pureed carrot, then the next time say it was parsnip, then it was something else, and then whenever I knew he didn’t react to any of those then they were mixed, whereas with the second one she seemed to progress a bit quicker on to the different things.

And did you make food especially for the babies or did you just give them’

Just gave.

‘some of what you were having?

What we were having and just kept extra over and pureed it and she actually, with keeping her to the six months, she went on to the solid lumpy food very quickly. I had a hand blender and one of the times I was washing it was fine and then I turned it upside down and there was like brown water come out and I thought, I don’t want that anywhere near her food, and I didn’t get back in to get another hand blender so everything was just mashed and she took it no problem.

Just mash it with a fork?

Just mashed it with a fork and then she went quite, I say lumpy food very quickly and was able to deal with it. I had friends and they had, their oldest was the same age as my son roughly, and they also weaned their second at the sixteen weeks and whenever I was visiting I was passing my daughter a banana to hold and to eat, and their child, three months older was still on pureed food, but perhaps that was just the, they just seemed to choke, you know, and gag if there was any lumps in their food now maybe that was just that child I don’t know.

But you think it might’ve been because they were started on solids quite early?

I’m just wondering if they were, you know, because if you start at four months you are pureeing things, and whether whenever you’re at six months and you just tend to give that wee bit lumpier stuff in it quicker, maybe they are more ready for it, plus at six months you don’t have to worry so much about what you are actually giving them, you know, between four and six months, theres wheat in this, what’s in it? Can we give it? Whereas at six months you can nearly get, they can nearly get anything.

Did you have a routine of breastfeeding before or after a solid feed, or not breastfeeding at all when it was time for a meal, a solid meal, how did you kind

Can you think about when you first introduced solids?

Yeah, I, didn’t think about introducing solids it was suggested to me by my health visitor, my daughter was sixteen weeks and I was asked if I’d considered this, which I hadn’t. And, it was suggested that maybe I would like to start thinking about it and one of the good things to start with was baby rice. So I went out and bought some baby rice, I expressed breastmilk to mix with baby rice, I’d never expressed really, never had, never had the need to express because I just always fed when she wanted feeding. So that were a little bit tricky, I found that bit difficult, and I mixed up baby rice and expressed breastmilk and thought, ‘This don’t, this really don’t look very appealing, we sat down, I put it in her mouth and she spat it out, and we did this for a week. And, it, weren’t pleasant, it, she didn’t want it, and I didn’t want it, it, weren’t, well neither of us were happy, you know, it just, it weren’t working. So I thought, ‘Maybe it’s the baby rice I’ll give her a carrot. So I did all the carrot thing and mashed it up.

Yeah she became, she really weren’t happy about it and she became quite, as soon as she realised what was going to happen she became distressed, so I became distressed. And we did it for a week, I kept trying, for a week, really to shove this food into her mouth and then at end of week I thought, ‘I can’t, I can’t cope with the stress of this because she don’t want it and it can’t, surely she can’t be hungry if shes so upset about it’ so I stopped. But I never admitted to anybody that I’d stopped, I never told my health visitor, because I thought that people would think I were a bad mother because I weren’t doing what I should be doing. But I just didn’t bother, I’d, I went back to breastfeeding and then when she was nearly six months I tried her with something and she seemed to take it so much better, and it started very gradual, we didn’t sort of start with, it had to be one meal a day, we sort of just took it quite, really relaxed about it and, if we had, we were at home and we had time to sit and try it we did, and if she took it that were great and if, we just built it up, so it weren’t as if, one day she were fully breastfed, next day she had to have a meal regardless of whether she wanted it, and it, it worked like that for us, and I found that she moved on to foods much quicker than what they said that shed, what they’d originally said that she would. So whereas it had been you have, you do this and you have to do that for a week and then you introduce something else and you do that for three, four days and then, I just sort of started doing little bits and putting them together because I think she were more open to different flavours as well, it didn’t need to be as, as bland as what were said. So she, she ate loads of sort of different tastes to what I hear a lot of people say that their children are eating, and I mean, brussel sprouts, well it’s one of her favourites for a little, a little baby, at and still [laughs] at three she likes brussel sprouts and shes got quite strong sort of tastes. So it were so much easier when I did it sort of later, it really were and we were both much more relaxed and it, it were a lot nicer.

A daughter.

And how old is she?

Shes just gone a year old now.

And is she breastfed?

Shes purely breastfed, she doesn’t eat any solid food at all at the moment.

Right.

In fact, she won’t even touch solid food.

Right, and I saw her shes a bonny baby.

She is. Full of beans.

Exclusively breastfed?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exclusively breastfed at the moment.

Right.

I tried weaning her at six months and followed all the advice about puree and then finger foods and she went from trying tiny bits to now if theres food on a plate shell either push the plate away or tip it over, she doesn’t like to be near food.

So shes just not interested in this at all?

Shes not interested at all which, is quite worrying at times, but the more I’ve read about things the more I’ve, I look at her and I think shes just not ready, and shell eat when she is ready, sometimes shell look at other children eating and that makes her interested in food, and so I try to just let her see children eating as much as possible and I’m sure shell eat one day.

Has anybody said anything to you about this?

Yeah I’ve had a lot of advice about this, that my health visitor is quite worried about it and Grace has been referred to a paediatrician. I’ve had lots of advice from them from giving her a bottle of formula feed to try and break the cycle of her enjoying breastmilk, and I don’t agree with bottles of, because, I used to, but since I’ve been breastfeeding I’ve become, I’ve read more about breastfeeding and I’ve become more and more into breastfeeding, and the more you read about it, the more you find out, the more amazing you think it is. So I didn’t want to give her a bottle, so I just said, ‘Oh she won’t take it’ and they actually said, ‘Put sugar in the bottle. And so I thought about this and I spoke to my breastfeeding support group that I go to and everyone was horrified and said, ‘Shes got teeth, if you start giving her a sugary bottle theres no goodness in it that shes not getting from breastmilk it’ll just have, give you a baby that’s addicted to sugary bottles instead of breastmilk. So I ignored that, then I was told to just stop breastfeeding her altogether and that shed eat when she was hungry, but I decided to ignore that too, which completely goes against the grain. Before I had Grace, I would have followed to the letter, anything that a doctor said to me, because I wouldn’t have even thought to question it. But, with a baby you just have this instinct of what’s best and what, you know best for your baby, and so I thought about it and decided that. Once I was ill, I had food poisoning and I was really dehydrated, I just couldn’t keep anything down and I knew I didn’t have any milk, and Grace just sat beside me for a whole day on the bed, theres no one to take her so she just sat next to me and played and I think she knew that I was ill, and she didn’t eat all day and my mum came and offered her food, but she wouldn’t, she was wasn’t interested, she wouldn’t even take water, so I thought if I stop breastfeeding I’m just going to have a screaming child and not a screaming child that eats.

Do you remember when you started to introduce other food?

Yeah she was four months old and well she was so enthusiastic, she just couldn’t wait to get her hands on other food, so anything you gave her it was, ‘Oh yes I’ll have that and I’ll have some more so was very, very keen, but I mean I’ve just, I’d given her vegetables that I’d mix, I’d put milk, I’d put some milk in them for her I’d expressed it so, because I thought I’m not going to mix things up with water or whatever, or cow’s milk so, yeah I think it was familiar to a certain extent anyway and she just took to it, well like she had to breastfeeding really once shed got going she just couldn’t stop eating things, she just really wanted it all the time.

Did you have a set pattern or a routine that you would give her breastmilk and then solids, or solids and then breastmilk or anything like that?

I’m trying to remember now, I’d give her lunch about the same time as I did so I think, you know, I mean I always breastfed on demand so it was just a case of well now were going to have lunch and if she happened to have a feed not long before so be it I wouldn’t say, ‘Oh eleven I’ll give you breastmilk and then at half past eleven well have lunch, it would just depend on, you know, what she wanted, so.

So very flexible about it all?

Yeah. I don’t go with routines really; I just sort of do what seems the easiest thing at the time, what suits them and suits me. I mean this young man hes completely opposite to his big sister, she would always want to have solid food and hes not really interested.

And how old is he now?

Hes sixteen months.

And still not really interested in solids?

Not particularly I mean, he is but on his terms, when he wants something he will have it, but, you know, he might only eat four or five teaspoons in a day, and weve been through, I used to go and see the health visitor and I soon gave up on that idea when, because she was concerned so this health visitor and I don’t really see eye-to-eye on pregnancy and birth and everything else and breastfeeding and so on, and my daughter is seven and is tall and thin as they come, now she would eat and eat and eat and apparently was going to be obese by the time she was six, well she has to have a belt to keep her trousers up because her trousers are so, not just thin, shes a beanpole, which is quite funny because when she was little she was overweight and well the health visitor’s perception of her as a baby and when she two, well there were two different health visitors, was that she was overweight because she was very, you know, shed tripled her birth weight by less than a year and so on. Anyway young man has done exactly the same thing and is, you know, generally put on a lot of weight, but he doesn’t like solid food and the health visitor who was saying my daughter weighed too much is looking at this little boy who’s nice and large and saying, ‘Oh hes going to be malnourished, hes going to be underweight’ and I just laughed, and then she says to me one day she said, ‘Oh to encourage him to eat solid food stop breastfeeding him now, stop today’, and I said, ‘Well what about getting up, ending up with mastitis and everything else?’ She said, ‘Oh no, just stop feeding him today, and to encourage him to eat gives him desserts, give him chocolate desserts,’ and I just said, ‘You are joking?’ and I said, ‘Do you know what this does to breastfeeding? You know, do you know what it’ll do to my milk supply and ev