Transcript: Homemade Baby Food For Twins
Twin Talks
Homemade Baby Food for Twins
[00:00:00]
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[Theme Music]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Is mushy brown puree on the horizon for your twins or you looking for something more interesting when you introduce solid foods? If you’re thinking about getting your babies fresh homemade food, stay tune to learn the essentials. Joining us today is our panel twin parents who are here to talk about homemade baby food for twins. This is Twin Talks.
[Theme Music/Intro]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Welcome to Twin Talks, broadcasting from birth education center of San Diego. Twin Talks is your weekly online on the go support group for expecting and new parents of twins. I’m your host Christine Stewart-Fitzgerald. Have you hear about the Twin Talks club? Our members get bonus content after each new show plus special giveaways and discounts.
You can subscribe to our monthly Twin Talks newsletter and learn about the latest episodes available. And another way for you to stay connected is by downloading our free Twin Talks app and is available from most smart phones. Well before we get started, let’s go around our room and see who where is here to share with us about their experience about baby food. So let’s see here, Sunny?
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah. So I’m just kind of getting my feet wet in these whole things. So hey everyone I’m Sunny and I’m a mommy to four children. Sayer is my oldest, Urban is my middle guy and then my twins are Ainsley and Addison. They were exclusively breastfed up until about maybe 7 months. They are now 8 months and now we’re starting to incorporate some stuff but I would say they’re still like 90% breastfed.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Wow.
SUNNY GAULT: Because I just well I’m honestly because I’m lazy. I have tried to do some puree stuff and it’s messy. I thought it was messy on one baby you know with my singletons and now I don’t know you guys usually fed your babies when they were at that age but like it’s like if I start to feed one the other one cries and I’m so like I have to get two spoons out at once and anyways the whole thing is just more than I could handle right now. I’m so breastfeeding as much.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: You could’ve end but you’re ready to dive right in.
SUNNY GAULT: I mean I am and I’m certainly interested in learning about how to make baby food. We didn’t even consider it with my singleton. It was just easier to go to the store, buy the stuff and it wasn’t really big concern of mine. And I’m sure we’re going to talk about this later on the show but you know now it’s two financially there’s just some things to consider and you honestly want the best for your babies. I’m more looking at the ingredients going okay there’s more than one reason really to consider making our own. So I’m excited to learn from you guys today.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Awesome and Shelly.
SHELLY STEELY: Hey I’m Shelly. I’m the producer here at Twin Talks. I have identical twin boys who just turned two and I am 35 weeks with a singleton girl. So we’ll be getting back in the baby food soon. We so we started right on 6 months with the boys because I think first time mom are always eager and you know I kind of like Sunny is if I’ve known so much of a hassle it was by the way that longer and for us it was a 100% finances we could not afford.
Jars or pouches I mean they are expensive so we made everything at home for the boys. I think I might have bought I don’t know a couple of here and there for traveling or out and about but I mean really times two the cost was and then my boys are big eaters so we just it was kind of the decision was made for us but it ended up working out really well and they’re I mean they’re fantastic eaters as usually there are nothing they won’t try. So I’m excited to get talking about it.
Before we jump in I want to let the listeners know that we have a virtual panelist program. So for those of you who can’t make it into the studio but want to participate still. You can follow us on Facebook or Twitter and you can also use the #twintalksvp to be part of the conversation from home.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Awesome. And I’m your host Christine Stewart-Fitzgerald and I have a let’s see identical girls who will be 5 in the next month and a half and so it’s been a while since we’ve done you know the baby food but we thought that was one of our things and yeah Shelly we are also motivated by a lot of it by cost.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So we did that and I do have a singleton who is she’s almost two and we also did baby food. We took a little bit of a different approach called you know baby [inaudible 00:04:44] weaning which we will talk about. So I think there’s kind of some different ways to approach the whole you know the homemade baby food making and I’m sure we can look at the pros and cons of everything.
[Theme Music/Intro]
SUNNY GAULT: Okay so we have a fun segment today it’s called “We’re expecting what?” and this is a segment that we like to do. It’s all about when you guys first found out that you are pregnant with twins and the funny stories that happen shortly thereafter and this comes from Amber. Amber writes I found out I was pregnant when I was 7 weeks and my 8 year old daughter was talking to my belly saying how there is two babies in there.
Well at 9 weeks I got my first [inaudible] and she was right there and I showed her the pic and she said “ha I told you there was two” and she kept telling me how they are girl and a boy. She went there with me to find out the sex and when the lady told us there was a boy and a girl she yelled “ha I told you I was right again, man mom when are you going to learn I’m always right”.
Okay well thanks Amber for sharing this story with us and if you guys have a funny story about finding out your pregnant with twins or even the gender of your twins, we would love to hear it. You can send us an email or call our voicemail at 619-866-4775.
[Theme Music]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Well today’s topic is homemade baby food for twins and today we’re chatting with our expert here on the studio, our panelist about the logistics of making homemade baby foods. So hi thanks for joining us. In our introduction we touched a little bit on some of the reasons why each of us chose to do baby food and we said cost is one of them.
SUNNY GAULT: Yes.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: My gosh I mean I don’t know I know for myself I’ve bought a little bit of jarred food just for the convenience of it and I mean if I recall I mean it was like at least if I can find on sale it was at least a dollar a jar.
SUNNY GAULT: It depends on what you buy right?
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah. I mean we try to get all of our food pretty cheaply. We try to you know go to the best stores for the best deals and do all that kind of stuff but you know it and it also depends on what age too like the really basic puree stuff is always cheaper but once you get into like you know I don’t even know the ages that they put on but the chunkier you know they got different stages usually.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yes.
SUNNY GAULT: And if something really has home noodles on it or something like that I mean there’s like things you can buy as an adult that would probably just as filling so I mean though they charged you like you know a lot more for those types of foods so.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. Yeah and then of course you get it I mean if it’s organic…
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Or it’s you know GMO free or gluten free or I mean there’s a cost to it too you know.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah so I mean there’s the jar which is kind of what most people think of initially and they’re fairly I mean 50 cents to a dollar depending on where you get them and how many of them you buy at once but I mean if you’re kids are anything like mine then each one will eat the entire jar and that’s you know 2 dollars for breakfast, 2 dollars for lunch, 2 dollar for I mean it adds up you know. You don’t want to be spending dollar and dollars and once they get a little bit bigger they’re easting two jars or three jars…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh my gosh.
SHELLY STEELY: I mean I’ve heard people you know their kids they eat they’re hungry so and that’s a lot of money on food that you can’t use for anything else.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right.
SHELLY STEELY: You know it’s not part of your budget already and then some people had mention they had a problem where their kids wouldn’t finish the jar…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yes.
SHELLY STEELY: And you can’t put a jar back in the fridge…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yes.
SHELLY STEELY: Because once you put [inaudible] into something else and yeah it was just overwhelming for us in terms of cost and so we just you know I’ve heard from other people making your own food was better, fresher, less expensive and really not very time consuming so that was kind of where and in nutrition also you’re now controlling the food I mean…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Because you know what’s in it.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: And I think that’s probably one of the biggest things is just you know I mean I don’t know I’m trying to avoid process foods as much as I can in general but I mean like you that sometimes you think oh it would say like 100% natural but I mean what does that really mean? You know it’s like then you start looking at these ingredients and they have these preservatives to maintain freshness and…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: You know and oh then there’s like you know…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah how much citric acid? Was it [inaudible]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Citric acid. Yeah. Exactly or zinc oxide you know for color and it’s like really.
SUNNY GAULT: You know I’m starting now as I mention to feed my twins soon and I have one twin that will pretty much eat anything except meat stuff. That stuff oh my gosh I don’t even know if I would feed it to my dog. But I keep thinking they need it but then I’ve heard this quote from a lactation consultant that food before one is just for fun.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh.
SUNNY GAULT: And I’m like kind of like in my head like okay we’re kind of just playing around with food right now. It’s not really they don’t really need it nutritionally because I’m still breastfeeding them so much and but anyways my one twin will eat anything the other one even the basic stuff that is like stage one puree stuff she is having trouble with and it’s not just at first it was like she just didn’t know what to do with it you know she was like what’s this in my mouth but even bananas she’s just kind of like and bananas are sweet like you…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: know you think that that if anything you know that that would be something that she would eat so I’m also having an issue with one is taking to it really quickly and the other one is just like not so much just give me the boob…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: You know.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. So it may take time just sort of just you know introduce a few things and see if maybe they take on you know to one thing one flavor…
SHELLY STEELY: One yeah…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Or not and then yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: One of the benefits of making your own food I think over buying it is different tastes and textures. So some babies don’t like the pureed texture. You can try something like chunky like some babies will respond better to a chunkier texture like a you know like an avocado just mash up versus…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Like something pureed you know a piece of a banana instead of a banana mango palp so I think for it was helpful for us to have the options and my kids also didn’t like to be fed at all. If I try to put a spoon on their mouth they just took the spoon out of my hand which it was a really messy it’s still really messy I’m not even going to lie.
Meal time has always been a disaster around our house but it was easier with two like I would preload a spoon you know here’s some avocado, here’s some sweet potato, mush it on to the spoon and then give them the spoon and then my hands are free to eat. So I mean that turned out it was really kind of convenient for us that we let them you know here’s your food on the tray have at it and I can eat my own food. I mean I think…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: And that’s kind of like more of the baby led weaning approach.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Where the kids get to sort of decide at what pace they want to eat and yeah…
SHELLY STEELY: And we could do both you know some foods I mean I was uncomfortable giving them whole pieces of chicken you know that seem terrifying from the choking stand point. So you know you can puree something but then like I would preload it on the spoon for about just to make sure it was thick enough to stick to the spoon. You know so we like I said we did a mix of things but…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: [inaudible] so you’ve mentioned as far as like what kind of foods did you introduce? I know I mean we did you know a lot of I mean let’s just say vegetables. I mean everybody wants their kids to try different vegetables. So…
SHELLY STEELY: So we started slow with kind of one food at a time like they recommend for allergy reasons though we really didn’t space it out very much just one food one day, add another food the next day and really just for the first month and after that it was kind of like free for all you know anything.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Once we kind of saw they didn’t react to anything it was whatever we were eating and I actually have never eaten this healthy in my life as I did when my kids started eating. Because I wanted to set kind of a good model so we would a lot of banana, avocado, sweet potato and those are all things that you just mash and put it on a spoon and then we have to you know I would my crave was sweet potato and one potato would feed you know the three of us for dinner. I’ve had half and I give each of them half mash up and kind of let them have at it. For vegetables I did puree some peas initially but once again like once their eight to nine months I just gave them the peas…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: By…
SHELLY STEELY: Whole?
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: You know something cubes of sweet potatoes…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: And you and those are great too and if you wanted things I know I did a lot of things was I would mixed some fruits and vegetables so they get a little bit of sweet and savory together. So maybe like you know doing like a peas and maybe with apples. I mean apples seem to go with a lot of stuff.
SUNNY GAULT: Oh yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So.
SUNNY GAULT: Bananas too . . .
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: We actually use apple juice when we made the meat puree. I know it sounds weird but you can…
SUNNY GAULT: Oh you made it sweeter.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah. Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: We would what I would do is I would cook chicken in the crack pot like just plain chicken breast with apple juice as the liquid in there like a whole crack pot full of chicken shredded up and then I had one of those baby food makers because I got it as a gift but I mean you could use any blender food processor to make baby food. It only takes a minute. So that’s how we did meats just a little bit of juice and then chicken or beef or pork and blended up.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: How about grains? Because I know sometimes and right now a lot of people are you know gluten free and what kind of grains do you use with your kids? I know we were we did a lot of oatmeal at the beginning and then you know one thing I’ve used a lot is Polenta so you can you know cook that up and when it hardens you know it can form sort of like you know little pieces that they you know kids can pick up but it’s still ultimately squishy and you know they’re easy to digest. So…
SUNNY GAULT: That’s sounds a good idea I didn’t think of that.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah so we skip the baby cereal. You know a lot of people the old recommendation used to be 4 months start with some rice cereal and because of the iron added to it but that added fortified iron is poorly absorbed to begin with and so we didn’t really see a reason to give them kind of you know fake iron supplement. We did oatmeal only when we were eating it too.
That was another thing we basically tried to make sure that the boys just had whatever we were eating so it wasn’t something that I would be eating then I wouldn’t give it to them and that again was kind of our thinking like let’s have them have the same eating habits that we do but for grains we did a lot of oatmeal and then bread actually. And there’s this really cool recipe we found, you take, you cut of the crust of bread and you spread like a piece of like whole grain bread if you just spread a layer of apple sauce on it and roll it up and you can put it in…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Hmmm roll it up.
SHELLY STEELY: You roll it up…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Okay.
SHELLY STEELY: And you put it in the microwave for 30 to 60 seconds and it dries completely out and so you end up with kind of like tether almost.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Ha.
SHELLY STEELY: So it’s like a hard. It turns the bread hard you know because the and then the apple sauce keeps it together and then they could just chew on it. So those were great for keeping them busy while you’re fixing dinner.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: That’s yummy.
SHELLY STEELY: So it’s kind of like a healthy homemade baby tether.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh.
SHELLY STEELY: And the boys love those. I got it from another friend, another twin mom on one of my groups and it was I mean it was kind of like a life saver because it’s got apple sauce so it’s kind of sweet you know it’s got that harder texture so they can chew on it and whole grain plus healthy.
SUNNY GAULT: Oh that’s perfect for my girls now…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: Because they are they put everything in their mouth. They’re teething like no teeth yet but I know it’s coming.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Wow.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah it’s awesome.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So you know what we’re going to take a break when we come back we’re going to talk about some of the equipment that you might need in making baby food.
[Theme Music]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Well welcome back today we’re talking with our expert panelists about the different ways of introducing foods to be either puree or chunks or kind of baby led weaning and the use of texture. So Shelly and Sunny how did you introduce texture? Did you do puree foods completely or do you leave some chunks in there or you know did you do the baby led weaning approach where you’re you know doing in you know big pieces?
SHELLY STEELY: So we never puree-ted all the way down but your typical baby food would be like I said we occasionally bought some of those like single flavor pouches or jars but everything was chunky so if my kids are having avocado I literally just like mash up the avocado with a fork and put it on a spoon. Sweet potato mash with the fork and some butter and put it on a spoon.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: I and you know I personally think I think that’s a great way to go because when you have that variety of texture I think it really forces the babies to get used to that feeling of something solid you know on their mouth and it’s like okay they have to going to use their palette to kind of mash it down and it’s I mean it’s soft enough and probably small enough that they can swallow it but it’s not just sort of oozing all over the place you know.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: It’s true. And you know your kids I mean by boys did really well with chunky textures. Big pieces they took to eating very well but I mean some kids respond better to those thinner purees and that’s okay too. So making your own baby food I think really gives you control over like you mention your girls having different preferences I mean you can make them different textures and I think that’s one of the huge benefits is you know my kid responds well to this so I’m going to make it this way for him. You know I mean especially…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Customize it.
SHELLY STEELY: Especially with twins because I mean my boys are identical I just mean they’re the same but they’re they had pretty similar taste and textures but even on the foods they chose to eat more of more how much of it they just eat at once they were different and then you know if you’re looking at fraternal twins they’re100% developmentally different you know. They have different likes, different dislikes, different preferences and so you don’t have to feed them exactly the same you know you can kind of say this is my texture kid and this one is going to need you know things a little bit more puree. This kid loves her fruit and he’s a little more into his vegetables. So you can kind of had that flexibility I think.
SUNNY GAULT: I think one of the nice things in defence of purees a little bit though is that if you’re transitioning from breast milk I think it’s more of an easy or could be an easier transition just consistency wise I mean especially if you have babies that really love breast milk and you can’t get them off the breast and like I felt that it was a little bit more messy for sure but a little bit more like breast milk like transition.
SHELLY STEELY: I actually made my boys oatmeal with breast milk.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: You know so instead of buying I mean we bought pre-package oat meal I didn’t roll my own oats or anything but you know instead of making it with water regular milk I made the food with breast milk and you can use breast milk to thin out a puree if it’s too chunky or too think. And you can also use formula if you’re formula feeding too. So that’s another option for transitions you can kind of customize how much should I put into here.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Now that’s smart. Now how about for flavours too I mean what did you do to make it more interesting? Because I know we talk about I mean fruits most kids adapt well to fruits but then kind of going back to the whole vegetables you know how do you make that interesting? Did you guys use seasonings? I mean I know I with my twins it was pretty you know bland and straight forward.
I was going under the rules about well don’t add salt and don’t and don’t add butter and you know all this things like oh no we’re going to have these obese kids but then when I did you know with my singleton you know I felt like you know what I think there is really nothing wrong with butter a little bit of salt and a little bit I mean I use spices. I use all the regular spices in my spice cabinet and I mean she really enjoyed it. Because I felt like you know I want to introduce vegetables and really you know get her palette you know excited then why shouldn’t she have what adults are having. You know as long as it’s not harmful. So…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah that was kind of our approach. So we started with more vegetables then less fruits and then just kind of adding in whatever but yeah butter I mean babies brains are developing they need fat you know so butter, coconut oil, olive oil, the things that you know whatever you normally use to kind of fatten up your food at home, babies can have too. And sea salt especially that really good…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: You know we got some of that like Himalayan pink sea salt…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Just a little tiny bit of that…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Goes a long way and there’s you know the mineral in it are good too for taste and texture and really any seasonings. We try to avoid anything that would be too much of an irritant so only a little bit of cinnamon you know very I don’t think we use pepper for a while. But just you know a little bit but when you think about it in other cultures around the world they don’t sell jarred plain baby food.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right. Right.
SHELLY STEELY: And you know babies eat what their parents eat.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: What parents eat. Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And this whole idea that baby food has to be bland and simple and very mushy is kind of this manufactured idea…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right.
SHELLY STEELY: You know all the process food and so I think kind of just looking outside your box if your child was raise somewhere else they would be eating heavily seasoned or heavily spice foods.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: It’s not harmful. It’s actually delicious.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh exactly. You know I have to say I’m a big fan of Indian food. Now when I was pregnant I mean actually with all the kids I ate a lot of curries so I kind of think I sort of prep them they got it when I was pregnant you know the amniotic food they got with the breast milk. So when they were doing baby food I actually did some sort of [inaudible 00:22:14] you know turmeric and you know some of the different you know like a there’s [inaudible] you know a little bit of those and I’m not kidding you my like today all my kids like curries.
SHELLY STEELY: My boys favourite thing to eat is [inaudible] I mean…
SUNNY GAULT: Oh yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And it’s my favourite place to take them because it’s inexpensive.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: It’s family friendly. You get a lot of food. It comes up fast.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yes.
SHELLY STEELY: Your check is up [inaudible] no it’s great I mean and they’ll even I mean you know just now we’re starting to give them their own brought because they’re kind of learning with that but we would just put noodles and meat in a bowl for them…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And then give them bites of our brought and it didn’t matter how spicy or heavily seasoned they would just sip it right down. So….
SUNNY GAULT: I’m hungry now you guys you make me hungry.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. So [inaudible] how about with meat? So it sounds like I think you’ve given your boys like little pieces of chicken and [inaudible]?
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah. So a lot of the reason that they recommend baby cereal is because of the iron in it but that’s it’s an additive you know there’s not iron isn’t naturally occurring in rice cereal.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: So it’s just its fortified and so the new recommendations they’re switching towards making meat kind of a first food.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And I think in Canada actually that is their first recommendation like meat should be your first food. Organ meats actually if you could…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh interesting.
SHELLY STEELY: Because the fat is good for their brains. We didn’t go that far…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: But it’s you know we…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: We did salmon.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Salmon I think you know a salmon has such a mild flavour to it. I mean I think that is such a great food I mean and tuna too sometimes you know even just you know good canned tuna with just you know a little bit of flavour. I don’t do the whole mayonnaise thing I’m not a big mayonnaise fan but I mean I think sometimes with just a little bit of seasoning or lemon juice on it.
SHELLY STEELY: And you know if you’re not because I didn’t eat mayonnaise for years old now I’m a little bit more open but you can mix tuna with Greek yogurt instead.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah that’s a no I like that.
SHELLY STEELY: Because it’s got that protein and it’s a simple food then you’re not giving your kids mayonnaise.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: But yeah I made tuna salad with Greek yogurt and actually with even like little bits of onions. My children love onions which…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh wow.
SHELLY STEELY: A bit strange right you wouldn’t think but now they think that they’re great just another vegetable to chew on.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh awesome. So okay well we talk about some of like some of the things you can make for babies but how do you actually do that? Now I think Shelly you mentioned you had you know a baby food maker which in fact I had one too but I think most folks probably do it just the old fashioned way and I think it’s usually I mean the most people used just steam the food and so I think you know…
SUNNY GAULT: Steam and mash it.
SHELLY STEELY: So we always steam stuff that we would normally steam so vegetables would get steamed but we didn’t steam fruit. I never made my own apple sauce. That’s not that was more work than I was willing to invest.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: But I know some people who did but like fruit we just we would just give whole but if we did want to blend it you know occasionally like strawberries you can just chop them up and put them on a blender. You don’t need to steam a strawberry. There’s no…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right. Right. Right.
SHELLY STEELY: But it was really I mean it was really simple especially in the beginning because your just doing a lot of simple foods so like I said I microwave a potato when they were first eating solids you know 6-7 months. I would completely mash it with the fork and put it in a bowl with a spoon for them. Once they got a little bit better with their hands, I would cut it into smaller cubes and then you know eventually just big pieces.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right. Yeah. I know with like my singleton I would you know buy the baby carrots you know they’re shaved down carrot anyway and then steam them and then I actually gave it to her whole so she could hold on to the carrots. So they’ll be soft so she could just you know bite in and sort of you know mush I mean a little bit resistance but you know really soft enough that she could hold on to it. So I mean it was great because I feel like okay I just cook I don’t really have to do any prep really.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah and I know so you can like puree freeze make large batches. We tried once or twice I made like a big batch and froze it but to be honest if you’re feeding two kids I mean you’re going to go through that faster than it’s even worth putting it in the freezers so I found that the act of like getting it out, defrosting it, heating it to the right temperature took as just as much time as making it so we really didn’t do a lot of freezing or storage or and we really didn’t do it in advance. So I remember a lot of moms saying like oh you can make huge batches keep them because you can freeze them on like on ice cube trays.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right. Like that’s actually what we did now I mean I did take the with my twins I did do it in batches and my reasoning with that you know I went to the store and I get like get maybe a big bunch of fresh spinach. And so you know the shop life of that wasn’t you know terribly long so I would you know steam the spinach and then yeah like we’d you know let it you know kind of condenses down. And for freezing we use this silicon baking sheets…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So there’s and if you go to like the big box stores they have this sheets that are you know there, they call them like browny bites…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: [inaudible] little cubes and it’s silicon so basically you can kind of twist it and the thing is just you know that when they’re once they’re frozen they just pop out. And then I didn’t buy any fancy storage container. I know there are some nice little systems where you can they’re all colour coded and you know you can you know have your dates on there but we just use black bags. But then one thing I like about that was you could again kind of mix things. So we have like you know I do a couple of cubes of spinach and then maybe a couple of cubes of apples and you know maybe a couple of cubes of you know carrots or something then you can mix them up and you have I mean I know I guess I feel like I have more variety that way.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah and we like I said we were just if it was what I was eating then it was what they were eating. And really the amount of time that I had to blend anything for them was so short and the big picture I mean I’m talking maybe 2 months. By 8 months they had a pretty solid [inaudible] like I give them just cubes of things and honestly by 10 or 11 months my boys where eating pretty much everything.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh that’s great.
SHELLY STEELY: I mean anything that we could eat.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And they still do. You know they’re toddler so there are days when they have preferences and these days they’re favourite thing to do is play dump truck with their food.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh gosh.
SHELLY STEELY: You know pick up dump it out.
SUNNY GAULT: Oh my gosh.
SHELLY STEELY: But they…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: I hope you really had a really good sweeper.
SHELLY STEELY: I have two hungry dogs.
SUNNY GAULT: Oh there you go.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh even better.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah but you know it was in the long run I mean making baby food was I almost found it kind of like therapeutic it felt like something good that I had control over. It helps me feel like a little more in charge of things that are going on but it’s such short period of time in the long run.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. I think we did puree well. We did the purees with the twins for you know probably I’m guessing about 4 months but then as you said I think when they got between 10-12 months they’re doing just a lot more solids and you know just regular food in pieces so you know and then I had you know I made things in batches so I had sort of a supply in the freezer that you know that I could just kind of pull out. It was nice.
It was definitely a lot more and less work. Thanks so much everybody for joining us today and for more information about homemade baby food for your twins or for more information about any of our speakers and panellists, you can visit our episode page on our website. Now this conversation continues for members of our Twin Talks club and after the show our panellist are going to talk about some of their baby food making oops. So for more information about the Twin Talks club you visit our website on www.newmommymedia.com .
[Theme Music]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So here’s a question from one of our listeners. This comes from Sandy of Kansas. She writes I’m pregnant with twins. I’m not very far along yet so I’m still nervous and praying that they both make it through the first trimester safe and sound. But I would love some advice at the mean time. Anything different that I needed to do with my diet besides ingest more calories, any special gear for pregnancy and beyond that I need to make sure that I have. I’m really trying to learn everything I can so any and all advice is greatly appreciated.
JONAROSE FEINBERG: Hi Sandy. This is JonaRose Feinberg. I’m an IBCLC, momma of twins and editor of breastfeedingtwins.org. As I’m sure you are already learning there are some things about expecting twins that are a bit different from being pregnant with one baby at a time. Here are some things to think about and do during pregnancy. First and most importantly listen to your body.
Some moms find a need to make a lot of lifestyle and dietary changes while they’re pregnant and some don’t need to change much of anything. Some moms are up and about in their normal activity levels and some need to limit their activities early on. [inaudible 00:39:59] of so many things, the previous activity level, the child condition and the unique circumstances of your own pregnancy.
There is no single set of rules that works for everyone. Please check with your own child care provider to help you make decisions about your own unique pregnancy. Many nutritionists suggest increasing not only your overall calorie intake but specifically your protein intake while pregnant with multiples. Protein helps your baby’s development and while many moms carry their twins to 37 weeks or more, some moms deliver early. It’s important to ensure that your babies are growing well early on.
It’s definitely [inaudible] live in milkshakes and cheeseburgers but you may want to incorporate additional protein sources in your overall diet. Lots of moms like making [inaudible] with protein powder because it’s an easy way to get a lot of healthy ingredients and extra protein into one meal. I recommend a book called When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets or Quads by Barbara Luke for a really good explanation of diet and nutrition during the multiples pregnancy.
To keep you more comfortable, I strongly suggest adding extra pillows to your sleeping arrangements. You may want several pillows maybe one behind your back and another between your legs or you may be most comfortable with a long body pillow or other maternity pillows to support your growing belly. Many moms also find it more comfortable using the belly support band later in pregnancy to help support their growing mid-section. Sometimes you can have your care provider prescribed a special band or get one from maternity specialty store.
Finally, pregnancy is great time to reach out to other moms. Join your local twins club or reach out to other moms of multiples online. Local groups often have expectant [inaudible] moms groups you can attend now to get advice from moms who recently been through the adventure of pregnancy. Know that local clubs have different personalities, programs and offerings. If one group is not a great match, you may be able to find another nearby or online that will meet your needs.
Again congratulations on your pregnancy. Take it easy keep them cooking and enjoy this new adventure and visit me online at www.breastfeedingtwins.org for more information and tips.
[Theme Music]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Well, that wraps up our show for today. We appreciate you listening to Twin Talks.
Don’t forget to check our sister show:
• Preggie Pals for expecting parents
• Our show The Boob Group for moms who breastfeed their babies and
• Parent Savers, your parenting resource on-the-go.
This is Twin Talks parenting times two.
[Disclaimer]
This has been a New Mommy Media production. Information and material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Statements and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. Though information in which areas are related to be accurate, it is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, Medical or advisor care and should not be used for diagnosing or treating health care problem or disease or prescribing any medications. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified health care provider.
SUNNY GAULT: New Mommy Media is expanding our line up of shows for new and expecting parents. If you have an idea for a new series or if you’re a business or organization interested in joining our network of shows through a co-branded podcast, visit www.NewMommyMedia.com
[00:34:30]
[End of Audio]
Episode Transcript
Twin Talks
Homemade Baby Food for Twins
[00:00:00]
Please be advised, this transcription was performed from a company independent of New Mommy Media, LLC. As such, translation was required which may alter the accuracy of the transcription.
[Theme Music]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Is mushy brown puree on the horizon for your twins or you looking for something more interesting when you introduce solid foods? If you’re thinking about getting your babies fresh homemade food, stay tune to learn the essentials. Joining us today is our panel twin parents who are here to talk about homemade baby food for twins. This is Twin Talks.
[Theme Music/Intro]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Welcome to Twin Talks, broadcasting from birth education center of San Diego. Twin Talks is your weekly online on the go support group for expecting and new parents of twins. I’m your host Christine Stewart-Fitzgerald. Have you hear about the Twin Talks club? Our members get bonus content after each new show plus special giveaways and discounts.
You can subscribe to our monthly Twin Talks newsletter and learn about the latest episodes available. And another way for you to stay connected is by downloading our free Twin Talks app and is available from most smart phones. Well before we get started, let’s go around our room and see who where is here to share with us about their experience about baby food. So let’s see here, Sunny?
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah. So I’m just kind of getting my feet wet in these whole things. So hey everyone I’m Sunny and I’m a mommy to four children. Sayer is my oldest, Urban is my middle guy and then my twins are Ainsley and Addison. They were exclusively breastfed up until about maybe 7 months. They are now 8 months and now we’re starting to incorporate some stuff but I would say they’re still like 90% breastfed.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Wow.
SUNNY GAULT: Because I just well I’m honestly because I’m lazy. I have tried to do some puree stuff and it’s messy. I thought it was messy on one baby you know with my singletons and now I don’t know you guys usually fed your babies when they were at that age but like it’s like if I start to feed one the other one cries and I’m so like I have to get two spoons out at once and anyways the whole thing is just more than I could handle right now. I’m so breastfeeding as much.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: You could’ve end but you’re ready to dive right in.
SUNNY GAULT: I mean I am and I’m certainly interested in learning about how to make baby food. We didn’t even consider it with my singleton. It was just easier to go to the store, buy the stuff and it wasn’t really big concern of mine. And I’m sure we’re going to talk about this later on the show but you know now it’s two financially there’s just some things to consider and you honestly want the best for your babies. I’m more looking at the ingredients going okay there’s more than one reason really to consider making our own. So I’m excited to learn from you guys today.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Awesome and Shelly.
SHELLY STEELY: Hey I’m Shelly. I’m the producer here at Twin Talks. I have identical twin boys who just turned two and I am 35 weeks with a singleton girl. So we’ll be getting back in the baby food soon. We so we started right on 6 months with the boys because I think first time mom are always eager and you know I kind of like Sunny is if I’ve known so much of a hassle it was by the way that longer and for us it was a 100% finances we could not afford.
Jars or pouches I mean they are expensive so we made everything at home for the boys. I think I might have bought I don’t know a couple of here and there for traveling or out and about but I mean really times two the cost was and then my boys are big eaters so we just it was kind of the decision was made for us but it ended up working out really well and they’re I mean they’re fantastic eaters as usually there are nothing they won’t try. So I’m excited to get talking about it.
Before we jump in I want to let the listeners know that we have a virtual panelist program. So for those of you who can’t make it into the studio but want to participate still. You can follow us on Facebook or Twitter and you can also use the #twintalksvp to be part of the conversation from home.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Awesome. And I’m your host Christine Stewart-Fitzgerald and I have a let’s see identical girls who will be 5 in the next month and a half and so it’s been a while since we’ve done you know the baby food but we thought that was one of our things and yeah Shelly we are also motivated by a lot of it by cost.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So we did that and I do have a singleton who is she’s almost two and we also did baby food. We took a little bit of a different approach called you know baby [inaudible 00:04:44] weaning which we will talk about. So I think there’s kind of some different ways to approach the whole you know the homemade baby food making and I’m sure we can look at the pros and cons of everything.
[Theme Music/Intro]
SUNNY GAULT: Okay so we have a fun segment today it’s called “We’re expecting what?” and this is a segment that we like to do. It’s all about when you guys first found out that you are pregnant with twins and the funny stories that happen shortly thereafter and this comes from Amber. Amber writes I found out I was pregnant when I was 7 weeks and my 8 year old daughter was talking to my belly saying how there is two babies in there.
Well at 9 weeks I got my first [inaudible] and she was right there and I showed her the pic and she said “ha I told you there was two” and she kept telling me how they are girl and a boy. She went there with me to find out the sex and when the lady told us there was a boy and a girl she yelled “ha I told you I was right again, man mom when are you going to learn I’m always right”.
Okay well thanks Amber for sharing this story with us and if you guys have a funny story about finding out your pregnant with twins or even the gender of your twins, we would love to hear it. You can send us an email or call our voicemail at 619-866-4775.
[Theme Music]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Well today’s topic is homemade baby food for twins and today we’re chatting with our expert here on the studio, our panelist about the logistics of making homemade baby foods. So hi thanks for joining us. In our introduction we touched a little bit on some of the reasons why each of us chose to do baby food and we said cost is one of them.
SUNNY GAULT: Yes.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: My gosh I mean I don’t know I know for myself I’ve bought a little bit of jarred food just for the convenience of it and I mean if I recall I mean it was like at least if I can find on sale it was at least a dollar a jar.
SUNNY GAULT: It depends on what you buy right?
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah. I mean we try to get all of our food pretty cheaply. We try to you know go to the best stores for the best deals and do all that kind of stuff but you know it and it also depends on what age too like the really basic puree stuff is always cheaper but once you get into like you know I don’t even know the ages that they put on but the chunkier you know they got different stages usually.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yes.
SUNNY GAULT: And if something really has home noodles on it or something like that I mean there’s like things you can buy as an adult that would probably just as filling so I mean though they charged you like you know a lot more for those types of foods so.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. Yeah and then of course you get it I mean if it’s organic…
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Or it’s you know GMO free or gluten free or I mean there’s a cost to it too you know.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah so I mean there’s the jar which is kind of what most people think of initially and they’re fairly I mean 50 cents to a dollar depending on where you get them and how many of them you buy at once but I mean if you’re kids are anything like mine then each one will eat the entire jar and that’s you know 2 dollars for breakfast, 2 dollars for lunch, 2 dollar for I mean it adds up you know. You don’t want to be spending dollar and dollars and once they get a little bit bigger they’re easting two jars or three jars…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh my gosh.
SHELLY STEELY: I mean I’ve heard people you know their kids they eat they’re hungry so and that’s a lot of money on food that you can’t use for anything else.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right.
SHELLY STEELY: You know it’s not part of your budget already and then some people had mention they had a problem where their kids wouldn’t finish the jar…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yes.
SHELLY STEELY: And you can’t put a jar back in the fridge…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yes.
SHELLY STEELY: Because once you put [inaudible] into something else and yeah it was just overwhelming for us in terms of cost and so we just you know I’ve heard from other people making your own food was better, fresher, less expensive and really not very time consuming so that was kind of where and in nutrition also you’re now controlling the food I mean…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Because you know what’s in it.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: And I think that’s probably one of the biggest things is just you know I mean I don’t know I’m trying to avoid process foods as much as I can in general but I mean like you that sometimes you think oh it would say like 100% natural but I mean what does that really mean? You know it’s like then you start looking at these ingredients and they have these preservatives to maintain freshness and…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: You know and oh then there’s like you know…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah how much citric acid? Was it [inaudible]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Citric acid. Yeah. Exactly or zinc oxide you know for color and it’s like really.
SUNNY GAULT: You know I’m starting now as I mention to feed my twins soon and I have one twin that will pretty much eat anything except meat stuff. That stuff oh my gosh I don’t even know if I would feed it to my dog. But I keep thinking they need it but then I’ve heard this quote from a lactation consultant that food before one is just for fun.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh.
SUNNY GAULT: And I’m like kind of like in my head like okay we’re kind of just playing around with food right now. It’s not really they don’t really need it nutritionally because I’m still breastfeeding them so much and but anyways my one twin will eat anything the other one even the basic stuff that is like stage one puree stuff she is having trouble with and it’s not just at first it was like she just didn’t know what to do with it you know she was like what’s this in my mouth but even bananas she’s just kind of like and bananas are sweet like you…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: know you think that that if anything you know that that would be something that she would eat so I’m also having an issue with one is taking to it really quickly and the other one is just like not so much just give me the boob…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: You know.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. So it may take time just sort of just you know introduce a few things and see if maybe they take on you know to one thing one flavor…
SHELLY STEELY: One yeah…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Or not and then yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: One of the benefits of making your own food I think over buying it is different tastes and textures. So some babies don’t like the pureed texture. You can try something like chunky like some babies will respond better to a chunkier texture like a you know like an avocado just mash up versus…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Like something pureed you know a piece of a banana instead of a banana mango palp so I think for it was helpful for us to have the options and my kids also didn’t like to be fed at all. If I try to put a spoon on their mouth they just took the spoon out of my hand which it was a really messy it’s still really messy I’m not even going to lie.
Meal time has always been a disaster around our house but it was easier with two like I would preload a spoon you know here’s some avocado, here’s some sweet potato, mush it on to the spoon and then give them the spoon and then my hands are free to eat. So I mean that turned out it was really kind of convenient for us that we let them you know here’s your food on the tray have at it and I can eat my own food. I mean I think…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: And that’s kind of like more of the baby led weaning approach.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Where the kids get to sort of decide at what pace they want to eat and yeah…
SHELLY STEELY: And we could do both you know some foods I mean I was uncomfortable giving them whole pieces of chicken you know that seem terrifying from the choking stand point. So you know you can puree something but then like I would preload it on the spoon for about just to make sure it was thick enough to stick to the spoon. You know so we like I said we did a mix of things but…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: [inaudible] so you’ve mentioned as far as like what kind of foods did you introduce? I know I mean we did you know a lot of I mean let’s just say vegetables. I mean everybody wants their kids to try different vegetables. So…
SHELLY STEELY: So we started slow with kind of one food at a time like they recommend for allergy reasons though we really didn’t space it out very much just one food one day, add another food the next day and really just for the first month and after that it was kind of like free for all you know anything.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Once we kind of saw they didn’t react to anything it was whatever we were eating and I actually have never eaten this healthy in my life as I did when my kids started eating. Because I wanted to set kind of a good model so we would a lot of banana, avocado, sweet potato and those are all things that you just mash and put it on a spoon and then we have to you know I would my crave was sweet potato and one potato would feed you know the three of us for dinner. I’ve had half and I give each of them half mash up and kind of let them have at it. For vegetables I did puree some peas initially but once again like once their eight to nine months I just gave them the peas…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: By…
SHELLY STEELY: Whole?
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: You know something cubes of sweet potatoes…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: And you and those are great too and if you wanted things I know I did a lot of things was I would mixed some fruits and vegetables so they get a little bit of sweet and savory together. So maybe like you know doing like a peas and maybe with apples. I mean apples seem to go with a lot of stuff.
SUNNY GAULT: Oh yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So.
SUNNY GAULT: Bananas too . . .
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: We actually use apple juice when we made the meat puree. I know it sounds weird but you can…
SUNNY GAULT: Oh you made it sweeter.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah. Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: We would what I would do is I would cook chicken in the crack pot like just plain chicken breast with apple juice as the liquid in there like a whole crack pot full of chicken shredded up and then I had one of those baby food makers because I got it as a gift but I mean you could use any blender food processor to make baby food. It only takes a minute. So that’s how we did meats just a little bit of juice and then chicken or beef or pork and blended up.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: How about grains? Because I know sometimes and right now a lot of people are you know gluten free and what kind of grains do you use with your kids? I know we were we did a lot of oatmeal at the beginning and then you know one thing I’ve used a lot is Polenta so you can you know cook that up and when it hardens you know it can form sort of like you know little pieces that they you know kids can pick up but it’s still ultimately squishy and you know they’re easy to digest. So…
SUNNY GAULT: That’s sounds a good idea I didn’t think of that.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah so we skip the baby cereal. You know a lot of people the old recommendation used to be 4 months start with some rice cereal and because of the iron added to it but that added fortified iron is poorly absorbed to begin with and so we didn’t really see a reason to give them kind of you know fake iron supplement. We did oatmeal only when we were eating it too.
That was another thing we basically tried to make sure that the boys just had whatever we were eating so it wasn’t something that I would be eating then I wouldn’t give it to them and that again was kind of our thinking like let’s have them have the same eating habits that we do but for grains we did a lot of oatmeal and then bread actually. And there’s this really cool recipe we found, you take, you cut of the crust of bread and you spread like a piece of like whole grain bread if you just spread a layer of apple sauce on it and roll it up and you can put it in…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Hmmm roll it up.
SHELLY STEELY: You roll it up…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Okay.
SHELLY STEELY: And you put it in the microwave for 30 to 60 seconds and it dries completely out and so you end up with kind of like tether almost.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Ha.
SHELLY STEELY: So it’s like a hard. It turns the bread hard you know because the and then the apple sauce keeps it together and then they could just chew on it. So those were great for keeping them busy while you’re fixing dinner.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: That’s yummy.
SHELLY STEELY: So it’s kind of like a healthy homemade baby tether.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh.
SHELLY STEELY: And the boys love those. I got it from another friend, another twin mom on one of my groups and it was I mean it was kind of like a life saver because it’s got apple sauce so it’s kind of sweet you know it’s got that harder texture so they can chew on it and whole grain plus healthy.
SUNNY GAULT: Oh that’s perfect for my girls now…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
SUNNY GAULT: Because they are they put everything in their mouth. They’re teething like no teeth yet but I know it’s coming.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Wow.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah it’s awesome.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So you know what we’re going to take a break when we come back we’re going to talk about some of the equipment that you might need in making baby food.
[Theme Music]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Well welcome back today we’re talking with our expert panelists about the different ways of introducing foods to be either puree or chunks or kind of baby led weaning and the use of texture. So Shelly and Sunny how did you introduce texture? Did you do puree foods completely or do you leave some chunks in there or you know did you do the baby led weaning approach where you’re you know doing in you know big pieces?
SHELLY STEELY: So we never puree-ted all the way down but your typical baby food would be like I said we occasionally bought some of those like single flavor pouches or jars but everything was chunky so if my kids are having avocado I literally just like mash up the avocado with a fork and put it on a spoon. Sweet potato mash with the fork and some butter and put it on a spoon.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: I and you know I personally think I think that’s a great way to go because when you have that variety of texture I think it really forces the babies to get used to that feeling of something solid you know on their mouth and it’s like okay they have to going to use their palette to kind of mash it down and it’s I mean it’s soft enough and probably small enough that they can swallow it but it’s not just sort of oozing all over the place you know.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: It’s true. And you know your kids I mean by boys did really well with chunky textures. Big pieces they took to eating very well but I mean some kids respond better to those thinner purees and that’s okay too. So making your own baby food I think really gives you control over like you mention your girls having different preferences I mean you can make them different textures and I think that’s one of the huge benefits is you know my kid responds well to this so I’m going to make it this way for him. You know I mean especially…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Customize it.
SHELLY STEELY: Especially with twins because I mean my boys are identical I just mean they’re the same but they’re they had pretty similar taste and textures but even on the foods they chose to eat more of more how much of it they just eat at once they were different and then you know if you’re looking at fraternal twins they’re100% developmentally different you know. They have different likes, different dislikes, different preferences and so you don’t have to feed them exactly the same you know you can kind of say this is my texture kid and this one is going to need you know things a little bit more puree. This kid loves her fruit and he’s a little more into his vegetables. So you can kind of had that flexibility I think.
SUNNY GAULT: I think one of the nice things in defence of purees a little bit though is that if you’re transitioning from breast milk I think it’s more of an easy or could be an easier transition just consistency wise I mean especially if you have babies that really love breast milk and you can’t get them off the breast and like I felt that it was a little bit more messy for sure but a little bit more like breast milk like transition.
SHELLY STEELY: I actually made my boys oatmeal with breast milk.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: You know so instead of buying I mean we bought pre-package oat meal I didn’t roll my own oats or anything but you know instead of making it with water regular milk I made the food with breast milk and you can use breast milk to thin out a puree if it’s too chunky or too think. And you can also use formula if you’re formula feeding too. So that’s another option for transitions you can kind of customize how much should I put into here.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Now that’s smart. Now how about for flavours too I mean what did you do to make it more interesting? Because I know we talk about I mean fruits most kids adapt well to fruits but then kind of going back to the whole vegetables you know how do you make that interesting? Did you guys use seasonings? I mean I know I with my twins it was pretty you know bland and straight forward.
I was going under the rules about well don’t add salt and don’t and don’t add butter and you know all this things like oh no we’re going to have these obese kids but then when I did you know with my singleton you know I felt like you know what I think there is really nothing wrong with butter a little bit of salt and a little bit I mean I use spices. I use all the regular spices in my spice cabinet and I mean she really enjoyed it. Because I felt like you know I want to introduce vegetables and really you know get her palette you know excited then why shouldn’t she have what adults are having. You know as long as it’s not harmful. So…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah that was kind of our approach. So we started with more vegetables then less fruits and then just kind of adding in whatever but yeah butter I mean babies brains are developing they need fat you know so butter, coconut oil, olive oil, the things that you know whatever you normally use to kind of fatten up your food at home, babies can have too. And sea salt especially that really good…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: You know we got some of that like Himalayan pink sea salt…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Just a little tiny bit of that…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Goes a long way and there’s you know the mineral in it are good too for taste and texture and really any seasonings. We try to avoid anything that would be too much of an irritant so only a little bit of cinnamon you know very I don’t think we use pepper for a while. But just you know a little bit but when you think about it in other cultures around the world they don’t sell jarred plain baby food.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right. Right.
SHELLY STEELY: And you know babies eat what their parents eat.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: What parents eat. Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And this whole idea that baby food has to be bland and simple and very mushy is kind of this manufactured idea…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right.
SHELLY STEELY: You know all the process food and so I think kind of just looking outside your box if your child was raise somewhere else they would be eating heavily seasoned or heavily spice foods.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: It’s not harmful. It’s actually delicious.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh exactly. You know I have to say I’m a big fan of Indian food. Now when I was pregnant I mean actually with all the kids I ate a lot of curries so I kind of think I sort of prep them they got it when I was pregnant you know the amniotic food they got with the breast milk. So when they were doing baby food I actually did some sort of [inaudible 00:22:14] you know turmeric and you know some of the different you know like a there’s [inaudible] you know a little bit of those and I’m not kidding you my like today all my kids like curries.
SHELLY STEELY: My boys favourite thing to eat is [inaudible] I mean…
SUNNY GAULT: Oh yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And it’s my favourite place to take them because it’s inexpensive.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: It’s family friendly. You get a lot of food. It comes up fast.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yes.
SHELLY STEELY: Your check is up [inaudible] no it’s great I mean and they’ll even I mean you know just now we’re starting to give them their own brought because they’re kind of learning with that but we would just put noodles and meat in a bowl for them…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And then give them bites of our brought and it didn’t matter how spicy or heavily seasoned they would just sip it right down. So….
SUNNY GAULT: I’m hungry now you guys you make me hungry.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. So [inaudible] how about with meat? So it sounds like I think you’ve given your boys like little pieces of chicken and [inaudible]?
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah. So a lot of the reason that they recommend baby cereal is because of the iron in it but that’s it’s an additive you know there’s not iron isn’t naturally occurring in rice cereal.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: So it’s just its fortified and so the new recommendations they’re switching towards making meat kind of a first food.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And I think in Canada actually that is their first recommendation like meat should be your first food. Organ meats actually if you could…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh interesting.
SHELLY STEELY: Because the fat is good for their brains. We didn’t go that far…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: But it’s you know we…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: We did salmon.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Salmon I think you know a salmon has such a mild flavour to it. I mean I think that is such a great food I mean and tuna too sometimes you know even just you know good canned tuna with just you know a little bit of flavour. I don’t do the whole mayonnaise thing I’m not a big mayonnaise fan but I mean I think sometimes with just a little bit of seasoning or lemon juice on it.
SHELLY STEELY: And you know if you’re not because I didn’t eat mayonnaise for years old now I’m a little bit more open but you can mix tuna with Greek yogurt instead.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah that’s a no I like that.
SHELLY STEELY: Because it’s got that protein and it’s a simple food then you’re not giving your kids mayonnaise.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: But yeah I made tuna salad with Greek yogurt and actually with even like little bits of onions. My children love onions which…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh wow.
SHELLY STEELY: A bit strange right you wouldn’t think but now they think that they’re great just another vegetable to chew on.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh awesome. So okay well we talk about some of like some of the things you can make for babies but how do you actually do that? Now I think Shelly you mentioned you had you know a baby food maker which in fact I had one too but I think most folks probably do it just the old fashioned way and I think it’s usually I mean the most people used just steam the food and so I think you know…
SUNNY GAULT: Steam and mash it.
SHELLY STEELY: So we always steam stuff that we would normally steam so vegetables would get steamed but we didn’t steam fruit. I never made my own apple sauce. That’s not that was more work than I was willing to invest.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: But I know some people who did but like fruit we just we would just give whole but if we did want to blend it you know occasionally like strawberries you can just chop them up and put them on a blender. You don’t need to steam a strawberry. There’s no…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right. Right. Right.
SHELLY STEELY: But it was really I mean it was really simple especially in the beginning because your just doing a lot of simple foods so like I said I microwave a potato when they were first eating solids you know 6-7 months. I would completely mash it with the fork and put it in a bowl with a spoon for them. Once they got a little bit better with their hands, I would cut it into smaller cubes and then you know eventually just big pieces.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right. Yeah. I know with like my singleton I would you know buy the baby carrots you know they’re shaved down carrot anyway and then steam them and then I actually gave it to her whole so she could hold on to the carrots. So they’ll be soft so she could just you know bite in and sort of you know mush I mean a little bit resistance but you know really soft enough that she could hold on to it. So I mean it was great because I feel like okay I just cook I don’t really have to do any prep really.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah and I know so you can like puree freeze make large batches. We tried once or twice I made like a big batch and froze it but to be honest if you’re feeding two kids I mean you’re going to go through that faster than it’s even worth putting it in the freezers so I found that the act of like getting it out, defrosting it, heating it to the right temperature took as just as much time as making it so we really didn’t do a lot of freezing or storage or and we really didn’t do it in advance. So I remember a lot of moms saying like oh you can make huge batches keep them because you can freeze them on like on ice cube trays.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Right. Like that’s actually what we did now I mean I did take the with my twins I did do it in batches and my reasoning with that you know I went to the store and I get like get maybe a big bunch of fresh spinach. And so you know the shop life of that wasn’t you know terribly long so I would you know steam the spinach and then yeah like we’d you know let it you know kind of condenses down. And for freezing we use this silicon baking sheets…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So there’s and if you go to like the big box stores they have this sheets that are you know there, they call them like browny bites…
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: [inaudible] little cubes and it’s silicon so basically you can kind of twist it and the thing is just you know that when they’re once they’re frozen they just pop out. And then I didn’t buy any fancy storage container. I know there are some nice little systems where you can they’re all colour coded and you know you can you know have your dates on there but we just use black bags. But then one thing I like about that was you could again kind of mix things. So we have like you know I do a couple of cubes of spinach and then maybe a couple of cubes of apples and you know maybe a couple of cubes of you know carrots or something then you can mix them up and you have I mean I know I guess I feel like I have more variety that way.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah and we like I said we were just if it was what I was eating then it was what they were eating. And really the amount of time that I had to blend anything for them was so short and the big picture I mean I’m talking maybe 2 months. By 8 months they had a pretty solid [inaudible] like I give them just cubes of things and honestly by 10 or 11 months my boys where eating pretty much everything.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh that’s great.
SHELLY STEELY: I mean anything that we could eat.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: And they still do. You know they’re toddler so there are days when they have preferences and these days they’re favourite thing to do is play dump truck with their food.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh gosh.
SHELLY STEELY: You know pick up dump it out.
SUNNY GAULT: Oh my gosh.
SHELLY STEELY: But they…
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: I hope you really had a really good sweeper.
SHELLY STEELY: I have two hungry dogs.
SUNNY GAULT: Oh there you go.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Oh even better.
SUNNY GAULT: Yeah.
SHELLY STEELY: Yeah but you know it was in the long run I mean making baby food was I almost found it kind of like therapeutic it felt like something good that I had control over. It helps me feel like a little more in charge of things that are going on but it’s such short period of time in the long run.
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Yeah. I think we did puree well. We did the purees with the twins for you know probably I’m guessing about 4 months but then as you said I think when they got between 10-12 months they’re doing just a lot more solids and you know just regular food in pieces so you know and then I had you know I made things in batches so I had sort of a supply in the freezer that you know that I could just kind of pull out. It was nice.
It was definitely a lot more and less work. Thanks so much everybody for joining us today and for more information about homemade baby food for your twins or for more information about any of our speakers and panellists, you can visit our episode page on our website. Now this conversation continues for members of our Twin Talks club and after the show our panellist are going to talk about some of their baby food making oops. So for more information about the Twin Talks club you visit our website on www.newmommymedia.com .
[Theme Music]
CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: So here’s a question from one of our listeners. This comes from Sandy of Kansas. She writes I’m pregnant with twins. I’m not very far along yet so I’m still nervous and praying that they both make it through the first trimester safe and sound. But I would love some advice at the mean time. Anything different that I needed to do with my diet besides ingest more calories, any special gear for pregnancy and beyond that I need to make sure that I have. I’m really trying to learn everything I can so any and all advice is greatly appreciated.
JONAROSE FEINBERG: Hi Sandy. This is JonaRose Feinberg. I’m an IBCLC, momma of twins and editor of breastfeedingtwins.org. As I’m sure you are already learning there are some things about expecting twins that are a bit different from being pregnant with one baby at a time. Here are some things to think about and do during pregnancy. First and most importantly listen to your body.
Some moms find a need to make a lot of lifestyle and dietary changes while they’re pregnant and some don’t need to change much of anything. Some moms are up and about in their normal activity levels and some need to limit their activities early on. [inaudible 00:39:59] of so many things, the previous activity level, the child condition and the unique circumstances of your own pregnancy.
There is no single set of rules that works for everyone. Please check with your own child care provider to help you make decisions about your own unique pregnancy. Many nutritionists suggest increasing not only your overall calorie intake but specifically your protein intake while pregnant with multiples. Protein helps your baby’s development and while many moms carry their twins to 37 weeks or more, some moms deliver early. It’s important to ensure that your babies are growing well early on.
It’s definitely [inaudible] live in milkshakes and cheeseburgers but you may want to incorporate additional protein sources in your overall diet. Lots of moms like making [inaudible] with protein powder because it’s an easy way to get a lot of healthy ingredients and extra protein into one meal. I recommend a book called When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets or Quads by Barbara Luke for a really good explanation of diet and nutrition during the multiples pregnancy.
To keep you more comfortable, I strongly suggest adding extra pillows to your sleeping arrangements. You may want several pillows maybe one behind your back and another between your legs or you may be most comfortable with a long body pillow or other maternity pillows to support your growing belly. Many moms also find it more comfortable using the belly support band later in pregnancy to help support their growing mid-section. Sometimes you can have your care provider prescribed a special band or get one from maternity specialty store.
Finally, pregnancy is great time to reach out to other moms. Join your local twins club or reach out to other moms of multiples online. Local groups often have expectant [inaudible] moms groups you can attend now to get advice from moms who recently been through the adventure of pregnancy. Know that local clubs have different personalities, programs and offerings. If one group is not a great match, you may be able to find another nearby or online that will meet your needs.
Again congratulations on your pregnancy. Take it easy keep them cooking and enjoy this new adventure and visit me online at www.breastfeedingtwins.org for more information and tips.
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CHRISTINE STEWART-FITZGERALD: Well, that wraps up our show for today. We appreciate you listening to Twin Talks.
Don’t forget to check our sister show:
• Preggie Pals for expecting parents
• Our show The Boob Group for moms who breastfeed their babies and
• Parent Savers, your parenting resource on-the-go.
This is Twin Talks parenting times two.
[Disclaimer]
This has been a New Mommy Media production. Information and material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Statements and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. Though information in which areas are related to be accurate, it is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, Medical or advisor care and should not be used for diagnosing or treating health care problem or disease or prescribing any medications. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified health care provider.
SUNNY GAULT: New Mommy Media is expanding our line up of shows for new and expecting parents. If you have an idea for a new series or if you’re a business or organization interested in joining our network of shows through a co-branded podcast, visit www.NewMommyMedia.com
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