Archive for the 'Feeding' Category

Book review: Twin Set

Published
by
twinutero
on July 31, 2008
in Blogging & writing, Books, Diapers & potties, Fair & green, Feeding, Getting Around, Getting Help and Sleep
. 4 Comments

I read this book with a twinge of nostalgia – and nausea.

My twins have now outgrown all-night breast-bottle feedings, infant bouts of inexplicable crying and multiple poops a day. The toddler years are not exactly peaceful, but that sickening sleep deprivation and round-the-clock care of the first year is over. Reading Twin Set brought back both the difficulties of those first few months as well as the sheer amazement of giving birth to, and caring for two tiny twins.

Twin Set is a practical guide to pregnancy, birth and the first years of parenting twins. The book doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive guide to parenting in general. If you want details on prenatal care, breastfeeding or toilet training, you’ll have to supplement with other books. But Twin Set does a good job of highlighting differences between parenting twins and parenting singletons. And as mothers of twins know, almost everything is different: pregnancy, birth, post-natal care (both for you and the babies), feeding, bathing, getting out of the house, discipline, starting school – and everything in between.

The best part of this book is that the advice is not simply the authors’ opinion but was gathered through a survey. According to the introduction, the authors surveyed 300 mothers of twins “from around the country” (presumably the US). The scientist in me wanted to know much more about this survey: how it was conducted; what questions were asked; how the mothers were chosen etc. Still, there is wisdom among 300 mothers, and that shows in the book.

Twin Set would be most useful for parents about to give birth to twins. No one is reading just after the birth, and within a year or so you will have figured it all out anyway. But for the parents-to-be there are many useful insights: just how difficult bathing two slippery, crying infants can be; the importance of recording all feeding and pooping in the first few months because you’ll forget who did what and when; that grocery shopping will never be as quick and easy, partly because most shopping carts have only one kid’s seat.

I do have a couple of gripes with the book.

The information is very (although implicitly) US-centered. Some things, like a “Snap ‘N Go” or leaving your kids in the car while you run back to the house, may not make sense outside America.

I also got tired of the book’s cutesy language and general dumbing-down. Consultant pediatricians, for instance, are called “Mommy Doc” and “Daddy Doc”. Really, we can handle a real name and title! And I’ve yet to meet a mother who would spend precious alone-time getting a manicure or doing word-puzzles.

My biggest gripe was with the book’s slant on the environment. Buying bottled water by the case-load (or at all) is simply irresponsible. Trying filtering. And, sorry, teaching your kids to play with empty toilet rolls does not negate thousands of disposable diapers in the land fill. Yes, there is debate on cloth versus disposable diapers (see The Great Disposable Diaper Debate) but telling parents to just “stop worrying” rather than make a conscious and informed decision seems, again, irresponsible (as is failing to disclose Twin Sets partnership with Pampers!).

Gripes aside, this is a useful and realistic book for parents embarking on the head-spinning adventure of raising multiples.

(Thanks to Random House for the review copy.)

Update on bisphenol A

Published
by
twinutero
on April 16, 2008
in Fair & green and Feeding
. 0 Comments

Our children may be among the last to consume bisphenol A (BPA) with their milk and formula. Or so we hope.

Since I wrote on using Medela baby bottles, public pressure to ban BPA has heightened and the availability of BPA-free baby products has soared.

And then… one of the biggest producers of polycarbonate bottles and the strongest defender of BPA safety, Nalgene, launched a line of BPA-free drinking bottles. Read more commentary on Z Recommends.

And now… Health Canada has announced that it is “taking action” on BPA. The department has completed its risk assessment, which focused on infants and newborns, and is proposing a ban on polycarbonate baby bottles.

Here is the story according to the Globe and Mail.

Here is Health Canada’s offical news release of April 18. Make of it what you will.

Also see information on BPA from the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment.

The day we gave the bottles away

Published
by
twinutero
on April 6, 2008
in Fair & green, Feeding, Guilt and Sleep
. 0 Comments

It was overdue, long overdue.

Last weekend we finally rid the house of all baby bottles. Alex and Jon are over two, after all, and Thomas is three and a half. It was embarrassing to have them ask for a bottle in public or have visitors pass a load of empty bottles in the kitchen sink.

Mostly, we were tired of the dependency. Whenever the kids were sleepy, or upset or awake in the night, they would ask for a bottle of milk. They didn’t always get one, but they were rewarded often enough to keep asking.

Why did we wait so long? Because there never seemed a good time to take away something so obviously comforting. Had Thomas been an only child, or more than fifteen months older than his brothers, we would have weaned him long ago. But I don’t think he sees himself as older at all (well, except when it’s convenient) so it was hard to say yes to the twins and no to Thomas. We decided to wait until they were all ready to leave the bottles behind.

That, of course, could have been long ago. All three kids started drinking from sippy cups before they were one and from real cups before they were two. They didn’t need a bottle to have a drink. They sometimes needed a bottle to settle down, however. It was a habit, and with all the changes of the past six months (i.e., moving to a different hemisphere) we were reluctant to break the habit and further rock their world.

Last weekend, however, after a string of wakeful nights, we said enough. In the morning, we told the kids that today was a special day. We were going to pack up all the bottles and give them to some babies who need them more than we do. Everyone helped, Jon most enthusiastically. The bottles went into a bag; the bag went to “the babies”. In fact, the bottles went to the basement until we were sure we could handle life without the bottle crutch. Yesterday, they did go to less-fortunate children in a nearby township.

The transition was surprisingly easy. We always have an answer to “I want a bottle.” Jon usually pipes up with, “Some babies.” They have seen the bottles go into the bag and they know that babies, not boys, have milk in a bottle.

We’ve replaced nightly bottles with Klean Kanteen sippy cups. Klean Kanteen products are stainless steel, free of bisphenol-A, odorless and dripless. We bought them in Ottawa before we left (at Arbour). They are pricey however and the kids objected to the chill of holding a steel cup. So we found bottle insulators and now have the most expensive sippy cups on the planet.

But… we have no bottles.

High chairs for the high strung

Published
by
twinutero
on July 21, 2007
in Feeding
. 3 Comments

I recently came across a glossy photo of the “Nest” high chair. It’s a mod, almost Jetsons-style chair, looking something like a gum-ball on a chrome pedestal. First thought: very stylish. Second thought: my kids wouldn’t last a minute in that chair.

To be fair, I haven’t actually seen, much less tested a Nest (and given the price tag, I never will). Perhaps it is stable and fully toddler-proof. My skepticism is based solely on the rather, um, dynamic nature of my kids.

We started using “travel” high chairs when the kids were five or six months old. The type that clips directly to the kitchen table, like a canvas bucket hanging mid-air, is great for very young children who are just learning to sit up by themselves. It’s impossible to slip, lean or fall out of a well-placed travel seat. They also take up very little space, a necessity when you have three kids in high chairs.

Depending on the design (ours were from the UK) and provided that they are attached to a sturdy table, travel chairs can theoretically hold kids up to thirty pounds, or about two-years-old. But my kids, especially the twins, were too rambunctious for their travel seats well before two. With Alex at one end of the table, and Jon at the other, they would rock back and forth with such enthusiasm that the whole table would edge across the floor and the seats would bounce up and down on clips that suddenly seemed irresponsibly flimsy. It was a game for them – if only one child was seated the mood was much more subdued.

The travel seats were also impractical as the kids started grabbing their spoons, flinging cereal onto the table and finger-painting it into the canvas and metal clips of their chairs. I liked that the seats were not plastic, but not being plastic, they were a real pain to clean.

So we packed up the travel seats, and went in search of something more robust, easier to clean, small enough not take over our entire kitchen, and economical enough not to require a bank loan. We chose booster seats with detachable trays that attach to kitchen chairs. Ours are made by First Years, but there are many almost identical models.

These seats were great – at least for a while. They are very simple to clean, take little extra space, and with all the belts secured, seem safe. Within a few weeks, however, both twins learned how to remove the extra tray that comes with this seat (it’s like a covering for the main tray). We stopped using the extra trays. Alex then discovered that with the right leverage, the main tray also comes off. Faulty design or overly exuberant child? Either way, it’s pretty annoying. If the tray is off for any length of time, both Jon and Alex, apparently, stuff food down the open hole. There it collects, rotting or desiccating, between the booster seat and the kitchen chair, to be unearthed at a later date.

So, the new booster seats – as well as the chairs and floor underneath them – still require vigorous cleaning. And unfortunately, the competitive rocking and tipping of the high chairs has continued as well. Alex, being more boisterous in nature, started it, but Jon soon caught on. They rock with such force that the legs of the kitchen chair lift off the ground, and the entire seat, with child attached, is in danger of falling either forward or back. To prevent that, we nailed the kitchen chair to a piece of plywood on the floor.

In my prenatal class, I was told that twins are more than “double trouble”; that the mischief they create is not simply twice that of one child. Rather, twins act in synergy to achieve an exponentially greater amount of havoc. I suspect that is the root of our high chair problems. Individually, neither Alex nor Jon can be that far from the norm, and surely high chairs are tested before hitting the market. Perhaps they just need to be tested with twins….

Toddlers are picky eaters

Published
by
twinutero
on July 8, 2007
in Feeding
. 3 Comments

Not exactly a news flash. Parenting magazines write about it; baby food companies exploit it. Unfortunately, neither vitamin-enhanced toddler formula nor stealthily hidden vegetables will change the fact that toddlers generally eat what they want, and toss the rest to the floor – or to some well-fed family pet.

Thomas is our most mercurial eater. He has a ten meter anti-veggie-radar and extensive, apparently innate, knowledge of the supermarket snack food aisle. At times he seems to survive on milk, bread and hope for sweets, all other offerings being refused with tremendous drama. At other times, he will relish an apple, orange or soft-boiled egg as the most delectable treat.

When Thomas was about two and a half, we lost patience with his fussiness and our consequent evening routine (I make dinner; Thomas refuses it; Thomas is hungry and we are both awake by 3 am). We adopted a rather merciless alternative. Thomas must now finish all of his dinner or he sits in his “time out” place on the stairs. This was hell at first. Mealtimes became a very loud, stressful, unpleasant struggle, and Thomas spent a lot of time on the stairs. Within a few days, however, he learned to try what was in front of him, and more often than not, he liked it. He has since eaten salmon, stir-fry, curried chicken, veggie pancakes and everything else I have made for dinner.

I never thought I would resort to such tactics. I hate the thought of mixing healthy eating with punishment. Ideally, I would respect our children’s preferences, encourage them to eat when they are hungry, and foster a relaxed but adventuresome attitude toward food. Maybe this will come – but not during toddlerhood. For now, we have set our goals on a few more basic and realistic lessons:

  • We eat – or at least try – what has been made.
  • We sit together at the table for meals.
  • There are consequences for bad behaviour.
  • Mom and Dad determine what is, and what isn’t bad behaviour.

Alex and Jon haven’t yet been subjected to this regime. I think they’re too young for “time out” and they’re are not as choosy as Thomas. Alex will try everything and rejects little. He seems too eager to get on with life to linger over meals. He just fuels up and runs. Jon more obviously savours his meals, often using all six senses to explore his food. The result is a fabulous mess and a more discerning eater. He has a sweet-tooth (inherited from his mother) but will happily smear his body with plain yogurt, hummus, watermelon, and veggie burgers.

Here’s a quick list of the toddler foods that have worked best for us:

Plain yogurt. It’s cheaper than flavoured and I can control the amount of sugar by serving it plain or with molasses or fruit.

Organic raisins. Alex eats them by the handful. Grapes, and therefore raisins, can have high pesticide residues so I try to buy organic. See the Environmental Working Group’s Shoppers Guide.

Peanuts and cashews. High in fat and protein but allergenic. I give them to Thomas but not yet to the twins.

Fruit. Any type, but watermelon and apple sauce are most popular.

Hummus. High in protein, easy and cheap to make (although I usually just buy it).

Lasagna. Particularly good for hiding vegetables.

Eggs. Soft-boiled for Thomas; scrambled for the twins. This is our default dinner when there’s nothing else in the house.

As for recipe books, my two favourites are:

Rebar. From the Victoria, BC restaurant by the same name. The recipes are not quick-and-easy but I have made almost one third of the recipes in this book and they are all excellent and mostly kid-friendly.

The Best Vegetable Recipes. From the editors of Cook’s Illustrated. Turns out that vegetables taste much better if they are cooked properly. This book shows you how.