We planned a meal of banana at lunchtime today. I was optimistic – shouldn’t banana be the best baby food going? Sure, it has a reputation for getting everywhere and drying to a dark solid paste, and for being, well, interesting when it comes out the other end. But we were armed with a bib with sleeves, and nothing could defeat us.

I wanted to give Charlie his banana after he’d taken his milk. He had a long nap around 11am, so it ended up being about 2.00pm before we sat down with some sliced pear and banana for both of us. I had Charlie on my knee at first, but couldn’t manage both him and the plate, which threatened to end up being flipped onto Charlie’s face, so I popped him into the highchair. The banana was so soft that it simply squidged in his hand every time he picked it up, which was frustrating him. He was sucking merrily away at the pear, but then I was seized by a fit of self-doubt. Why was he sucking at the pear? Was he still hungry for milk? Perhaps he would suck a whole piece of pear right to the back of his mouth and then choke on it. I gave him more milk, and then ended up mashing up the banana and spoonfeeding it to him. He loved it and was soon grabbing at the spoon and cramming it into his mouth, but I feel like I’ve abandoned the principles of BLW; I shouldn’t be worried about getting as much food into him as I can, rather letting Charlie explore new textures and tastes at his own pace. On the other hand, Charlie really wanted the banana, and wasn’t ever going to be able to feed himself with it as fast as he wanted to.

In other news, we have had confirmation that Charlie has been ingesting and digesting food. From the nappies it looks as if both the pear and baby rice have been doing their jobs. Hooray! Can’t wait to see what the banana looks like. I googled ‘banana nappy’ to see if I could find out what is to come, but sadly no one has quite as bad taste as me, so there were no images to be found.