Starting a baby eating solids is a time of great trepidation for many parents. This might be because this transition from exclusive breastfeeding or formula feeding to family foods (which starts around 6 months and continues until between 18 and 24 months) is a very vulnerable time.

It's a time when patterns like "fussy" or picky eating, or babies not eating enough to meet their requirements can sneak in, leading to malnutrition or failure to thrive. Delays in developmental milestones around feeding can and often do occur unless good feeding and eating practices are set up, ideally from the start.

And of course, there's always the fear of choking.

No wonder this time can be such a big cause of stress for parents.

But in spite of the clear importance of this transition period, I don't think that it needs to be stressful or scary. I actually think that starting your baby on solids can be an enjoyable, fun and even relaxing time for kids and parents.

And in fact, by taking a deep breath and chilling out you can actually help your child learn to feed themselves in a timely manner, get all the nutrition they need, and have fun doing it.

​I have a 12 month old and a 3 year old and they have both been proficient, happy little eaters for as long as I can remember. Here's how I navigated starting my kids on solids when they were around 6 months old, and beyond, all whilst being responsibly lazy.
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I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Fiona Sutherland, host of the Mindful Dietitian Podcast and founder of the The Mindful Dietitian, which provides non-diet and body inclusive training for professionals and groups in Melbourne, worldwide, and online.

She’s not only a highly skilled dietitian trained in eating disorders, body image, mindfulness-based practices and HAES, but she’s dedicated to sharing her expertise and light-hearted but deep wisdom with other health professionals and groups. Her questions made it clear that she’s well-versed in podcasting and, being a dietitian, yoga teacher and mother of two herself, she's also very familiar with the overlap between the motherhood, yoga and "wellness" spheres!

I was especially humbled to hear that she’s read several of my articles and totally rates them! Wow. I can’t think of a better compliment.

If you want to hear us wax lyrical about motherhood, yoga culture and the BS inherent in the "wellness" spaces (including hear me share about my recent experiences as a new mum of two), tune into Episode 36 of the Mindful Dietitian Podcast.
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Listen here or search iTunes for the Mindful Dietitian Podcast (Episode 36).
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Having a baby is one of the most challenging things you’ll ever do.

Going through pregnancy, labour and delivery demands a lot from a woman - physically, mentally,  emotionally, and spiritually.

From the time we see that double line on the pregnancy test, many women spend hundreds of hours finding the right antenatal care providers. We read all the books, ask all the questions, and buy or borrow all the things we think a newborn baby needs

By the way, they mainly just need you, your boobs if you're breastfeeding / bottle if not, and your body warmth.

What we often fail to prepare ourselves for is what comes after the baby is born:

the months (and in some cases years) we spend recovering from this massive life event.

Our recovery from childbirth. The all important but under-acknowledged postpartum. And the desperate need we have, both as individuals and as a society, to nourish the mother during this time more than any other.

What you eat during the month after you give birth has the power to radically improve your strength and recovery.

And, it is said in Chinese medicine, what you eat and how well you take care of yourself during this crucial time has the power to impact your health 20, 30 or more YEARS down the track.

There are other important things to think about in your Golden Month, which I mention here - but of course, being a nutritionist, I believe the food you eat after having a baby is crucial.

Nutritional requirements during recovery and breastfeeding unsurprisingly increase, and in the case of some specific nutrients, quite significantly so.

If you're breastfeeding your requirements for protein, zinc, iodine and vitamin A literally double.

And to produce milk, you need to be getting more overall calories than even during your third trimester of pregnancy; around 500-600 calories more for the first six months postpartum if breastfeeding exclusively (as recommended by the World Health Organisation), which is an extra meal or 2-3 extra snacks a day.

Of course I don't recommend calorie counting and nothing is set in stone - listen to your hunger and fullness cues and you will be fine. Note: If you have a history of or current disordered eating you may find it difficult to follow your body's hunger and fullness cues, in which case seeing a HAES or non-diet health professional would be super helpful for you.

Even if you cannot or choose not to breastfeed, extra nutrition is required to heal from childbirth and replenish your body after nine months of pregnancy.

And if your kids are more school age than newborn, you need some serious fuel to keep up with all the crazy demands asked of you, mama. You have important shit to do and you need energy and nutrients to do it.

So without going into a huge amount of detail on exact postpartum nutrition requirements, here are the three big nutritional principles from TCM you can aim to follow in your Golden Month. 

And by the way, nourishing yourself well is as crucial in healing immediately after childbirth, as it is 10 years postpartum. These three tips apply just as much years after your last child is born, as they do as soon as the baby is born.

It’s been less than 48 hours since I gave birth and already the memories are fading like raindrops on a desert highway. So here I am on my phone trying to capture my rapidly shrinking recollections while baby Kairi sleeps milk drunk across my chest.

At around 38 and a half weeks I’d noticed I was becoming impatient with being pregnant. People around me seemed to be having their babies left, right and centre... yet here I was still unable to stir a pot on the stove, get in and out of a car, or use a sink without having to position my body at an awkward angle to keep my belly out of the way. And if I wasn’t mindful I’d just bump my belly into things, which was both annoying and painful!

My due date was Jan 13 but I predicted baby would come Thursday Jan 4. My first child Archie arrived five days early and I’d predicted his birth date with laser accuracy. 

So when this baby didn’t arrive on the date I’d predicted, I realised I’d just have to be patient and stop thinking about it. “Assume you’ll go to 43 weeks” was the wise advice from my dietitian friend and mama of two, Susanna.
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Holy crap. I just read that blog I wrote about my second trimester when I was pregnant with Archie in 2015. And I'm glad to say, this time around things have been refreshingly different.

Why? On the surface I could say that my life circumstances are different: there are actual spaces in my schedule. I'm living somewhere I like. And I'm being more gentle with myself in terms of work, exercise, and pretty much everything else.

But when I dig deeper, I can see that things are different this time around because I am different. My decidedly gentler approach to everything is a result of my being stronger than I used to be. I don't take as much shit from people as I once did. Including myself.

I've waxed lyrical about my disdain for the commodification of yoga and how until very recently, it drove me away from yoga for nearly two years. You can read me being all anti-mainstream yoga Ranty McRantus, here.

But the other big reason I quit yoga was this: ​after I gave birth to my first child, my personal yoga practice was feeling spiritually unfulfilling. And physically depleting as hell. 

Following Archie's birth, the yoga I knew and loved - the dynamic, acrobatic, energetic practice full of dance and strong postures, inversions and fast flow - it just no longer... worked. It was not giving me the vitality, peace and stillness it once did.
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It has taken many painful mistakes, a near-complete abstinence from yoga for a time, and a rediscovery of yoga at a deeper level for me to come out the other side. Here's what happened after I had my first baby, and how you can avoid making the same mistakes I did.
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Ok, so this blog comes a little late. I'm now 17 weeks pregnant, meaning I'm well into my second trimester. With a wedding, a honeymoon, a not-really-weaned toddler, recommencing uni, and the busiest spell I've had in clinic EVER, I've been a bit slack on the personal blogs! But I'll do my best to recount things from those first three lunar cycles of this pregnancy, my second pregnancy...

Ironically, when I started writing this blog series on improving fertility naturally (somewhat out of self-interest because umm I wanted to get pregnant again), I was actually already one week pregnant - but of course didn't consciously know it at that early stage.
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I recently came across a celebrity trainer's 12 week weight loss program that really got my goat. Nothing new there, same old shit about restricting calories in via dieting and doing mega workouts to "burn calories off." Same old cheesy marketing and aesthetically pleasing presentation of just enough accurate information intermingled with bullcrap to confuse the majority of consumers who are not savvy about diet culture's sneaky AF ways.

But what really upset me - even more than the same old rubbish - was that as an extension of this dreadful program there were weight loss plans for pregnant and postpartum women. Complete with daily caloric "allowances" for these groups of women.

There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to start. The quest for "body after baby" is massively prevalent in our society and it's harmful to both women and their babies.

​Pregnancy is not the time to try to lose weight. And postpartum is one of the riskiest times in a woman's life for developing or worsening an eating disorder.

The caloric allowances allotted to these vulnerable groups of women on this particular diet plan are scarily misinformed, and dangerous. This is the kind of stuff that sets women up for deteriorating body image and developing eating disorders during and after the vulnerable time that is pregnancy.

But before we get to that, let's start with why calorie counting in the first place is a waste of time.

As a non-diet dietitian who loves food, you won't be surprised to hear that I rarely talk calories or kilojoules with my clients – unless its to point out they need more. There are so many flaws with the general idea of counting calories, including:

• calorie counting grossly over-simplifies the ways body weight is determined and encourages subscription to the "just ensure calories in is less than calories out" mentality towards weight control. With this polarised lens, we forget the many other factors that influence body weight just as much if not far more than food and activity, including genetics, stigma, socioeconomic factors, stress, sleep deprivation, hormonal imbalances, environmental toxicity, gut bacteria, etc
• calorie content (calculated in food laboratories by bomb calorimetry or indirect calorie estimation) reported on packaged food labels can be off by as much as 20% due to variations in manufacturing, season, and suppliers.
• similarly, the calorie content of whole foods is wildly unpredictable. Two similar-sized Fuji apples can have vastly different calorie contents due to the soil and climate they're grown in, the time of season they're harvested, how they've been handled after picking, and how they're prepared.
• calorie counting doesn't take into account the type or quality of food you're eating (and it matters.)

• calorie counting is far more difficult and inaccurate than people think, whether in regards to calculating food intake or calories used in exercise. Under or over reporting is common and human.
• calorie counting does not factor in the immense individual variation in metabolic rate. BMR calculators can be off by 20% or more, in which case, is it really worth calculating?
• calorie counting is also complicated by variations in individuals' muscle mass, amount and type of physical and mental activity, and many other totally random and unpredictable genetic factors that we may not even be aware of, let alone have the capacity to plug into a caloric requirements calculator.

Then of course there's the elephant in the room: that weight loss dieting - whether by calorie counting and food restriction or some other method - does not work.

But myths abound over how much women should be eating. In conversations with women with weight concern, I notice a lot of magic calorie numbers being thrown around when it comes to how many daily calories they think they should be eating: 800? 1200? 1500? 1800?

And just how much more do you need to eat when pregnant or breastfeeding - "because this celebrity trainer says it's x" (P.S. she's terribly, dangerously wrong.)

So just this once, let's talk frankly about calories.
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