Foooooood

[ailbhe]

Here I am breastfeeding a newborn again.

FEED ME.

I am barely functional and hugely short-tempered, most days, and it's entirely due to inadequate food intake. I can't do anything needing two hands because if I put Astrid in a sling she spits up on me, but she also doesn't want to be laid flat on her back because that makes her spit up too. We need to buy a reclining bouncy chair device. I'm sure we used to have one but Rob can't find it in the attic and we may have given it away.

For brief periods (long enough to put something oven-ready in or out of the oven) her sisters can prop her up, so oven-ready things are fine. But even cutting a bagel in half can be a problem, unless she's asleep.

I really need to figure something out. We need oven-ready dinners for evenings, which are easy enough, but we also need something ready to eat lunchwise. We tried reversing it, but it takes Rob just as long to get a bunch of sandwiches ready in the evening (when I'm feeding the baby more or less constantly) as it does to get a basic cooked dinner. And that makes the evening meal too late.

Weekends spent cooking things up are the answer for the evening meal... but what about snacks and lunchtime?

I bet by the time I have this figured out she'll have stopped eating so much. Two days now, maybe three, she's eaten almost constantly from noon to 7pm, sometimes eating in her sleep. As I said earlier, if she doesn't weigh 13lb by Monday I'll send her back.

Comments

[nitoda]

Ah, the joys of having a new baby! Soon as you work out how to cope with what they throw at you, they change it to something new. How about making big batches of smoothie and having biscuits/ raw veggies around for snacks? If I remember this right, you need lots of fluid as well as lots of calories to make all that wonderful instant Astrid food. ;-) I believe Milk Stout used to be recommended to nursing mothers ... but I don't like beer so it never appealed to me.

[br3nda]

for me is was toast toast toast - with marmite or peanut butter or jam. or just butter when i was too exhausted to find anything else. also muesli bars and so many milos.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Pre-made stews and soups? Smoothies?

[ailbhe]

Premade soup is an excellent idea, thanks. I hate instant soups but we've been using them anyway.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Oh honey, I wish I knew the answer to this because I felt the SAME WAY. Still do occasionally.

Fruit delivery? Some pre-made stuff even though it's against what you usually do? Even a case of pre-made smoothies or something?

Have Rob preslice a dozen bagels in the evening so that during the day all you have to do is grab it? Have him pre-slice cheese and/or other things to put on bagels and have them in the fridge and then you just have to assemble one-handed?

N.

[ailbhe]

Part of the thing, I have realised, is that I feed the children first, and then am too tired to feed myself. Ha ha. Yeah. That's really clever.

[clarahippy.livejournal.com]

I am amazed by the constant hunger, although I am very very lucky to have someone available to feed me constantly as well!

(mine is now 10 days old squee!)

[ailbhe]

Squee! Mine is more than twice as old as yours, I'll apply for her pension...

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

Snickers? I used to hoover them up after diving- as they actually have some sort of nutritional value as well as chocolate and sugar. Or other cereal bar type things? Could Rob do a batch of home-made flapjacks once a week? They are very calorific especially with dried fruit etc, and could be eaten with one hand.

[ailbhe]

We used to do flapjacks and stopped when Emer's teeth got bad. But maybe...

[akcipitrokulo.livejournal.com]

I have a bouncy chair I can bring over if that helps? Also if you want can pop over & help if I wouldn't be getting in the way.

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite getting it. In what way is your food intake inadequate? I first read this as a "I just can't get enough calories" post, but read that way it TBH just doesn't make sense. If calories were your only consideration, it's not clear why you'd need to cut a bagel in half, and not clear why one of the older girls couldn't bring you a bagel on demand. Sounds as though there's something more interesting going on here. Is it that you feel you need more protein, rather than more calories, i.e. the bagel is only useful once you've cut it in half and put something inside? Or is it more about appetite, e.g. that you could grab a plain bagel and gnaw it but the idea just doesn't appeal, maybe because you want to feel that you or someone have enough time to take care of you that you get "proper meals"? Or what? I think the right thing to do might depend on what the real issue is, and that's not quite clear, to me at any rate.

[ailbhe]

Uh, if it were just calories, I could just eat icing sugar straight from the packet. That really *would* be inadequate food intake, though definitely easy.

Anyway, the issue with a whole bagel is that chewing a whole unmoistened bagel would be more work than it's worth - it would make me tired of eating long before I'd managed to eat enough fast-burn white processed flour to even slightly fill me up. I suppose I could dip it in water, but the idea doesn't appeal.

Edit: Just realised you said "inside" the bagel. I tend not to eat bagels cut in half and re-assembled because they are too big to put in my mouth comfortably. Which is why biting into an unsliced one is not fun.

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

Do you have some kind of upright carrier like a Moby Wrap - Alistair would spit up the second I put him in a sling or chair, because it would squish his tummy up, but in an upright hold in the Moby he did a lot better.

[ailbhe]

Oh, yes, I'm using sling to mean "baby carrier," not ring sling or similar. I have about nine, five of which are upright carriers.

[heraldis.livejournal.com]

a box of your favourite cereal, straight from the box? Dried fruit and a jug of water by your nursing table

When making the girls any food, make twice as much and eat the leftovers?

I lived on chocolate milkshake when I was in this position, but I know that wouldn't work for you...

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Dried apricots, everywhere. Stuffed in drawers etc. No matter where you are sitting to feed Astrid, there should be dried fruit or oatcake packets, where you are. Bananas. Keep nibbling, so your blood sugar is kept up - then you'll have the energy to do more than just nibble. :-)

[quentinwrites.livejournal.com]

This might sound rank but I used to eat Heinz baked beans cold, straight out of the can. Strangely delicious and quite nutritious as well.

[barakta]

I've done this when low on blood sugar and spoons.

Recently I've taken to cheating premenstrual hypoglycaemia with 'energy drinks' sipped slowly for several hours after food but suspect that wouldn't work for ailbhe either.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

Do a big dried fruit and nut shop, ask Rob to divide into appropriate portions and leave them all over house?

[ailbhe]

Hee, you greatly overestimate Rob's ability to help! He's currently still working on making enough time to both shower and get to sleep before 1am, and neither of us can tell what he's doing with the time!

But yes, Linnea and Emer can definitely do more.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

some sort of meat paste or bean dip that you can scoop up bits of one-handed?

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Hummus!

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I was constantly in danger of not getting enough liquid during the newborn stage. If I had to do it over again, I'd make sure I had a pitcher of smoothies in the fridge.

I ate a *lot* of granola bars, but that had some scary effects in the "texture of solid waste" department. I don't know which direction you need to be wary of, but I see you've got that well in mind.

[ailbhe]

Both. I have a C-shaped muscle where I should have an O-shaped one, and a sort of hernia thing.

[cabbagemedley.livejournal.com]

I think I basically lived on Galaxy, prunes, and bread sticks and hummus.

[juliet]

Crackers and something sandwich-filling-ish on the top? Or get Rob just to slice bread (or get pre-sliced, but you said something about bagels that suggested that pre-sliced-type bread might not work to be filling; it certainly doesn't for me, and the only person I'm generating calories for is myself) in the morning, which should only take a minute or so, then stick all the slices in a plastic bag and get one of the girls to put sandwich-filling-stuff on it at appropriate points. They could be open sandwiches if that's easier to eat (you certainly get more protein-ish filling per slice of bread in that case :) )?

Things I find satisfying/filling in sandwiches: hummous (pre-made tubs are easiest, obviously); refried beans (cook up at weekends?); carrot & lentil pate (ditto?); Tofutti fake-cream-cheese and Marmite (if you don't like Marmite, the stuff on its own is a bit boring but they do ones with chives etc in). I also use leftover pasta sauce or chilli or whatever as sandwich-filling sometimes. Other things if I weren't vegan: cheese, assorted meat pate type things, tuna.

Other pre-made beanish dips besides hummous? Can't remember now what sort of things they have in supermarkets; butter-bean dip is lovely but you'd have to make it yourself. Baba ganoush or similar aubergineish thing?

Soups also sound like a good potential idea. Or, if Rob's making an evening meal anyway, could he (depending on what it is) make extra & you could have it for lunch/snacks the next day? I find this works well with chilli/curry (if you don't like using next-day rice, rice microwaves fine IIRC so could be left dry in a microwavable pot ready to have water added & be stuck in the microwave); less well with pasta although next-day pasta *can* be OK if oil or sauce is applied when it's still hot.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Ah, the one-handed phase! Neither of my babies were as spitty-up as yours, but it was still pretty gruelling. (Mmmm, gruel!)

I'd be going for nuts and hard-boiled eggs, personally. With smoothies for a quicker hit. And slice a whole bag of bagels at a time, then put them back in the bag in the fridge - they should be fine for a couple of days, particularly if toasted.

I made a brilliant thick lentil soup yesterday, kind of by accident. I find lentil soup immensely comforting. If it appeals, here's what I did: Rinse about half a litre in volume of mixed dhal. Dump in slow cooker with a teeny bit (0.25 tsp?) of turmeric. Add two litres of cold water and a can of chopped tomatoes. Turn on to Low. Chop and sweat some onion, lotsa garlic, carrot, celery, whatever. When they're soft, add them to the lentils, along with generous herbs (I used thyme, oregano, and a bay leaf) and some stock (powder or cube). Walk away. I actually cooked the lentils overnight, then added the other stuff, but it would probably be even nicer if all cooked together.

Count meals? I needed six a day for pregnancy and the first few months. Or set an alarm to make sure you eat something every two hours (or whatever you need)?

Definitely feed yourself first. Definitely. Really definitely. I still do that, on particularly collapsey days.

Good luck!

your solution

[(Anonymous)]

I used to survive on malt loaf and bananas even in the very early hours. You can slice it up and put your spread on and leave it in a tub in the fridge to snack on. worked for me...