Alicia has been throwing up into her baby’s mouth. Not actually throwing up: she chews her food and then Frenches her baby, Bear Blu [!!], transferring the food into his little pie-hole like the birdies do.
Now. This may be very healthy and vitamin-full and . . . oh gosh I just can’t. I am practically vomiting myself, just thinking about it, and there is not even a baby nearby I can vomit into.
I don’t see the problem. It is an respected tradition in low-tech countries. Many anthopologists say that is even how french kissing originated.
I have done it myself when I was out with my baby and we ran out of baby food. All I had were dry crackers. I chew the crackers, and gave my baby a pat of it on my fingers in his mouth. No problem, happy baby instead of fussy hungry baby.
There are places in the world where you can’t go to a supermarket to buy baby food, or have a blender, how else would you introduce solid food to a baby?
This gave me flashbacks to when my mother did this to me as a child. She wasn’t slobbering all over the food and then spitting it into my mouth, but she was chewing it up so that I could eat the resultant masticated bits.
I must have buried this memory deep because it’s the first time I’ve recalled it in my adult life. It’s a minor trauma, thinking about it now. I don’t know what to say.
There there, just don’t think about it. If it’s any consolation, the idea of premastication doesn’t really bother me at all, although I wouldn’t be eager to try it myself. (Although for all I know, maybe I have tried it myself: I’ve never stringently interrogated my mother on exactly what feeding method(s) she used during my infancy.)
However. Is it appropriate for Silverstone to be, in essence, using her celebrity status to “advertise” this method on her healthy-living website? If this were merely her own private parenting choice I’d say the celebrity-watchers and gossip hounds should just mind their own beeswax.
But if she’s deliberately publicizing and promoting this idea, then as far as I’m concerned she’s totally within her rights to do so but anybody who finds it distasteful is also totally within their rights to publicize and promote their revulsion at it.
I draw the line at moms who put Junior on the other side of the room in his high chair, masticate a mouthful of food, then put the bolus into a slingshot and yell “open wide!”
Eh, there’s worse and weirder things out there. However, it seems to me that the child in the video is old enough to chew his own food. Maybe not meat, which they don’t eat anyway, but certainly soup vegetables.
Failing that, a wet twisted up handkerchief. Failing that, literally any clean container. I’d sooner stuff bread and water into a bottle and shake it up than pre-chew.