The perils of being the 4th...

Last weekend, whilst in the middle of a sewing frenzy (more about that another day), I forgot to feed The Baby.  Again.  It's possibly not as bad as it sounds - she was whingy and I was trying to figure out why, going through my mental checklist of tired, clean nappy etc and I realised that she was overdue a feed, possibly by about an hour, maybe two.  Although she is almost 7 months old, she's Baby Led Weaning (note the capitals) and so pretty much still exclusively breast fed.

It led me on to thinking about the perils of being the 4th baby in a household where the oldest child is not even yet 6.  All the children have been BLW, but where The Eldest was weaned on steamed vegetables and The Boy on appropriate finger foods lovingly prepared by an Ayah, I knew that the Feral One was ready to wean when she grabbed a piece of pizza off the middle of the table and shoved it in her mouth.  The Baby has been much the same and has already munched on pizza, garlic bread, fish fingers and chips.  Don't get me wrong, they eat a healthy and varied diet (well, sort of, if I hide the vegetables in their food anyway), but there is no way on earth that I would ever have let my older two touch pizza before they were 2 at the earliest.  The same with crisps (The Eldest only had Organix crisps until she was over 3) - turning up at preschool with orange baby vomit down my top I mentioned to a friend that it was the perils of letting The Baby munch on a wotsit.  The Friend had assumed it was carrot and I probably should have let her continue to labour under that misapprehension...

The list goes on - trips to the supermarket instead of baby groups, dog walks and school runs instead of swimming trips, being allowed to chew on her sister's crocs, hand me down clothes and mummy forgetting to feed her or change her (cloth) nappy.  I wonder if she will turn into some sort of sociopath?  More likely, she will be the most well rounded of them all.