I’ve been thinking recently that I may be rebelling against my organised, professional, accountancy, middle class, home owning side and turning into a hippy.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when it started happening though I have a feeling it began around the time I met my now husband. He’s vegetarian and with me not really being a meat eater anyway, I decided I might aswell become veggie myself seeing as it is easier all round if we are both veggie. What started out as just doing it for convenience 4 years ago has now turned into a passion and I’m almost militant about it. In our house we like animals so we don’t eat them – simple. The same will go for Zara – she will be raised as a vegetarian until she is old enough to choose for herself and even if she does decide she wants to eat meat at some point then she will have to accept that meals cooked in this house are vegetarian and I won’t be cooking her anything with meat in it.

So I turned veggie and the onset into hippydom (if there is such a word – which there probably isn’t) continued. The biggest shift happened when Zara arrived on the scene. I didn’t actually realise my choices put me in the hippy category but apparently it’s what hippys do!

Hippy Hint 1: I chose to do baby led weaning with Zara. How radical! The truth of course is that I chose to do BLW simply because I read the book and liked the idea of building a positive relationship with food from an early age, not having to bother spoon feeding her and just because it fits in with out lifestyle and meals anyway. 90% of our meals in this house are a) healthy, b) have fresh vegetables in them and c) don’t have any salt in them and so for us BLW was simple, just give Zara what we are having from the start. 2 months on from starting it, mealtimes are a pleasure, Zara sits with us, eats what we eat – and does remarkably well, she loves her food and watching her choose what she eats is amazing. A bit of cucumber, followed by a piece of tomato, followed by a drink, followed by some breadstick etc etc. She concentrates so hard on what she is going to eat next, it is fascinating to watch. There is no pressure on Z to eat anything at all, if she doesn’t eat anything then that is fine as I want her to grow up being happy to experiment with food and not feel under pressure to eat just because the books say we should replace bottle 2 with a meal at so and so stage. There’s probably not many 7 month olds who love curry, love olives, love marmite (in v small doses as aware of salt content), loves garlic bread and in fact loves pretty much anything we give her. The only thing she really hasn’t been interested in that I have given her has been raspberries.

Hippy Hint 2: The second hippy sign is apparently my fondness for carrying Zara in a sling. In fact of course we do this for convenience and because Zara loves it. I’m also a pram addict aswell and love my Quinny Buzz and Quinny Zapp but at times we also love to carry Zara in her sling because it makes life more interesting for her seeing the world from our viewpoint and not staring at everyone’s knees all day. Shock horror even Daddy likes to wear the sling aswell – definitely a bunch of hippies!

So there we have it, I may be an accountant and a business woman but apparently I’m also a vegetarian, babyledweaning, babywearing hippy! :)