The Truth About Baby Gravy: Why Sunday Roasts Need a Rewrite

It's 2019. Sunday roast at my mother-in-law's house. Maya is eight months old and currently mashing a piece of dry chicken into her highchair tray with the kind of intense focus usually reserved for defusing bombs. My mother-in-law, bless her, reaches over with a steaming boat of Bisto and says, "Oh Sarah, let me just put a little baby gravy on that, it's far too dry for her!"

I literally froze. I was wearing a cream ribbed sweater from Zara that I bought because I thought I was the kind of mom who could wear cream around an infant. (Spoiler: I'm not. It now has a permanent orange stain on the left sleeve from a sweet potato incident we don't talk about). I didn't know what to say, so I just sort of grabbed the bowl out of her hands and mumbled something about sodium while trying to smile so I wouldn't look like an absolute lunatic. The whole table went dead silent. You could hear the dog snoring in the hallway. It was horrible.

Why salt is basically infant kryptonite

I remember dragging a very cranky Leo to Dr. Aris for his nine-month checkup a few weeks later. I'm sitting there on that awful crinkly paper that sticks to the back of your thighs, sweating through my favorite vintage band t-shirt (that I can barely fit into anymore), clutching a lukewarm oat milk latte like it's a literal life preserver. I swear to god I drink more cold coffee than hot coffee these days. I just make it, leave it on the counter, forget about it while I wipe someone's butt, and then chug it two hours later. It's basically my entire personality now. Anyway, the point is, I was exhausted.

I asked her about the whole gravy situation because my husband Mark was in the living room trying to make the nickname "Baby G" happen for Leo. Like, Baby Godzilla, because he destroys everything he touches. I was literally hiding in the pantry earlier that week, panic-typing "is baby gravy safe" into my phone while Baby G was outside the door violently banging a wooden spoon against the dog's water bowl. Mark kept asking if we could just give him a tiny bit of our sauce because "he looks bored with plain potatoes."

Dr. Aris looked at me with that gentle, pitying doctor smile and basically said hell no. She explained that babies under one need less than one single gram of salt a day. One gram! That's like, I don't know, a dusting of a salty breeze. Their kidneys literally can't process it. I'm pretty sure she said their little organs are like tiny unformed sponges that just shut down if you overload them with sodium, but honestly I was running on four hours of sleep and staring at a poster of a cartoon giraffe on her wall, so I might have hallucinated the sponge part. She said something terrifying about high blood pressure and strokes later in life, which I didn't even know babies could set themselves up for, but apparently ruining their palate with salty junk food now messes them up forever.

The grocery store aisle of lies

Let's talk about the grocery store aisle of lies. You know the one. Mark comes home with these things and thinks he's a nutritionist. It's a whole disaster.

• The green packaging lie: Mark brought home stock cubes with a green label and said, "Look, 25% less salt!" Yeah, Mark, 25% less than the human equivalent of a salt lick is still way too much for a baby. Don't fall for the green marketing crap.
• The homemade delusion: Just because you made it from the pan drippings doesn't mean it's magic. If you rubbed that chicken in salt before roasting it, that salty goodness is right there in the drippings.
• The dry food panic: We think they're going to choke if a potato isn't smothered in sauce. They won't. They literally just need a little moisture.

If you're completely overhauling your mealtime chaos right now and realizing everything in your pantry is full of salt, you should probably just browse the Kianao feeding collection before your dining room gets completely destroyed by angry, dry-potato-throwing toddlers.

What actually works when they hate dry chicken

I learned the hard way about messy eating when I tried to make a safe sauce out of pureed carrots and water to appease my mother-in-law's obsession with wet food. I put Maya in the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie. Honestly, this thing saved my sanity. We have it in three colors. The day of the Great Carrot Gravy Incident, she got orange mush literally everywhere. Up her back, in her hair, between her toes, places I didn't even know carrots could go. But this bodysuit? It's so unbelievably stretchy that I could just pull it straight down over her shoulders and shimmy it off her body instead of dragging wet carrot puree over her face and getting it in her eyelashes. Plus it's organic cotton, which is amazing because Maya's skin breaks out into an angry red rash if you even look at it wrong. The only mildly annoying thing is the snaps are super tight at first and you kind of have to wrestle them when you're sleep-deprived and fumbling in the dark, but once you break them in, it's golden. Seriously, buy six of them.

While I was frantically boiling down unsalted carrots to make this fake sauce, Mark was supposed to be watching Leo. He had bought these Gentle Baby Building Block Set things to keep him busy. They're... fine. Like, they're squishy and they don't hurt when you inevitably step on one at 2 AM on your way to pee, which is a massive bonus compared to wooden blocks that feel like stepping on a landmine. But oh god, they attract dog hair like an absolute magnet. If you've a golden retriever, prepare to spend half your life wiping fuzz off these blocks. Leo likes chewing on them though, so I guess they do their job, even if I've to rinse them off twelve times a day.

Speaking of chewing. Sometimes they're rejecting the roast dinner not because it's too dry, but because their mouths hurt. I spent a whole Sunday convinced my cooking was so bad that my own child was on a hunger strike. I made plain chicken, I made sweet potato mash, I practically begged him to eat. I was doing that airplane noise thing with the spoon that makes you feel like an idiot but you do it anyway. It turned out Leo was just cutting a massive molar. His little gums were so red and swollen I felt like the worst mother on the planet for trying to force-feed him dry turkey.

If your kid is screaming at Sunday dinner and throwing peas at the wall, just hand them the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy Soothing Gum Relief. I'm fully obsessed with this panda. We have two. One lives in the fridge next to the leftover oat milk, one lives permanently in my diaper bag. It actually reaches all the way back to where the molars are coming in, and you can just throw it in the dishwasher when it gets gross. It's literally the only thing that stopped the crying long enough for me to eat my own dinner while it was still hot. Well, room temperature. Hot dinners are a myth.

Oh, and people will tell you to buy those special zero-salt baby stock cubes, but honestly I tried them once and they taste like dusty sad water, so skip them.

Don't buy the low-salt adult crap and think it's fine, just mash up some carrots with warm water and a little unsalted butter while you're holding a screaming infant on your hip and call it a day while ignoring your family's judgmental sighs. You don't need a culinary degree to feed a tiny human. You just need patience, a ton of paper towels, and the ability to tune out unsolicited advice from people whose parenting licenses expired in 1995.

Before you go try to explain to your mother-in-law why her famous roast drippings are officially banned from the highchair, head over to Kianao and grab a few of those organic bodysuits to handle the impending food explosion. Your washing machine will absolutely thank you.

The messy Q and A because we're all confused

Can I just use a tiny bit of our regular gravy?
Oh god, no. I used to think a tiny drizzle wouldn't hurt, but Dr. Aris basically told me even a spoonful has enough sodium to overwhelm their tiny system. Just don't do it. It's not worth the anxiety of wondering if you just ruined their kidneys.

What if I dilute adult gravy with tons of water?
Mark tried to argue this exact point once. He's like, "If I add a cup of water, it's fine!" No, Mark, the salt is still in there. It's just swimming in more water. You're just making salty dishwater at that point.

My baby refuses dry meat, what do I actually do?
Just mash it up with whatever veggies you cooked! Carrots, sweet potatoes, whatever. Add a splash of warm boiled water or unsalted butter. They don't know what they're missing, I promise.

Are those low-salt bouillon cubes okay?
I wouldn't. Even the reduced salt ones have crazy amounts of sodium for an infant. Seriously, read the back of the box, it's terrifying. Just use plain water or roast your own veggies without salt.

When can they honestly eat normal Sunday roast sauces?
Usually after they turn one, their kidneys are a bit more robust and they can handle a little more salt, but honestly, I still hold off on the heavy Bisto pours for Leo. Just ease into it so you aren't dealing with a salt overload.