Saturday, November 17, 2012

The Dude Who Doesn’t Like Food

At Jude’s 9 month appointment our pediatrician gave us the go ahead to start giving Jude a much bigger variety of foods and wants us to start weening down how much formula he eats.  The goal is that by one year he is mostly eating “real food”.  And of course over the last 4 or 5 months we have been giving Jude all sorts of different purees along with a few finger foods (rice puffs mostly), most of which he has tolerated/liked.  But now, he has grown to hate them.  He doesn’t mind most fruit purees and likes a few veggie ones, but he just won’t eat very much of them.  Sometimes he won’t eat the purees at all, and now that we are trying things with more texture like cottage cheese and things like that, he just spits them out.  And he pretty much freaks out if you try to feed him anything warm and pureed (he drinks his bottles cold out of the fridge, so he isn’t used to anything being warm).

So we have been trying more “finger foods” and if he can feed it to himself he is far more likely to not spit it out.  And you would think with his mouth full of teeth that he’d be getting the chewing thing down by now, but you would be wrong.  He mostly likes to cram things in his mouth and then like a chipmunk hold it all in his cheeks to spit out a later time.  He likes Cheerios, cut up cheese quesadillas, chopped up fruit, and sometimes cut up bits of cheese.

It just seems like I don’t know what to feed him.  At this point he should be getting three “meals" a day and snacks but it just isn’t happening.  Its frustrating to make him things that he refuses to eat.  The pediatrician suggested cutting back his formula a bit so that he is hungry when we feed him and so we have gone from 32oz a day to 28oz a day, and he does seem hungrier, but it isn’t really resulting in him eating more food.  So, any suggestions?  What sort of stuff do you feed your baby?

And a bit late, his 41 weeks photo along with some photos we took for our Christmas card this year.  And speaking of Christmas, I’m really really excited to participate this year in the

2012 Annual Holiday Craft Exchange.  






-Liz

5 comments:

  1. We feed asher steamed soft veggies like peas, carrots, asparagus, squashes, lots of fruit, he especially likes melons and banana, cheese chunks, soft veggies like tomato, beans, olives, and mushrooms which he loves sautéed with butter and onion. He loves fish, some pediatricians don't like any fish before a year but ours is good with low mercury types. He also loves scrambled eggs, good way to get in some veggies, and toast with butter. Also pasta cooked very soft, we use Fusili cause it has built in grips or ravioli. I'm trying to think of other things we try but that's all I can come up with at the moment.
    Feeding little ones can be so stressful.

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  2. Don't stress too much. All kids are different. Our daughter was so picky and really hated baby food. I have found with 3 kids, the finger foods are the best. You can even do dips like hummus on stuff. They love dips (or at least ours did.) Ideas... when they're small obviously it has to be stuff they can manage. Our pediatrician didn't like fish for infants because they can't speak and if they get any kind of fish bone in their throat, it can cause irritation without knowing why. But chances of a fish bone in fish sticks? Probably low...

    Pasta, cheese, peas, fruits, hummus, cereal, rice cakes, cream cheese on bits of bread/cracker, yogurt. I always let them feed themselves even if they can't really do a great job of it. They seem to appreciate the food more that way. Good luck!!!

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  3. Hi, there! Bram would never eat purees, but here's what he will eat (cut into pinkie-sized strips unless it's already smaller than that): chicken, broccoli, chickpeas, green beans, peas, black beans, kidney beans, whole cloves of roasted garlic, squash, sweet potato, regular potato (skinned), grapes (skinned), apple (whole halves, peeled and cored, so he can just gnaw on it), pears (the same way), bananas (halved), roasted carrots... Good luck, mamas!

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  4. Baby-Led Weaning!! Sent you a fb message about it. So much fun, but very messy :)

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  5. It's so hard isn't it! The most important thing I finally learnt was not to stress about it - whatever was eaten was eaten. Do think cutting down milk, baby led weaning and making sure not too tired at meal times really help.

    Would love for you to link this up at the Friday Baby Shower link party. We're focused on weaning this week and really keen for mums to share all the challenges that you can face, Alice x

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