Nutritional Information.
So, does your baby eat? Because mine still doesn’t, not with any consistency. Sure, she has her good days, like the Thursday she ate a WHOLE ENTIRE CHICKEN FINGER (happily, the most nutritious part of the chicken), but in general it is a battle, and one I am waging poorly.
The situation is not helped by the varying opinions on how much a 13-to-17-month-old baby ought to be consuming in a day. [Speaking of 13-to-17-month-old babies, I have tired of explaining Simone's actual and adjusted ages, and now when someone asks how old she is, I simply express her age as a range. I assume people think I can’t remember, that I've only managed to narrow the date of her birth to a four month window, or maybe that we found her in the woods and "13-to-17 months" is the closest estimate we could come up with by counting her rings.]
Anyhow, her pediatrician is concerned, but her pulmonologist says she’s doing splendidly. The pulmonologist is easily pleased—if baby is keeping her blood oxygenated and her toes pink, he’s full of praise for us. This is the difference between a critical care specialist and a general practice pediatrician, by the way—the height of the bar your baby must clear. Simone was just allowed to discontinue Pulmicort until winter, so by pulmonologist standards, she is some kind of respiratory rock star. As for the fact that she still gets most of her nutrition via bottle, he says “It would be stranger if she DIDN’T have any eating issues after being on the vent for two months.” He doesn’t pull any punches, Simone’s pulmonologist, and at every appointment reminds us how astounded he is that Simone didn’t die. “I’ve read her chart,” he said as he first entered her NICU room to introduce himself, “And frankly I’m surprised she’s here at all.”
But I’d like to start setting the bar a little higher, now, start inching closer to treating Simone like a Regular Old Baby. The problem being that I have no idea what one expects of Regular Old Babies. I do own a book about them, but I rarely open it, because it has been singularly unhelpful. For instance, the typical day’s menu it gives for a child Simone’s age:
BREAKFAST: 3 egg whites, yogurt smoothie, bran muffin, coffee (decaf), 6-8 oz. juice
MORNING SNACK: Wheel of gouda, piece of toast with peanut butter, two apples
LUNCH: Whole chicken breast, spinach salad, Bananas Foster
AFTERNOON SNACK: 12 oz milk, slice of pie, pkg. Lil’ Smokies
DINNER: Filet mignon or Turducken, baked potato, 1 cup chili, whole avocado, Big Gulp
I’m typing that from memory, so it may not be 100% accurate, but you get the general idea. It is a lot of food.
So what I’m wondering—and this is where you come in, people—is this: If you have a baby between the ages of 13 and 17 months, or HAVE had a baby between the ages of 13 and 17 months, what does it eat in a day? And does it still make an unholy—though enthusiastic—mess when given a sippy cup?
162 Comments
Baha! Toddler feeding is tough stuff. Some days my daughter shovels anything put in front of her into her face, and other days she kerplunks every bit of it with equal enthusiasm onto the floor.
I used to be obsessed with baby nutrition and now have revereted to the if-it-stays-on-the-tray-it-stays-on-the-menu approach.
Violet, 14 months, will eat english muffins spread with peanut butter, bananas, cheerios in a snack cup she can tote around the house, peas, steamed carrots, grapes, cherries, blueberries, strawberries, couscous, rice pilaf, spaghetti, sharp cheddar cheese (not to be confused with medium cheddar which is always fed to the dog), raspberry yogurt.
My child refuses meat. Still.
And while it looks like she eats SO WELL, sometimes we have week long spells where all she will eat are grapes. Only. Grapes.
Good luck, and let us know if you figure out how to keep toddlers from making an unholy mess with a sippy cup.
My personal uhhhh (counts frantically) 17-month-old eats: macaroni and cheese, dry Crispix, and scrambled eggs. THAT IS ABOUT IT. He will sometimes surprise me by mowing through some random other food item, then dramatically refuse it one day later.
He’s still on the bottle, too. *Hangs head*
My first child (a full-termer) is old enough that I’ve blocked out her first two years. My second was a 32-weeker, so her eating habits may not be in sync with a full termer either. At 13-17 months, she was nursing six or fifty times per day, having about 16 ounces of pumped milk at daycare, and eating MAYBE four ounces of pureed foods. She also was on a vent for two days, not two months.
Are you on the preemie-l list on Yahoo Groups? There are lots of micropreemie moms on that list and they can probably help you to feel more comfortable with what Simone is consuming. Your pulmonologist is right though, about it being unsurprising that a baby who was on a vent that long has eating issues. Many of the kids on preemie-l have oral aversion and refuse to eat anything. Check them out. They have LOTS of experience and LOTS of good advice. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/preemie-list/ They have another list, I believe, that’s more focused on NICU graduates, but I can’t remember the name of it.
We have a nearly 14 month old (12.5 months adjusted) who has yet to purposely swallow any solid food (including baby food). We’ve been seeing a special feeding team and I have plans to take her to another specialist later this month for a second opinion. So I’ll be interested in the responses you get here. I think your pulminologist is probably right – that she’s just fine – given the vent and everything. But, despite that, I know first hand how stressful it can be. Hang in there.
p.s. is she gaining weight? Our daughter has stopped gaining which is why we’ve been elevated to the Land of the Experts.
Oh, I’d have laughed at this post if it also didn’t make me want to cry. My 13-month-old is a real strange eater. I think she still gets most of her nutrition from breast milk. She weighs so little that if it weren’t for the fact that a bunch of babies in my family weighed just as little at one year and then grew up fine anyway, I’d believe the doctors and be concerned. As it happens, I kinda think she’s fine. She’s just a strange eater.
To wit: some days she’ll snarf down an entire avocado mixed with some tahini. She likes chicken most of the time but only since about a month ago. Though when I say ‘likes chicken’ I mean she’ll eat, I don’t know, maybe the amount that would fit on a tablespoon? She usually likes yoghurt (Fage brand, mixed with honey). Oh, and there was the time she ate a quarter of a banana. Or the time she ate a quarter cup of blueberries. Or the day of strawberries. These are just the foods I can remember because they elicited some sort of response. I’ve been known to get frustrated.
Lately I find it easier to get her to eat by pretending it’s not really eating, just some food I’m giving her while she’s playing. The high chair’s gone into retirement. I think she mostly doesn’t have the patience to eat; it’s not interesting in the same way as it’s interesting to walk or try to fling herself down some stairs or take every toy she owns and place it somewhere on the living room rug so that the largest possible area is covered (just for example). That rug now has a fairly high avocado content. But, seriously, I think she eats all the different kinds of foods she needs in about a week.
Boy, you really should expect a lot of comments on this one. Here is MY non-parent story:
Best Husband Dave was a verrrrrry picky eater. Of the type to not have food touching, eat one food always ever, etc. One day his mom just had had it up to HERE (indicate hand raised high over head) with the boy’s habits. She force-fed him macaroni till he threw up.
YEARS later boy still doesn’t eat macaroni. When I first met Best Husband’s Mom she asked me, tentatively, “He didn’t tell you the macaroni story did he?”
Silence.
“It wasn’t my best moment.”
PS – kata made me LAUGH
Pasta with sauce, any sauce. Yogurt (bad mom confession: lowfat yoplait WITH SUGAR). Fish, any kind of fish, cooked nice and soft and flaked up. Sweet potato fries. Broccoli, steamed soft. Toast, mine eats tons of toast with just butter (lots and lots of butter.) Peaches, pears, plums, nectarines and bananas. Blueberries and strawberries.
I find it’s best to hand her the item and let her have at it. She has 5 teeth so can manage a fist-sized piece of soft fruit quite well. It’s a messy business but whatever.
What kind of sippy cups are you using? I’ve never experienced sippy mess.
I don’t recall them eating. Maybe crackers or raisins. Not necessarily on the same day.
We kept the milk coming :)
Alexa, may I say yet again how freaking hilarious your writing is? Even on a frustrating topic, like preemie feeding issues, you still manage to make us laugh. Thanks!
My micropreemie had feeding issues, BIG feeding issues, up until he was about 19 months (actual, 16 adjusted). He basically ate nothing that was remotely “solid” at all. Everything that was actually consumed came by bottle…….breastmilk, Neosure formula, Pediasure, even regular cow’s milk mixed with a TON of Carnation Instant Breakfast. Just trying to get calories and nutrients in him somehow, and to avoid the impending “failure to thrive” dx from the pediatrician.
I SOOOOO get what you’re saying about the difference in perspective between the regular pediatricians vs. the NICU doctors, preemie specialists, etc. *sigh*
So, my little guy apparently had a sensory avoidance thing going on in regards to swallowing food. He would put foods into his mouth, seemed interested in them, and would “chew” and mush them around for a while, then spit them back out. Even baby food on a spoon….he’d let me put it into his mouth (sometimes) and then would dribble it right back out without swallowing. With finger foods, he would pick pieces up, over and over, but would spit each one out, then try again……repeat, repeat, repeat…..you get the idea.
We did OT and they were working on oral aversion, etc. We were just about to start pursuing a swallowing study when one day he just started eating. I kid you not. We were at a Mexican restaurant and putting rice on his tray for him to play with. Usually, we’d find all of the food in his lap, on the floor, down his shirt, but this time, it wasn’t in any of those places. He ate it! To this day, I don’t know what the difference was or why he just started eating, but he did. So, I’m absolutely no help at all, am I? (((((((hugs)))))) and I hope Simone has a similar magic moment very soon!
My daughter is now 2. Around that age a typical eating day was:
Breakfast: (not much of a breakfast eater): 1/2 – 1 cup of berries and sippy cup of 3/4 milk and 1/4 drinkable yogurt
Morning snack: Graham cracker or animal crackers (like 4 of them) and fruit – those little clementines were a big hit
Lunch: (we’re not meat eaters): a few steamed broccoli florets, 1/4 cup – 1/2 cup fruit (I’m guessing on amt) every day and protein was grilled cheese- portion size – 1 piece of bread, or pasta (we like the whole grain pasta with the DHA and protein added) – probably 1 oz, or morningstar farms sausage link.
afternoon snack: fruit and goldfish crackers or yogurt
Dinner: pretty much same as lunch.
On the sippy cup thing, we’ve always used the straw kinds so it’s not been really messy at all.
Check out weelicious.com and ittybittybistro.com for good kid food ideas.
Mom of ex-26-weeker here, now 21-24 monts (I like that range thing!! :). He was 2 weeks on vent, 4 weeks on CPAP, 4 months on canula. He’s a fantastic eater, always has been, but then again, he’s been medicated since discharge. More on that later.
I’ve seen three different avenues of “food aversion” pop up here and there:
1) The baby has reflux, which can be silent and therefore not diagnosed, but causes heartburn. Baby learns very fast that eating “a lot” hurts, so baby limits food intake.
It seem like 70% of preemies have reflux, and sure enough, that’s where we’re at. The solution we’ve employed is Prilosec (anti-acid PPI (proton-pump-inhibitor). Curiously enough, it was the pulmonologist that prescribed the prilosec to guard the airways from burning.
I heard from one NICU nurse that a family tried a PPI on their very skinny child, and lo and behold, after a couple of weeks the kid was digging into food for the first time ever.
2) Some sort of mechanical issues, to do with the coordination of chewing, swallowing etc. Requires OT evaluation.
3) Sensory issues. Not liking different textures. Not a problem with us, so I don’t know any more about it.
As for my vague recollection of what my boy ate some four months ago:
Breakfast #1: A fistful of Cheerios (sometimes with milk)
Breakfast #2: Ikea baby bowl of oatmeal or more (the real stuff), followed by chopped fruit bits
4-6 oz bottle of milk for morning nap
Lunch: Ikea baby plate of food or less. For example: Cheese, bread, leftovers from dinner, pasta.
Snack: Yogurt (the Stonyfield farm baby stuff), sometimes a fruit, or bread or more cheese.
Dinner: Ikea baby plate of food or less of whatever we were having for dinner. Fruit bits for dessert.
Bottle at midnight.
Hope that’s mildly helpful! :)
For a minute there I thought you had been watching what I eat in a day.
I have a nearly two-year-old who still frustrates me sometimes with her sporadic eating. She is not of concern to any pediatrician, though, and I think that’s what makes your situation particularly tough. You have to answer to a higher (or maybe just different) authority in some ways.
What to do, what to do… Offer her lots of things on the go? In cute ice cube trays, so it’s a novelty? (Shit, I’m only coming up with things from the book.)
I have a friend with slender children (not even approaching the bottom of the weight chart curves and they were full term). For her first baby they did swallowing tests and speech therapy, you name it. Freaked her right out. Then, one idea kind of stuck. She read books to distract the both of them while the little one ate. (That’s the nutshell version and the only thing I can think of that might be of any help.)
BTW, her second baby is slender and precocious and the NEW pediatrician isn’t a bit worried.
Hope it works itself out without too much (more) blood, sweat and tears.
The thing is, every kid is different. To wit: As a toddler, my oldest ate like a rock star (the kind of rock star that eats a lot). He would try everything and sometimes ate so much that he overflowed. Ew. My middle boy was a more typical toddler in the sense of being picky, and some days eating very little and other days eating lots.
My littlest, who just turned two, every week goes through two GALLONS of whole milk by himself. He eats very little people food (though we offer it to him, of course) and he still likes us to feed him oatmeal and even baby food. He is otherwise developmentally fine. Our pediatrician says he would like to see him drink less milk. My solution is to stop telling the pediatrician how much the kid drinks.
I guess if I have any advice, it is to avoid, at all costs, getting into a power struggle around food and eating. Offer baby portions of what you’re eating, offer bread and cheese and fruit, try soup because the stuff in it is nice and soft, but don’t worry about it. Eating seems to come along just like everything else does.
I have a 12 month old boy who eats well, but has several food allergies. Big hits with him have been grilled chicken, watermelon, and potatoes.
But I don’t know how helpful any of that is to Simone. I will say that some kids do better with actual food than they do with the pureed stuff (or the #3 baby food, which has a little texture). Also, dips will go a LONG way. Ketchup can entice my 2-year-old to try almost anything, and poppyseed dressing for fruit (or vanilla yogurt as a dip for fruit) can win them over too.
Don’t know if any of that helps or not.
One thing we did do that I think was pretty helpful was let both of them teethe on those little mesh rings (we bought ours at Publix, I’m sure other grocery stores have them). It lets them taste foods – melons work best – and teethe on them, without you having to worry about choking before she’s ready to swallow it. I think it helped both of mine ease in the transition from bottle to food.
Good luck.
My youngest is 16 months and on any given day he may or may not eat. I just figure if he is hungry then he will eat. I know that isn’t very helpful so here is what he eats on a regular day.
I don’t measure how much he drinks any more I just refill his cup whenever it is empty. He usually drinks 3-5 cups of milk/water a day. When we first started him on the cup he wouldn’t take it so we spiked his milk with some strawberry quik and he loved it and went from bottles to cups in a few days.
Please remember that he is #3
Breakfast-
1/2 waffle
1/4c blueberries sometimes more
Milk
Snack-
Fruit and Goldfish
Lunch-
3 strawberries
1 hotdog
1/4 cup peas
chips??
Snack-
Cheese, goldfish/crackers & fruit
Dinner-
2oz chicken
1/4 cup green beans or broccoli
1/4 cup pasta
cantaloupe
My ped prefers my boys to all be on the leaner side so I wouldn’t worry about her to much. One of mine is in the 6th percent for weight and he said he is fine. Good luck!
My 18 month old will eat toast with jelly, pasta with sauce, green beans, peas (sometimes), banana (sometimes), fruit snacks, and anything if he can dip it in maple syrup or ketchup.
ps pediatricians worry a lot about stuff, if she is growing and not sickly, I’d try not to stress
My 13 month old love olives…YUP BLACK OLIVES. She will throw everything else off of her tray to get to the olives. She also loves lettuce with dressing. Most meals half of the food ends up on the floor. She is still nursing frequently and gets a lot of nutrition from breast milk. She is in the 5th-10th percentile….3 weeks early 5 lber but I was only 16 lbs at 1 year so no one is concerned..
Check out the Born Free sippy cups- never had a spill.
My 17 month old, a healthy porker weighing in at 28 pounds eats like this: breakfast is a sippy with whole milk, toast with jam – he sucks the jelly off and will occasionally ingest bread by mistake, and a half of a banana. Lunch is another sippy of milk, approx. a half cup of some sort of dinner leftovers (pasta with veggies, rice with veggies, etc.) and possibly some cut melon and cheese, distributed between his mouth, the dog, and the floor. Afternoon snack involves an all-he-can eat buffet of bunny grahams and milk or water. Dinner involves a sippy of milk, some of which he sprinkles on the table and “paints” with, about a half cup of cup of some sort of dinner stuff – veggies, rice, pasta, veggie burger, etc. Sometimes we have some icecream or a cookie for dessert, which he would stuff himself with if allowed. Not sure if this helps, but that’s the status over here.
It’s been a while, but if memory serves, when my Alex was 13-17 months, she lived on yogurt, scrambled eggs and pasta.
At 5 years old, these three things still comprise 80% of her diet.
My son is 18 months (almost 19 now!) and still doesn’t eat consistently. I comfort myself with the knowledge that he’ll let me know if he is hungry, even if he’ll only eat a handful of goldfish crackers and some blueberries in 24 hours.
*he still breastfeeds
I’ve also heard to look at your toddlers nutrition over weeks, a month even, as opposed to daily intake. They might eat avocado for a week and then spit it out of their mouth for the rest of the month.
Here’s what I found worked.
1. Social eating. Eating out always gets my son to eat, especially with a lot of people around. But during solo time with the baby–see if she’ll eat on your lap out of your plate, eat beside you, or snack while you play on the floor. I’ve even done drive-by spoonfuls of yogurt while mine runs around dancing.
2. Spoon & fork. They suck at it at first, but they want to try. Self feeding, especially with tools really got my son interested in eating again.
3. Whatever they will eat is ok. She refuses veggies–give up. Just give up. Just offer her something else. Try the veggies another time.
Here is what my son eats on an average day.
Breakfast: a whole 6oz container of yogurt and a little bit of what I’m eating (oatmeal, bagel, whatever)
Snack: fruit, crackers, more fruit, milk
pre-nap lunch: bread with hummus or peanut butter, left overs from the night before (pasta maybe)/whatever I’m munching on
Post-nap lunch: cream of wheat made with whole milk (lots of iron and milk and he loves it!) and more fruit
Snack: usually…more fruit!
Dinner: whatever we are eating or our fill-ins (egg, cheese, mac and cheese, pasta, applesauce)
PS. He also LOVES Tofu.
Hey! I know this one! My daughter is almost 14 months (and was full term), and eats a lot more like a baby than a lot of the previously described children. We puree a lot of stuff, mostly gotten at the St. Paul Farmer’s Market, but sometimes I just randomly pick up fruit that looks good at the Whole Foods.
Her typical day:
Wake up: She has a sippy cup full of milk. She’d actually rather nurse, but we’re trying to cut out that feeding so my husband gives her some whole milk.
Breakfast (about an hour later): Some kind of fruit cube (usually 2-3 one ounce cubes) mixed with baby oatmeal and fiber powder (she had some fiber issues early on). She likes: apples, plums, mangoes, pineapple, pears. She also likes strawberries, blueberries, and bananas, but we don’t puree those. Afterwards, she has some cheerios, thrown in a handful onto her highchair.
After she wakes up from a nap: she has a sippy cup of milk. At least a quarter of it spills on the floor.
Mid-afternoon: she has two foods (2-3 cubes per food), hopefully two vegetables but often a banana and a veggie. We puree: cauliflower, broccoli, sweet potatoes, squash, green beans, black beans and probably some others I don’t remember. She eats a lot of peas, too, which I just microwave and she picks up. This is followed by some cheerios, or maybe some of those veggie/fruit poofs from Target or Whole Foods.
Sometime later, she sometimes has some freeze dried fruit (we got it in some huge amount from CostCo and she LOVES it) or yogurt- I bought some of the full fat kind at Whole Foods and she REALLY likes it. Kiernan’s not a big fan of other people eating when she’s not, so if we eat when she’s around, she’ll usually eat some of whatever we’re having – pancakes, chicken, etc. She’s not a huge fan of meat, but she’ll eat a little until she figures out it’s not her favorite.
Then, she nurses to sleep. If she wakes up, I give her a little more milk.
In terms of the fruits/vegetables, I got this hilarious baby food cookbook as a gift from the Peapods (on St. Clair/Snelling) and it has made the food process a lot easier. You just microwave stuff and then stick it in the food processor, and it takes care of texture issues and weirdness. Kiernan doesn’t have the sensory issues (that I know of, anyways) as someone mentioned earlier, but making stuff a consistent texture made her way more willing to eat things she might have avoided otherwise. If it’s not thick enough, I just add baby oatmeal.
Sorry for the book.
Oh and after scanning the other comments, I must confess– the only way I get my son to drink milk is to add strawberry of chocolate syrup and even then he’ll drink only about 1/4 cup. He just doesn’t like. Doesn’t drink much water either. His main liquid–boobmilk.
Thus the cream of wheat. It takes about a cup of milk!
My 17 mo eats me under the table, and his older brothers as well. He eats a lot of straight grated cheese, as well as cheese melted on ww toast. He loves pickled beets, blueberries, lasagne, meatballs, chicken, any form of pasta, cooked vegetables with lots of seasoning, garlicky carrots, mexican food… anything we are eating, mostly, with a few exceptions. He won’t eat raw vegetables (except minced cucumbers, oddly) and he won’t eat avocado.
My middle son was the same way. My oldest, who is now a normal healthy 5 yo, barely ate. He would eat yobabies, macaroni and cheese, bananas, and, occasionally, rice. He liked cheerios. I think that was it. Everything else went on the floor, and he stayed in the 5th percentile or below for a while. Maybe till 18 months? Then, you know, he started eating more and growing more. Now he’s in the 30th percentile or so and totally fine. But still a very picky eater.
My oldest three were the King, Queen and Crown Prince of Pickitopia (which I suppose makes me the Queen Mother). At one point my older daughter would only eat peanut butter and jelly in a bowl (no bread), much to her older brother’s loudly articulated disgust.
I tend to take a rather hands-off approach to food issues, in that I am not willing to make food an issue, even as it drives me INSANE that the children clearly think that what I have served for dinner may be the Meal That Did Them In. I don’t short-order cook … simply put one thing I know everyone will eat on the table and pretend I don’t notice their lips curling as they poke at my carefully grilled (non-sauced) chicken. My older daughter ate applesauce for dinner for more than a year. From ages 3-5 my youngest son would not eat grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, macaroni and cheese, or spaghetti. Going out to dinner was a ton of fun.
All that said, one advantage of having children so far apart in age is that I can tell you with confidence that the hands-off approach works, within the confines of their personalities. My older boy eats everything, and with gusto. My older daughter will try almost everything, still hates bread and milk (but loves cheese) and almost always remembers to eat her vegetables. My younger boy will eat the previously snubbed kid food, and has added salad and a small variety of vegetables.
The baby seems to be as picky as her sibs, but I’m trying not to sweat it. I aim to full her nutritional needs over a week instead of a day, and remind myself that fruits and vegetables are in the same category. Multi-vitamins are our friends (the kids love the gummy vites from Costco, although I had to take them away after the younger boy figured out how to open the child-safe lid and ate all but 1/3 of a bottle).
I think karma played a role in my 2 year old’s eating habits, as she’ll eat anything not nailed down. Quite literally. However, when my now-6 yr old son was 19 months, he stopped eating and started losing weight. He just couldn’t be bothered to eat. And all those, “They’ll eat when they’re hungry” folks never met my son. I swear, if it were up to him, he would have subsisted on breastmilk, juice, and goldfish crackers.
What helped us, despite trying every fattening food under the sun (the dr. even said, whatever he’s willing to eat, give him more of it), was a combination of reflux medication (prevacid) for his silent reflus and having his adenoids removed. Once we got that in line, he gained 4 lbs in a month.
So I guess my advice is, whatever you can get her to eat, that’s what she should be eating. And I agree with everyone else on investigating the reflux possibility.
And – you might try cups with straws instead of sippy cups. Rubbermaid makes one that’s great – I think they call it a juice box cup. Sippy cups were the bane of my existence, but those Rubbermaid cups kick ass.
The Fulitity of Parenting – Example #462
(a.k.a. What my toddler ate for lunch:)
organic apple
organic yogurt
organic whole wheat crackers
cheese whiz
Guess which one of these he actually ate? He licked all the cheese whiz off the crackers and then asked for a second coating. I did it because it was the only food I got into him that day.
Remember, she also has those molars coming in. When my son was actively teething, it really affected what he would eat. We did a lot of soft dairy; milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream (when desperate).
My now 2 1/2 year old didn’t have any issues with food, but rarely ate, so it seemed. We just served her what seemed to be okay and what she ate she ate.In fact, it looked like she was getting most of her nutrition from snacks or a cookie at the store. As long as Alexa doesn’t seem hungry, she should be just fine.
Sometimes I have to be super sneaky to get my daughter (just turned 2) to eat, she had a phase at around 18 months where all she basically ate was milk. Now I have to pretend it’s my food and that it’s so great, too bad she doesn’t have any, etc., and then she will steal it from me. Or I’ll let it hang out of my mouth and then feed it to her Lady and the Tramp style. Luckily she likes porridge with cranberries so I know she eats well once a day. Her favourite foods for a long time have been things like blueberries, bacon and meatballs — anything that stains!
A good friend of mine has a skinny kid, he was a preemie too. She fattened him up nicely with avocado-coconut milk-fruit smoothies, that stuff is highly caloric so worth a try.
my 14 month old son (who was 7 weeks premature) eats the following:
Breakfast: 2 to 3 oz of fruit AND 3 oz of cereal OR a scrambled egg with cheese
Morning bottle (before nap): 4 to 6 oz of milk
Lunch: anything from spaghetti, mac & cheese, veggies (carrot, corn, potato, etc), rice, chicken or beef or turkey, etc etc etc. these days he’s barely eating his lunch though.
afternoon bottle: 4 to 6 oz of milk
Afernoon Snack: Gerber puffs or something of that sort
Dinner: 4 to 6 oz of food (similar as lunch)
bedtime bottle: 6 oz of formula
then another bottle at 5am.
gosh, that seems like a lot of food. but i think we’re at the stage where we’ll start to drop a bottle here and there (its the daycare’s schedule, not mine). so we’ll move more to 3 meals plus 3 bottles and 1 snack a day hopefully soon.
good luck with the feeding!
My son was never a big eater, and is now 3… his meals today:
Breakfast – milk
Lunch – Nothing
Dinner – An apple
These meals do not reflect what I made for him, this is just what I could get him to eat.
In comparison, my daughter (aged 7 months) ate: rice cereal, carrots, mac n’ cheese, and butternut squash. And as much breast milk as she wants.
Different kids, different needs, I guess.
It is shocking and frustrating to feed young children. Just know that you are going through what MOST parents go through. (I mean… I’m going to eat dinner, even though I’m not hungry… because it is DINNER TIME).
Kids are much smarter eaters.
I tried this book: Annabel Karmel’s First Meals. It was a good start for me as a new mom and crahpy cook.
Maura – Mom to 2 year old twin girls (remember – adjusted age stops at 2 years, so you have THAT to look forward to!)
The best advice I ever got for that time period was to think not in terms of a daily square meal, but a weekly square meal. My own add-on to that is that quantity really means nothing. She pooping? she peeing? If so, something must be getting in there.
Here is the menu for my 12.5 month old. Sometimes she eats more, sometimes she throws everything off her tray.
Breakfast: 1/2-3/4 piece of french toast (made using one egg)
Lunch: 5-10 cheese pieces — each about the size of a large blueberry; about 1/5 of a chicken breast w/ sauce and small pieces pieces of potato/broccoli/carrots/other veggie; about 1/2-3/4 of a yo baby; 10-15 blueberries. (hard to know how much lunch she eats b/c she is at day care.)
Snacks: one snack of graham crackers & fruit during the day.
Dinner: cheese pieces; 1/4 of a chicken breast or equivalent amount of beef/pork (usually leftover roast); 1/2 apricot or peach.
We still give her a bottle before bed, which my pediatrician says is bad bad bad but we do it anyway because we are weak in the brains and under her svengali-like mind control. Less than two weeks ago, she was drinking 3 large — one before bed, 2 during the day as “snacks” and one before bed — meaning that she was having a small lunch and a sizeable dinner but that was it.
At almost any age, my goal in feeding my kids is to make sure that I offer something from most of the food groups at every meal.
But for my 11 month old, this means he eats parts of what we eat.
So at breakfast it might be part of a blueberry muffin, a few spoonfuls of yougurt, and a couple of peanut butter crackers. Lunch might be an english muffin pizza and apple sauce. Dinner usually involves whatever is on our adult plate diced up to finger food size.
I think if I were in your shoes, I’d be focusing on offering, offering, offering, as much normal food and variety as possible. Some kids take a long time to warm up to things… moving in stages from letting the food on their plate, to touching and smelling it, then letting it touch their mouth, etc. etc. until they are someday eating it.
I honestly don’t recall if she’s had a swallow study to make sure she is both able to chew and swallow appropriately, but that might be something to look into. I am making my “reccomendation” on the assumption that she is able to chew, position and swallow food properly.
It looks like you’ve gotten a lot of responses but I’ll add mine in since you specifically asked. He’s 13 months and he doesn’t do dairy yet. The biggest hurdle for me was letting him eat regular food. I don’t know why but I felt it was not as healthy as the straight organic veggies he was getting but it made it a lot easier to feed him once I loosened my standards a bit.
Breakfast: 1 Eggo, handful of berries, 4 oz soy milk (sometimes this is his first breakfast and then he goes and has second breakfast at daycare…hobbit)
Snack: 1/2 to whole banana and some Cheerios 2 oz soy milk
Lunch: Pasta with sauce or buttered bread, maybe a slice of very thin sliced deli meat or a couple of bites of chicken/beef, lots and lots of berries…I have to bring these out last or he won’t eat anything else, vegetables, 3 oz soy milk
Snack: a couple of crackers and some more fruit or sometimes a couple nilla wafers or other non dairy kid friendly cookie, 2 oz soy milk
Dinner: This is where it all goes downhill. He sometimes won’t eat dinner. Sometimes I’m scrambling to the kitchen to get him more. But it pretty much looks like lunch, whatever we have leftover from last night (we eat after he goes to bed).
Before bed: A couple more ounces of soy milk.
He only does a sippy. At home we went from the breast straight to a sippy because I didn’t want to wash all the parts for the Born Free bottles AND it seemed easier to do one transition versus two. At daycare, I don’t know what she did but around a year, a week after he was weaned, I told her he was only doing sippies at home and I think she just switched him over. The sippies I have are leakproof so they aren’t very messy…I thought all sippies had the leakproof valves now…maybe not? I use Playtex or Gerber ones.
I have found too that he generally likes things with more flavor and spices. So when he was younger he would eat plain black beans and rice but now he expects spices. I guess he wants interesting food.
Hope that helps! I’m sure she’ll eventually come around.
BTW, I’ve got 3 kids, and I’ve never tracked how much they’re eating. My job is to offer food, that’s it. It’s not my job to make my kids eat, just to provide frequent and appropriate opportunities.
What the kids eat, they eat, what they toss, they toss. As long as they are healthy, it’s all good.
You always make me laugh Alexa and so do the comments from all your readers.
I have a full term born, 16 month old son. He will eat graham crackers and yogurt at any given time, but anything else seems to be up for grabs. Likes something one day, hates it the next. He’s been off the bottle for about 3 months.
I second the straw cups for sippy cups idea. The straw cups (these are GREAT from Playtex) seem to make less of a mess than the sippies.
He also LOVES to have his snacks in one of these. There is something fabulous about being in control for him I think, and the smart design makes less of a mess (or a meal for the dog).
He REALLY likes to ‘dip’ things too, and I can some times get him to eat something he normally wouldn’t by giving him a ’sauce’ to dunk it in to. Examples, banana dipped in yogurt, burger pieces dipped in ketchup, pasta dipped in sauce. Not sure what that is about but I use it to my full advantage. Incredibly messy but effective. I also took my ped’s advice (he has five children) and started stripping him down to his diaper for dinner. The bibs weren’t cutting it and we’re warm enough in Wisconsin that it’s kind of fun. He seems to enjoy the whole eating naked thing, course we don’t get out to restaurants much. :-)
Alexa, I had a 27 weeker and feeding problems are just another fun preemie fact of life, I think. The gift that keeps on giving…
I can tell you she looks fantastic, happy, well fed, but I can also relate to the just-say-no-to-solids thing. Don’t read anything written by the mom of a full termer :) Not to sound mean, honest, but preemies are not just small full termers, and the vent makes a lot of them weird about eating.
You’re doing great, she’s doing great, and she’ll get there.
These comments are killing me! So funny. I have nothing else to add. Good luck!
Sorry for the book ahead!
My son is 19 months. Here is what I gave him today:
Breakfast: 1/4 c. oatmeal, 1/4 c. blueberries, Milk
Lunch: Milk, 1 oz. chicken, cantaloupe, zucchini slices (which he didn’t eat), 1/2 slice bread
Snack: Milk, banana
2nd snack since supper was late: slice of cheese
Supper: (Out to eat) Milk, Chili (with beef & beans), part of a baked potato, dinner roll
That is a fairly typical day for him. He drinks a total of 16 oz. of milk per day. I don’t fix special food for him, just whatever we are having. If he doesn’t like something I don’t force him to eat it, but I don’t give him something else either. I am amazed by what he likes. He loves spicy foods, especially salsa. He isn’t picky although he doesn’t like fresh vegetables or broccoli in any form. He isn’t a fan of cantaloupe either but I still offer it to him regularly and today he even ate a few bites for the first time since last summer.
The two year old I watch is a very picky eater when left on her own. She will pretty much try whatever I give her, if I sit down at the table with her and feed it to her or keep reminding her to take a bite.
Foods they both beg for: blueberries, grapes strawberries, bananas, graham crackers, pop corn, dried cranberries, cheese, Chex, goldfish crackers
As far as the mess with the sippy cup, if I don’t pay attention, milk will be shaken or spit everywhere. I am assured they will outgrow this before graduating high school.
For what it’s worth I used to work in a nutrition program for daycares. It is completely normal for a toddler to eat a ton one day and then nothing for a couple days, or to only eat one type of food for days at a time. I always advised to continue offering the foods, even the ones they don’t like and eventually they will eat it. My son still won’t touch broccoli, but I keep trying.
If there is something your daughter likes, offer that along with small amounts of new foods or foods she is lukewarm on. Eventually she will expand her horizons.
I am the mom of a 29-weeker. My son didn’t have reflux or any particular oral aversions – but he did have the most sensitive gag reflex known to man. He would vomit quite regularly until about 22 months. Anything that he didn’t chew until it was liquid, could cause him to vomit. Eating at our house was FUN FUN FUN! And we didn’t take him out in public to eat until he was about two and a half. Anyhow – I worried for quite awhile about how little food he actually ate, how much he puked, how much his diet still consisted of milk. And by about 2 years old – I forgot that I was worrying about those things because he was eating a little bit of everything.
I honestly think as a first time parent, I am like that about everything. When we were in the thick of potty training – I worried that he would go to kindergarten in pull-ups, and now we are just a few short months later and he is fully trained. I worried about feeding until I realized that he is eating just fine. It may not be what I thought a toddler should consume in a day – but he is eating, gaining weight, growing, developing – and is now a happy healthy three year old completely feeds himself, who likes salad, likes eating straight from garden in the backyard, and will finally consume meat.
It is tough – it gets tougher, and hopefully we all make it out alive!
Good luck!
13-17 months: it eats nothing except milk.
that’s what i remember. family doctor wasn’t pleased, but if they aren’t hungry, what are you supposed do? feeding tube, that’s about it… and they require a lot of up-keep.
she’s not going to let herself starve, i’m sure you’re aware of that. doctors love to boss. :)
*whistling*
I have a five-year-old who, on a good day, eats ONE WHOLE CHICKEN FINGER. He funnels milk down his gullet like a baby calf, though. I suppose whole milk has been his saving grace.
You’ve plenty of suggestions for good meal ideas and what kids eat (I have a 2 y.o. who can eat circles around anyone – fruits, vegetables, everything, all the time. But the boy child? No.); just thought I’d add to the “I Have a Non-Eater, and He is Well” club.
My daughter has eating issues too. Between the ages of 13-17 months, she was below the 3rd percentile for her age so I started adding a couple spoons of instant breakfast to her whole milk sippies. I’d give her 3-4 of them a day and soon she joined the 10th percentile for her age group.
As for solids, the only things I could reliably get her to eat was macaroni and cheese and hot dogs (cut them up really small!). After watching an “Elmo’s World” episode about bananas, she decided that they were tolerable as well. Just experiment with different foods. I was surprised to find my daughter actually liked prunes after she stole one from another baby at a mommy group.
She still has issues with food and at 2 1/2 she rarely feeds herself. She has better things to do. Ironically, she’ll eat the shit out of pretend food.
Luckily I didn’t have picky eaters. As long as it could be smashed on their heads with glee, they’d eventually accidentally get some in their mouth too and figure out that maybe they liked it. Mealtimes are VERY messy in our house, much to my OCD-afflicted husband’s chagrin.
My daughter (Megan) is almost 5, and my son (Liam) is almost 14 months (full term). Megan was always small — 20th percentile or below. Liam is typically around the 50th although with his delicious double chin he’s often mistaken for a lovely, fat baby.
Anyway, as for what they ate… Megan ate what everyone else is saying — organic yogurt, whole grain waffles, organic oatmeal made with breastmilk, avocado, mac ‘n cheese, applesauce, fruit, vegetables. She didn’t have juice (gasp!) until she was over 2 years old and thought McDonalds was owned by Satan.
I snort with laughter at all of that now. Liam, as the 2nd child, lives a completely different life. I can’t even enjoy a glass of Diet A&W Root Beer anywhere in his line of sight because he will screech and freak out until I break down and let him drink some. Directly from a glass glass. The only thing more embarrassing than that is when my 4 year old daughter asks — with frighteningly clear enunciation — for a skim decaf caramel macchiato. No lie. AND, I let her have it. Because she doesn’t really drink any other sort of milk. Kind of like the strawberry quik, but yuppy style.
Anyway, at now 14 months, Liam eats all the shit I swore Megan NEVER would: fruit snacks (not the organic kind), yogurt (YoPlus, full o’ sugar), ice cream, and almost anything Lean Cuisine makes. Luckily, like his sister, he also loves meat — rotisserie chicken, steak, salmon, bacon, and deli turkey. He likes all fruits (except some melons, doesn’t dig them too much), and many vegetables. He loves pasta of any sort, and nearly any bread product ever baked. He treats Cheese-Its like they are sprinkled with crack and would kick his own mother’s ass for a handful of cheese Ritz Bits.
Both of my kids could eat their body weight in berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries), grapes or raisins. It’s great that they are eating fruit but good gawd the poop! Ick.
They also get liberal amounts of ice cream, golden oreos, goldfish, puffs, oatmeal and string cheese. So it’s a real mix over here of “good” food and crappy food. But I let them eat what they want, when they want and it seems to work. I put all of their food (except the marshmallows and the fruit snacks) on the lowest shelf of the pantry and let them have at it whenever they want. I let Liam make the biggest mess he could possibly dream up so that he will enjoy being tethered to the high chair. I may regret all of these choices as they get older, but for now they eat. They eat, on average, a very nutritious mix of foods although there are plenty of processed things thrown in there.
One of my secrets is the Lean Cuisines. They have no preservatives and whatnot. They aren’t organic but they aren’t completely shitty either. Megan could exist on their product line entirely if I let her. It’s a win-win for me — I don’t have to cook a bunch of stuff wondering if she’ll even eat it, one package doesn’t make a ton of food that will sit and grow old in the fridge, and if she doesn’t like it then I just eat it. I think it’s helped introduce her to a variety of foods (they put zucchini in their spaghetti, for example) without me spending our annual budget on produce at Whole Foods.
I’ve got no advice on the sippy cups. We have 6 different types here and they all make a huge mess. Mostly because Liam throws everything. Really hard. We are considering a name change to Chuck since that’s all this kid does anymore. He throws shit around when he’s happy, when he’s sad, when he’s tired and when he’s bored. It’s an all-day, every-day chuckfest. Anyway, since he throws his sippy cups down with such ferocity, they can’t help but leak and spill.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that Liam still has a 4 oz bottle of whole milk for his morning nap, a 4 oz bottle of whole milk for his afternoon nap, a 6 oz bottle of whole milk before bed, and a 4 oz bottle of milk when he wakes up anywhere between 4am – 6am. Plus, he gets milk in a sippy with each meal and other random times. I don’t know how much he’s actually drinking from the sippy, but I’d guess he goes through about 20 – 24 oz of milk a day. My daughter drank about 20 oz of milk a month. If that. Now we just give her vitamins and lots of dairy products because she’s just not that wild about milk. Oh yeah, and there’s the decaf caramel macchiatos. Liam would run you over like a mack truck for the white stuff, Megan couldn’t care less. Go figure.
None of this was probably helpful at all, and it’s the most god-awful long comment ever but maybe it gave you 1 idea to try.
Well, I would take heed in the Ped only in that maybe they are suggesting evaluation.
Does she desire to self feed? If she does, just star laying the stuff down and see what she does. Here are my examples:
Breakfast: Kashi toaster bluberry waffle
Second Breakfast: 1 Egg omlett & cheese, fruit of some kind
Lunch: home made meatballs, overcooked green beans, bread of some variety, some fruity type thing
Snack: yogurt (Yo! Baby), canned pears (in juice)
Supper: Refried beans and cheese, overcooked broccoli, frozen blueberries
I also had the kid who loved veggies, refused most protiens, and could eat her weight in steamed spinach.
my 13 month old probably goes for about 60% breast milk (when not at daycare so she has the option) augmented with a bit of mashed potato or banana and just tastes of everything else. doesn’t stress me – i figure when she wants more she’ll ask for it. in the meantime it’s meant that since going back to work in an office above a bagel shop, i haven’t put on any weight…
I’ve been reluctant to stop nursing my 13 month old because she’s a picky eater (already!). At dinner I offered her shredded chicken, beans, green beans, cornbread and (damn!) mac and cheese. She ate the cornbread and mac and cheese, and probably only about 5 bites of each.
She loves fruit, though, so throughout the day she’s had very thin slices of apple, cubes of cantaloupe, banana, and cherries I pitted and diced. She drinks milk through a straw, but not a measurable amount. And eats her brother’s Goldfish crackers at every opportunity.
Today she’s rejected: waffle, cottage cheese, ground beef, beans, chicken, cheese, diced tomato and green beans.
Hell, I get excited if my 3 1/2 year old eats a whole chicken finger. And the doctor always tells me he is fat. I say feed her what she will eat and don’t stress too much. Kids seem to cycle through eating–some days they eat like they are starving, some days they don’t touch anything.
My ‘baby’ is 6 1/2 years old and she still makes a ridiculous mess with a sippy cup many days. We’ve used Playtex cups since trying everything with my oldest. They work the best and leak very little. She has to work to make the mess.
I’d say a chicken finger is a great start to things. Just let her try everything and give her a lot of the things she likes. Don’t worry about balancing her diet at this point – you could give her a vitamin if you’re really concerned. Some days my 5 year old will only eat a cheese stick for lunch. She is a healthy girl and her pediatrician says to be happy she is on the lower end of the scale. I guess they see a lot of the opposite nowadays.
My girl was full term, so take it all with a grain (or pound) of salt. She self weaned at around 12 months – and she was in daycare full time. I was a tyrant and cut off her bottles being warmed and switched her to whole milk. It sounds worse than it was, I wasn’t punishing her. But after a week of throwing fits, her milk consumption came down quite a bit to more of a compliment to meals rather than entire meals.
As for foods – she ate a combo of the baby oatmeal and the baby fruit (jarred – I’m not cool enough to make her own), Gerber puffs for snacks, cheese quesadillas, and a variety of foods her father and I would eat. My pediatrician told me that the point of the food at this age was really texture rather than flavor, so I worked to get her to accept as much as possible.
The hardest lesson was not to act like a short order cook and make her a separate meal if she felt like it. That was a lesson for me, not her, and I should note that she never went on a full on hunger strike for more than a few hours. I don’t judge any parent that has a difficult eater in their midst.
Your Early Intervention program probably has someone who can look at the feeding issues with you and make some recommendations.
We’re in the “they’ll eat when they’re hungry” camp. Some days our 12 month old eats the equivalent of an appetizer. Most days, she munches 2-3 teaspoons of food. She’s a big fan of chewing and spitting it out to the dog. We do “baby led solids”, aka we are too busy to sit there with a spoon. She eats a lot of boobjuice still and that’s OK by me. Less messy than the sippy.
Son (now 2.5) would often leave me awe inspired at his ability to seemingly starve himself, and yet still gain weight and, well, GROW. He was never picky, just would have jogs of eating very little and then making up for it.
They are all beautiful and unique snowflakes, but to refrain, they will eat when hungry. You can do whatever you want to the food; dress it up, cut it up, blend it, sculpt it. If they’re not interested, they’re just not interested. Rest assured knowing hunger will call, and they will answer.
My youngest is 17 months old (almost 18) and he eats pretty much anything you put in front of him. What he is inconsistent about is the AMOUNT he eats. Sometimes he is a bottomless pit and other times he nibbles delicately like a little mouse.
My first son was far pickier (and continues to be so). His pediatrician advised that I stop trying to think in terms of what he ate in a day and think more about how he might eat in an entire week. Apparently it is not so weird (or wrong) for small children to go a few days not eating much and, like previous commenters noted, when they are hungry they will eat.
FWIW…current baby is still on the bottle (OH THE SHAME) and drinks about 32 ounces of whole milk a day. He makes an unholy mess with EVERYTHING, not just a sippy cup.
Eating with my 14-month olds is a total crapshoot, so it sounds to me like Simone is a Regular Old Baby as far as this is concerned! Here’s today’s intake (which was a great day for us). I’m doing the division for ya, so these quantities are for 1 kid:
Breakfast:
-1/2 banana mashed into a medium bowl of oatmeal
-too many blueberries – 25? 30?
-1/2 mini bagel
Snack:
-1/2 Dora yogurt
-more blueberries (Apparently I love changing diapers)
-handful cheerios
-4 oz milk
Lunch:
-1 banana
-1 graham cracker
-1/2 grilled cheese sammie
Snack:
-1/2 mini bagel
Dinner:
-1 1/2 turkey meatball
-1/4 diced sweet potato
-1/2 graham cracker
This is probably obvious to most people, but I’ve only just learned to stop offering a lot of puffs, cheerios, etc at mealtime. It has the welcome effect of leaving the kids HUNGRY for the main course. Duh.
Good luck with all this info!
I don’t normally comment, but as the subject of this post is one I’m all too familiar with, I thought I’d chime in. Our 26-weeker, who is now nearly 4, had – and still has – major eating issues. Things have gotten much better in the last year. The range of things he’ll eat is still very narrow, but he’s increasingly willing to branch out. Texture was a huge issue for us: he refused to eat anything soft or slippery. It seems to have been mainly a control issue – not wanting to have something slide down his throat quickly (2 months on the vent takes its toll). When he was Simone’s age we were in complete despair. We tried occupational therapy (no progress), we tried distractions of various sorts at meal times, we tried offering a diet of m&ms and maple syrup (please. eat. something.) – nothing seemed to work. He got most of his nutrients from milk until he was about 2, when he gradually started eating raw vegetables and fruits and cheerios and toast and the kinds of things most kids are eating at 9 months. It took him at least until age 2 to get the hang of a sippy cup and we’re just now transitioning to a regular cup. In the past year, though, he’s made enormous progress. He now eats pasta, eggs, cheese, and a handful of other things, in addition to fruits and veggies. He is very thin, but active and healthy.
One thing we’ve learned is that the effects of prematurity linger with regard to eating issues. It’s hard to resist putting the bad old days behind one, especially as your child starts meeting all the obvious milestones on time and doing all kinds of other age-appropriate things. But you may want to give Simone a break when it comes to eating. Comparing her progress on this front with that of term infants may just create more stress for you. That was our experience, anyway. In retrospect, I see that we spent way too much time worrying about these issues in the first couple years. I think we are much more relaxed now that progress is being made. We’re realizing that he’ll get there in his own time and the more we make an issue of eating, the more likely it is that problems will continue (or others will develop).
I won’t tell you not to worry, because, well, of course, you will worry. But I do want to assure you that what you describe sounds not at all unusual for a preemie (in my non-professional opinion), and that it does get better eventually. We still have challenges. Travel, for instance, is tricky, when you can’t be sure you’ll be able to find suitable food on the road. We tend to travel with lots of provisions. But it’s nothing like it was in those miserable first two years. And we’ve been especially fortunate in having a sympathetic paediatrician, who said, when we (repeatedly) expressed our concerns, “if this is his biggest problem after all he’s been through, consider yourselves very very lucky”.
Uh, I suck at guessing portion size, because there are two of them (and sometimes Millbarge attempts to broker trades with Fitzhume by leaning across the divide between their trays and muttering “Say, old chap, do you have any grey poupon?” Er, actually she’s always trying to offer Fitzhume cucumbers and broccoli (the non-edible foods, apparently) in exchange for olives or something) so just divide everything in half.
Bottles first thing in the morning.
Breakfast: 1/4 avocado, piece of cheese the size of two of those Pink Pearl erasers, a cup of cream top yogurt with oatmeal mixed in, a nectarine, grapes or blueberries, water as needed. Water the babies, I mean, not the blueberries.
Snack: Bottles
Grazing: Trader Joe kitty cookies or cheerios or what the hell ever they point to expectantly.
Please Stop Crying After Your Nap, Oh For God’s Sake, Put THIS In Your Pie Holes And Stop With The Yelling:
One banana and water.
Dinner: 1/4 avocado, cheese, 2 eggs (scrambled with a tbsp of cream) OR toast OR pasta, corn, maybe broccoli, some sort of fruit (grapefruit? kiwi?), oh, you’re still hungry? Some other sort of fruit and LOOK, you said you were hungry. WTF are you throwing that for? Honest to God, I’m starting a food fight at your weddings, you little ingrates.
Bottles at bedtime.
Fitzhume: Bottle at midnight. Yes, I know. The stupid handout at the doctor’s office said that babies her age don’t need a bottle at night, and I just don’t care. She does.
Millbarge was delayed and required feeding therapy and a fuck of a lot of patience for a really long time. She got the majority of her calories from the bottle until way past the “Oh…she’s still having formula? How…interesting.” point. She still regards all new foods with the utmost suspicion until Her Majesty’s Royal Food Taster (Fitzhume) eats it and lives.
The carpet can testify (against us in court, if being giant slobs is ever declared a crime) about the neverending mess involved with sippy cups.
Oh, for what it’s worth, Millbarge’s delays were accompanied by some other whatevers, and I just want to say this:
That whole “they’ll just eat when they’re hungry” business is NOT ALWAYS TRUE. That is true only for typical babies.
Delayed babies, or babies with other challenges may NOT “just eat when they’re hungry.”
They might, in fact, sit in front of a full tray of perfectly acceptable food and scream at you in impotent rage because they are so goddamned hungry that they can’t stand it, but they are unable to eat what is in front of them, and it’s hell.
They don’t eat when they’re hungry, they eat when they’re READY, and some babies need help getting to that stage.
I’ll be coming back to read all these comments in case it helps me feed my 11 month old with a metabolic disorder (who likes food, in bites the size of mini peas) and who is 5th percentile for weight – BUT – I wanted to chime in about the doctors. Sometimes they don’t know fuck all, and they don’t talk to each other. My pediatrician congratulated me for keeping H out of the hospital all year and that she was doing so well, metabolic clinic docs think I should get her weight up (how, exactly, they don’t say) but in the span of five days I got praise and doom and gloom. I see a happy alert smart petite baby with regular and proportional growth, so after I cry a little, in my mind, I tell the negative doc to fuck off.
Holy comments, Batman!
I try to think of food in colors, with the idea that those really colorful foods are healthier. If my baby eats something purple, something orange, and something green in a day, I’m happy.
She’s 14 months, I just finished weaning her, she has a dairy intolerance, and prefers to self feed, although she hates the “level 3″ foods with the texture. I try to distract her with finger foods she can pick up while I shovel in the pureed stuff:
Brekkie:
Some raspberries or cut up banana
Oatmeal (fortified!) mixed with soy milk
Lunch:
Hard boiled egg, sliced
Soy yogurt
Pureed Peas or Spinach
Dinner:
Whatever we’re eating, or
Mixed veggies or sweet potatoes
Cut up chicken or hot dog
Blueberries
She snacks a lot on cheerios, those puffs, and crackers. She loves carbs! She’s pretty good with the sippy, but I’ve been bad about letting her use the spoon herself. Our carpet is a mess too, which is what happens when your living room is also your dining room.
Lots of luck. I think all babies are picky eaters, to an extent. It’s been great to read what others are doing, maybe I should branch out a little!
I will be in therapy over my preemie twins’ feeding issues. They’re four now and we still have days where they wear a pair of Picky Pants. Offer lots of different foods and textures. Dip cookies or crackers in yogurt. Give her a spoon so she can practice while you scooch some in when she isn’t paying attention. One of my girls had MAJOR texture issues that occasionally rear their ugly heads. We just keep offering. Small bits of what I ate were what they got at that age. That with a few bottles of whole milk. They were almost two before I gave up the last bottle but I did sippy cups during the day and a bottle of whole milk before bed to help with the calorie count. At that age, their menu was pretty boring. B’fast was some cheerios, some cut up bananas and a sippy of milk. Snacks were usually bits of cheese or nilla wafers and yogurt. Lunch might be a half a grilled cheese with real butter, some green beans and a small sippy of watered down juice. Another snack might be cream cheese on a mini bagel or pb crackers. Dinner, whatever I made for the rest of the family but in small bits for “finger” and “fork” feeding. Plan on things being messy for a while. (A big hit with my kids is one scrambled egg with a half slice of american cheese melted into it.) A half hour before bed, we would give 8 oz of whole milk.
Most of all, remember that this too shall pass. You will all manage to survive it but you will wonder how on more than one occasion. And some day, your darling girl will look at you, over a plate of yesterday’s favorite food and announce, “I don’t like this anymore.”
My (ex 25 weekers) twins are 19-22 months old (I love the range thing). We have one that loves to eat and the other eats because she has to (yes she spent longer on the ventilator). We don’t force feed (how do you do that anyway?) but do offer toys or lately spoons for distraction during mealtimes- self feeding has really made mealtimes less stressful and more fun.
Breakfast: 10 oz of milk, 1-2 weetabix with 50-100g mashed fruit mixed in.
Lunch: slice of bread OR a roll OR 150g of pureed veg (whatever is available), water in a sippy
Snack: a cookie OR some fruit (my eater hates fresh whole fruit, my non eater on the otherhand will have a few bites), water in the sippy
Dinner: 150-200g pureed veg and meat OR spag bol (just started eating this) or tofu and veg mashed/pureed. 1/2 a cup of full fat fruit yoghurt. Water in the sippy.
We still give lots of purees as my non eater has only just stopped vomitting with table foods.
I only offer water in the sippy, as juice is way too sticky and they spit the milk out. Regarding the sippy mess, thank goodness it is summer is all I can say, otherwise they’d be going through 3-4 outfit changes a day.
Wait I suppose I shouldn’t call her a non eater, rather my less enthusiastic eater, it’s just too long to type out.
This is also what is offered, not necessarily what she eats (all leftovers are fed to my eater)
Argh. I hate feeding. It was so simple when it was just breastfeeding on demand. What I want to know is HOW MUCH of everything they are supposed to be eating? Nobody tells you!
My 13 month old has always refused to be spoon fed, which has added a challenge. Yesterday she ate about a tablespoon of scrambled eggs, 5 avocado rolls when we went out for sushi, a mouthful of banana, a crust of toast, a pear, a tablespoon of pasta bake. That’s a pretty typical haul, except normally there would be more fruit & no sushi. Keeping her in organic fruit is bankrupting me.
Relax! The more I wanted my son to eat, the more he refused eating. He had bottles till the age of three and could eat together with us when he wanted (and make a terrible mess, too). I only took care that he got no sugar, not to much fruit juice, mostly water or tea without sugar.
I offered him pure food without spices and little salt, and single pieces on his plate were important. He did not like mixed up food at all. For example: mash potatoes, brokkoli pieces with a little oil and a peace of chicken. Apple and banana pieces, yoghurt pure without fruit or sugar… and so on.
Toddlers develop taste, adult food mostly is much too spicy.
As a child he was always skinny, now he is strong an tall and very healthy, finally discovering spicy food and salad (with 21 years)!
Some days, all she’s eat would be a few bits of toast and occasionally a carrot stick. I didn’t wean until she was 19 months so I think the bulk of her nutrition was still coming from milk.
Offer the food and don’t worry if she doesn’t eat it. Kids will eat if they are hungry (apparently anyway).
My daughter is now almost 3 and still some days will not eat hardly anything. Bleh, kids and food, guaranteed way to make me insane. Like today? She’s eaten a slice of apple, some crackers and cheese and some plain noodles. Also, I suspect there was a spoonful of pure butter consumed, judging by the mess left on the bench when I got out of the toilet.
Oh and I meant to add, it’s bedtime in 10 minutes, so what she’s eaten has been everything over the last 12 hours, not just the morning.
Toby is nearly 15 months now, and from about 9-12 months I was like all “Ha! Am Super-Mother! my child will eat absolutely everything!”, and now? He will eat pretty much nothing. Actually, that’s a lie – he eats bread with leberwurst pretty reliably, and rice. And fruit mousse. But other than that, not so much. And woe betide I try to make him eat anything red. No way, José! Quantity is fairly variable too – some days he seems to never stop eating, and others, I can’t get him to eat more than a bite of anything, and he wakes at 3am starving hungry.
He’s weaned apart from before bedtime, so if he doesn’t eat solids, he doesn’t eat at all. I’m generally relatively laid-back about the whole thing – I offer him everything, and if he eats it, he eats it, and if he doesn’t, he doesn’t. Apart from before bedtime, when I start chasing hi mround the house with various foodstuffs (see 3am waking).
Have you heard about baby led weaning? There’s a book by Gill Rapley. Its basically offering what you’re eating, at the same time as you eat it, and letting them play with it, ignore it, eat it or whatever. Its worked brilliantly for my 1 year old – she now eats absolutely anything and we never have any battles or stress over food.
I know its different with preemies, but perhaps just taking some off your plate if she looks interested, and leaving her to get on with it (which is the hard part!) might help de-stress the situation. Plus, at her age they’re such copy cats that anything you’re doing is probably interesting.
I too have sippy cup everywhere. I’ve decided just to give her water, and that way I don’t care if the floor gets damp. :-)
Nic
I have three, one of them is almost 1 right now. As long as you place food in front of the child at regular intervals, offer a wide variety, and relax, she will eventually eat what she needs. Her body knows what she needs and will prompt her. It is so hard to tell what they actually are eating, not throwing on the floor or mashing into their hair. As long as she is bigger the next time you go to the dr., she’s fine. Also keep in mind that they might like weird non baby stuff, for instance my youngest LOVES bell peppers – whether cooked as stuffed peppers, tomato sauce, thai stir fry… whatever. Who would’ve thought a 10 month old would love bell peppers? And if all she eats is crackers: buy whole grain crackers and dole them out, one after each sentence that you write on your blog which I’m sure you’ll be posting to, daily, obviously, as a sort of compensation to your loyal readers who offer you so much invaluable advice, even better than your doctor, with no co pay required.
The Chieftain, now 16 months, eats, in no particular order, peas, eggs, potatoes (sometimes), blueberries, raspberries, toast, cheddar cheese, chicken, beef, ham, pork, fish, brussels sprouts, plain Greek yogurt, softened prunes, broccoli, (very soft) carrot, apple, orange, plum (but not peach), frozen cherries (softened), tomatoes fresh and sauced, and, er, some other stuff I can’t think of. He drinks milk and water.
However, the amounts he eats? Well, in the morning he might have up to half a slice of toast, buttered, and then nothing until 2-3pm except for milk. He tends to eat more a that time, and then by the time I come home and get dinner cooked, usually between 7-8PM, he’s absolutely starving.
Except when he isn’t.
And the amounts? Some times he eats everything, other times, maybe a teaspoon or two. And he still takes milk during the night, sometimes up to 16oz…but he’s been cutting down to 4-8oz, so we’re not too worried..
Oh, he loves cauliflower, and suprisingly, roasted garlic…
You have had a lot of responses….so I am gonna try not to go too crazy here…
but yea,
I have a 17 month old. I have struggled with feeding him for months. He. Does. Not. Eat. I am still nursing, and he also drinks cows milk…so at least we have that going for us. Sigh.
Typical day.
Breakfast..a few bites of egg and 13 cheerios. Then I spoon feed him a YoBaby for an hour.
Lunch…6 peas, 3 pasta pickups. Then I spoon feed him some oatmeal with prune for an hour.
Dinner…a pinch of chicken, a sliver of strawberry, 5 grains of quinoa, and air. Then I give him a Pediasure in a straw sippy and call it a day.
My pediatrician asked us to spoon feed him twice a day, because he really seems to prefer that his servents place the food in his mouth, but it takes FOREVERRRRrrrrr. I have tried offering snacks throughout the day. No interest.
He seems happy and jolly so I am hoping its just a phase? Sigh. Double sigh.
The best piece of advice I ever read was to think in terms of a week as to how baby eats. Did she have a good nutritional week? If one day all my boy eats is banana and cherries (that would be yesterday) and the next hot dog (that would be today) by the end of the week it probably all works out. He’s in a big “can’t eat, life’s short, gotta go play!” phase now so he’s getting lots of stuff like banana and bread and crackers that he can eat on the fly.
He insists on feeding himself. Oh. the. mess. Insists on drinking out of a proper cup even though he’s not that good at it because his big brother drinks out of a proper glass and sippy cups are for babies.
He’s 19 months and he gets some cow milk after each meal and a bottle at breakfast and before bed.
Is she interested in what you eat? Let her have her own plate with whatever you’re eating, and make sure the 3 of you eat together, at a table, as much as possible. Give her a cup with a small amount of liquid in it and be prepared for lots of spills – don’t cry!
Alexa…
I have a 10 month old who absolutley HATES baby food!!! SO what does that leave??? Yes, People food. I have tried steak, but she got so tired chewing, she fell asleep at the dinner table after only one bite! (?) Seriously, I do give a quantity of people food, such as canned veggies that we eat:
1. carrots
2. peas
3. beans (waxed and grean) hell, go all out and mix em up!
4. potatoes (squares) too lazy to actually peel an actual potato and cut it up. Hey, do NOT judge, I am NOT the take home chef here!
5. peas/carrots medley
6. little jars of packed meat. turkey or chicken. Abbie LOVES these. But be careful; choking hazard. WTF?
7. Pizza…my kid loves the shit.
8. Mashed potatoes. Note: If you are lazy (asI am), Idaho makes a mean box of instant Mashed potatoes that taste pretty close to homemade. Add some gravy to the bad-boys and voila! a meal! Mangia! Mangia!
I have been having the same problem with my kids. They go through eating spurts where they will eat everything hanging loose, and not eat anything at all! My son is 4 and weighs 75lbs and is over 4 feet tall. He is soooo picky and hard to please. It is a fight every day to get him to eat… healthy! My daughter is 10 months and weighs 24 1/2 lbs and is 31 in long. She is not picky, she just doesn’t want baby food, only people food. Oh well, soon enough, they will be old enough to decide for themselves what the hell they want to eat and we won’t have to stress every damn day on what to make for dinner. Good Luck!!!!
The most comforting book I have read is called _Child of Mine_ and is written by a nutritionist who has been working with children and their eating issues for decades. I think it would be very useful for you to read, both in terms of “how much should she eat?”, and also in terms of “how do I do this without screwing up her relationship with food?”, which is how I came to find this book. I come from a family of weird dieters, and so needed to common sense advice I found there.
At that age my 30 weeker would eat a couple tablespoons of food at a sitting most of the time.
I remember vividly thinking the kid would never eat enough, and by then his weight had plateaued (at 18 months he weighed 21 lb). Then one night he ate an entire full-sized grilled cheese sandwich from Culver’s. (Our furnace went out and I had to get him out of the house while it was replaced, in November.)
He still doesn’t eat as much as other kids, at 22 months, but he’ll have days where he never stops eating too. He’s a big fan of fruit smoothies right now (pureed frozen berries, milk, and whole-milk yogurt) and would eat a whole carton of raspberries in one sitting if I let him. Same for cheddar.
Some great advice our ped gave us: kids eat like snakes. They’ll eat a lot one or two days and then really back off for days after that. My children were all full-term so no ideas there but I do remind myself of her advice when one of my kids decides to eat little to nothing for breakfast, skip lunch and then skip dinner too.
As people have said, every kid is different and has different eating habits regardless of whether they were full term or not. I was lucky in that I had a good eater (he’s almost two now and I keep waiting for the pickiness to begin, which I’m sure it will). But even he had his phases when he wouldn’t eat for a period of time. These days, he eats pretty well, but he does not eat anything that resembles a vegetable. Oy.
Anyway, I think at Simone’s age, whichever age that might be, it’s fairly normal for kids to not eat because there’s so many other exciting things going on. They’re learning to walk! So much to see! So much exploring to do! So much trouble to get into! Who has time for this eating nonsense that requires I sit in one spot?
Good luck.
My daughter is 16 months and was born full term. She spent the first 6 months of her life comfortably around the 50th percentile for weight, then decided she wanted nothing to do with food and has been dropping in percentiles ever since. Now, at 16 months, she’s barely 19 pounds.
A typical day:
breakfast – part of a banana or a handful of grapes (and before anyone says anything, yes I do cut them up for her). Some days she might eat a few bites of yogurt. She actually loves the concept of yogurt. She will pick one off the shelf of the fridge, stand by the drawer until I had her a spoon, lovingly point out the baby on the container, proudly carry both to her chair, and then promptly refuse to take even a bite.
lunch – a few bites of grilled cheese and approximately 6 peas. This is a good day. A bad day might be one bite of grilled cheese and 2 peas.
snack – handful of bunny graham crackers. She will eat 2 or 3, throw the rest off the side while loudly proclaiming “uh oh!”, refuse anymore with a firm, “all gone” and then eat the rest off the floor. I’ve considered serving full meals on the floor since some days it seems that’s where she gets the bulk of her calories.
dinner – couple bites of pasta and veggies, maybe some cheese.
That’s really about it. Where she gets her endless energy, I have no idea. She HATES her sippy cup and would prefer to get all of her milk from me, but seeing as how she is no longer a newborn, I’m trying to break the 12 times a day nursing habit. When she does drink from the sippy, it’s a few sips, then the cup is flung petulantly to the floor with an indignant glare. Her poor, tortured soul.
i have been reading your blog for some time and have to admit that there were times i was really jealous when i would read about your being able to nurse simone or reading how much she weighed. we have struggled with feeding since adali was able to first try the bottle in the nicu. we convinced our neonatologist to discharge us (for my sanity) even though she couldn’t finish an ounce of breastmilk by bottle. we would feed her with a special bottle where you would literally just squirt the milk in her mouth and hope that she swallowed. i was so excited to make it to solid food thinking everything would get better. wrong!
adali is 16 months today and only weighs 17 1/2 pounds. she hates to sit still to eat so the high chair now collects dust. she’s likes a wide range of food but will only take a few bites of anything.
here are some suggestions…make the food you give her as high in calories as you can. examples: she eats yogurt for breakfast…instead of yobaby which is 120 calories for 4 oz give her liberte (hard to find) which has 250 calories or dannon la creme yogurt which has 150 calories.
another idea is to add a little olive oil to foods she will eat.
i didn’t want to do this but now put carnation instant breakfast powder in her sippy cup at dinnertime so she gets a bot of extra calories before bed.
another think i do that most parents would probably cringe at is give her a few spoonfuls of nutella every once in awhile.
by doing just these few things we are starting to see a little bit of payoff by weight gain.
oh yeah and sippy cups are always a huge mess! good luck!
Like you need an 84th comment, but here’s one anyway.
Regarding the sippy cup, yes. Even spill-proof ones will be messy. Baby always finds a way.
As far as what a child that age might eat, the answer is “whatever she wants to eat.” All of my babies were born in an unremarkable fashion, had normal health (and no, I’m not trying to make you cry or hate me) and still lived off of two spoonsful of oatmeal, one shriveled fruit snack (with adhering hair and mystery particulate), and vigorous lungsful of recklessly discharged air each day. My eagle eye and anxious offerings were to no avail and yet they thrived.
Just keep offering her food. My kids love fruit of all kinds, most especially bananas and apple sauce.
Thanks for the blog. It never fails to give me a guffaw.
Not sure if this has been mentioned but there is a great book on feeding babies/kids called “Child of Mine” by Ellyn Satter.
Get it.
I have 17 month old twins (born at 35 weeks) and this book is my bible. It will help you avoid a power struggle with the food thing. I am all about avoiding the power struggle. It’s full of great info and I highly recommend it.
Carrie
All I know about kids is that, if you want them to eat, they won’t. They can sense your overwhelming neediness. If you leave the food out and walk away, they’ll eat it. I watched this in action with my own two kids!
My daughter will be 13 months in a few days, and here’s what she eats:
- Breakfast: baby cereal (let me put in a note here that my 3.5 year old STILL eats baby cereal and loves it. I let her, because it’s got protein and iron in it) and some pureed fruit (bananas, apples, pears, peaches, oranges), cheerios
- Lunch: ham or balogna cut up, cheese (sliced tiny or shredded), crackers, cheerios, rice, noodles, pureed fruit or cut up fruit (apples, pear, whole blueberries), baby cereal
- Dinner: a jar of meat-based babyfood, pureed (to make sure she gets enough meat in her diet), lunch-type stuff, fruit (pureed or cut up), some of whatever we’re eating, frozen peas (loves thoes!), cheerios
She drinks just short of two 8oz bottles a day, so I’m struggling to get more milk into her. I also give her a sippy cup, and yes, experience mess when she shakes and bangs it.
And right now she’s squacking at me with a book, demanding I read it, a la Simone! :D
I also feed her yogurt, and try to give her whatever she’s pointing to and wants.
I once read that a toddler/baby will feed themselves all they need over the course of a week, even if it’s fruit one day, meat the next, etc.
I second the comments that as long as she’s gaining weight and is well hydrated, you’re doing great. :)
Looks like you have gotten lots of good input, but I’ll add this. My son did not eat any solid food except Dannon LaCreme vanilla yogurt (if that even counts as solid food) until he was approximately 2 years old. Not adjusted. Truly 2 years old with enough teeth to properly masticate hot dog pieces and string cheese. He drank at least 36 ounces of whole milk per day which made the pediatrician shudder. So I started lying about how much milk he drank and, at well child visits, I would make up elaborate menus. Oh yes, he eats 3 servings of meat per day and lots of whole grains…probably 5 servings a day and, oh no, no processed foods of any kind. Now he’s almost six. Still eats mostly hot dogs and mac and cheese but takes a vitamin every day and is pretty darn healthy. And just this year he started tolerating chicken…as long as there are no bones and it is breaded & fried.
My kids are older but I well remember my son at 13 months. He decided that eating was no longer interesting. He refused all foods but the odd cheerio or goldfish cracker. Seriously. His weight dropped off the charts.
So, just chiming in to offer empathy.
oh, and by the way, I really think that a whole turducken is too much for a child Simone’s age.
Well, it depends on the kid, ya know? I have 3 year old twins and an 11 month old. One of my twins would tear through a turducken at 13-17 months, the other eats so little we are seeing a specialist. My 11 month old drinks ok from a sippy cup and nibbles at the finger foods that she gets in her mouth, but still gets 85% of her nutrition from a bottle. (I would prefer her getting 85% from the breast, but she had other ideas and weaned herself last month). 13-17 months is a big range for a baby/toddler. At one year they are still getting most of their nutrition from liquid, but by 15 months they are able to digest more and more solid foods.
I used to be in the “put healthy food in front of them, if they’re hungry they’ll eat what they need” camp, but now, not so much. My twins were born healthy and full term (please don’t shoot me now) but looking at N now you wouldn’t know it. He only weighed 29 lbs at his 3 year appointment, and only gained 1 and 1/2 lbs in 6 months. He seems to have no desire to eat, no matter how little I appear to care. My advice to you is to give Simone I wide array of foods but make sure that one of her faves is available at every meal and keep an eye on her weight gain. If you are ever in doubt if your child is in fact eating enough, write down everything she takes in over a week and then look at the big picture. Most toddlers are getting more food in them than you realize.
Try frozen peas. Too little to choke on, melt quickly, and are great for teethers who are miserable but need food!
My kid seems to exist on a diet of sunshine and good will. And, if I’m lucky, some cheerios, a serving of fruit/veggies, and on a great day, 22-24 ounces of formula. My pediatrician said not to worry, since she’s getting molars, and teeth make all forms of eating unpleasant. I tried just leaving the food out for her to eat it when she wants, and she just crushes it on her head. I assume she’ll work through these issues with her therapist one day. In the meantime, cheerios.
My 3 kids were that age… but it’s been a while. They are now 7 (twins) and 4.
I apologize for not reading a lot of your comments. But I DID notice someone giving their 14m old peanut butter. Please please PLEASE avoid nuts until AT LEAST age 2 and waiting until 3 is even better.
I do remember our girls being more “picky”… not in terms of what they ate, but HOW MUCH they ate. That continues to be the trend today. They have more grown up tastes and never have been into “kid food”. For instance, last night I received much praise and happy moans (as they ate) over grilled squash, carrots, and steak. One proclaimed “I love vegetables!” Which is incredibly awesome… but the 30 calories in those vegetables aren’t going to put weight on your little body. So please do enjoy but also eat the other items!
One thing that we DO focus on is making what they eat “worth it”. If they are only going to eat 1/2 of what a “normal” serving is… it needs to be packed full of healthy calories, fat & vitamins.
OH… I also clearly remember there being a battle over independence. Us feeding them was frustrating. Getting the girls to eat anything off of a spoon that was in our hand was pointless. They did better (but yes – messier!) if they were in control of the food.
And milk… our girls were HUGE milk fans at that age… HUGE! But that is a fine line to walk because they can and will easily fill up on milk and skip the solids.
My daughter (now three) was never a great eater. She nursed until 17 months and I would console myself that she was getting some nutrition that way. I can’t remember the specifics, except for the stage we affectionately call her “Ham Period.” She would eat nothing but ham for days on end. That’s right…ham. Cubed Hormel awfulness. Her first sentence was “MORE HAM MAMA!”
Eh, my baby didn’t eat, and I never really figured it out. In fact, he still doesn’t really eat, and I still haven’t figured it out, and he’s 3 1/2. SO. Let me know if you figure it out?
Breakfast foods were always my most successful: Cheerios, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, pancakes…
Simone will eat what she sees the other children eating when she can go to day care. Of course, she can’t go until she gets older and stronger, which (you must imagine) she can’t do until she starts eating.
Our son began eating at the day care, but only if it was the sort of thing we couldn’t bear eating at home. In Holland (where we live), they have different ideas about baby and toddler food. Peanut butter is a baby staple here; they give the walls a periodic coating of the stuff, as well as offering it every day to unsuspecting kids. Another favorite is “smeerworst” (=liverworst you smear), containing miscellaneous pork products and smeary chemicals. That became our son’s favorite. He still refused to eat what we offered and what we liked to eat. I remember in particular a lentil battle that lasted days. Then when we gave up, he said triumphantly, “I didn’t eat your money!”
Our (baby) daughter will eat buckets if she is placed in front of the television and the food is shoveled into her dazed, unsuspecting face.
What’s the lesser of two evils, smeerworst or the teletubbies?
She’s so deliciously pudgy – I don’t get why there is a concern!? My second daughter (full-term) ate very little solid food at that age – she just wasn’t interested and preferred to just breastfeed. She’s seven now and brilliant, of course. Simone sounds perfectly normal to me.
My now 14 year old ate nothing of substance until she was probably four years old. While I spent a good deal of time freaking out about it, her pediatrician (who was the same one her dad had as a child and therefore a veteran of thousands of picky eaters) sat me down as I sniffed tearfully that my baby would.not.eat and told me that babies are hedonists and would do only what pleased them and that in fifty years of practice he’d never seen a baby starve herself and that I was to RELAX.
After that I fed her what she wanted when she wanted it. She went through the “only white food” stage, the “only vegetables” stage and the “nothing but dino shaped Kraft Dinner” stage and has suffered no ill effects.
We adopted our DD at nine months from China and worked with oral aversions for about six months.
Lots of sympathy here and two suggestions — 1) you can mix anything into a bottle and 2) love the book _Child of Mine_ by Ellen begins with S look it up on Amazon.
We began by mixing cereal and fruit into the bottle and changing to higher nutrition toddler formula. Gradually, very gradually, we were able to move from bottle to Stage 1 baby food. First foods were chunks of banana, very soft noodles, and cheerios. She gagged on yogurt and pudding for years.
EI and ped. were not much help for us.
You might want to check out Sensory Integration Issues, b/c I do think that my DD still has some of those and food aversion probably had something to do with SID.
Now she’s 8 1/2 going on 16 and will eat many things when she’s not rolling her eyes and designing tatoos.
If she’s growing well, don’t sweat it.
My two and a half year old 1) is still nursing 2) has been a crap eater her whole life. We had failure to thrive diagnoses *twice*, abandoned with reluctance by her pediatricians only because she was hitting all her developmental milestones way ahead of time and because she is larger than I was at the same age. (I weighed 24 pounds on my third birthday.)
13-17 months was actually when we were dealing with the worst of it, when I was having regular crying jags over her absolute refusal to eat. Some days, I swear to god, all that would pass her lips was breastmilk, Pediasure (ugh), and, like, three peas. She wasn’t picky — we’d joke that she’d eat two bites of anything — she just basically wouldn’t eat.
And then, occasionally, she would shovel a food into her mouth with both hands, and we would exclaim hooray! a solution! and then she would never touch it again. That having been said, here’s a partial sampling of our Success List:
* Tiny cubes of tofu
* Mozzarella perlini
* Fresh mango
* Pizza crust
* Frozen blueberries (caution: blueberry poop is terrifying)
* Sweet potatoes pureed with an equal volume of butter (I was desperately fortifying all her food with as much fat as I could cram into it)
* Mommy’s Nummy Chompy Stix, my home-made teething biscuits that started with a bagel recipe, used twice as much gluten fortification as normal, and replaced much of the water with olive oil, full-fat yogurt, and pureed vegetables.
the chomp sticks were actually a huge success. We would keep them frozen, and let her just sort of chew on them all day long. Because of the high gluten content, it was impossible for her to rip a chunk off — she would just sort of gnaw the end to mush over a period of a few hours.
To this day, she basically doesn’t eat, except when she does. The doctors have thrown up their hands and proclaimed that as she clearly has no developmental problems, we should let her guide her own feeding within reason. She’s tiny, but she’s fine.
Oh yeah, and she was born ON her due date.
ha! when you figure it out let the rest of us know. My children apparently get their nutrients by just being in the same room as a vegetable. They’re growing and healthy and that’s fine by me.
My 17 month old ate:
Yesterday
BF – 2 bites scrambled egg
half a veggie sausage
Learned to say ‘plum’ but would not
try one
Lunch – half a small tortellini
a whole roasted red pepper
Snack – 8 oz bottle
Snack2 – handful organic cheese crackers
Snack3 – 4 grapes
Snack4 – a pollyO string cheese
Snack5 – 1 bite each chicken sausage, celery,
bell pepper, shrimp
Dinner – hot dog
1/2 slice pizza
handful of chips
clam dip
12 chocolate chips
cheddar cheese
(Had dinner at grandma’s last night,
can you tell:)
Snack6 – 8 oz bottle
I usually manage to get more fruits and veggies in but that’s pretty typical for my daughter.
My son just turned 15 months and has been a pretty good eater (so far, knock on my cube desk). Being vegetarian, I was pretty motivated to introduce him to a wide variety of foods early. His typical menu is:
Pre-breakfast snack (before he eats at the sitter’s) – Sliced banana or piece of whole wheat bread with cup of milk or water.
Breakfast – Plain whole yogurt, Fruit (froz. berries, banana, applesauce), and 1/2 adult packet of instant oatmeal all together in a bowl
Lunch – Bowl of some or all of the following: lentils, rice, frozen veggies chopped up VERY tiny, cottage cheese plus finger food such as baked tofu, a veggie burger, or whole wheat bread. Cup of milk.
Afternoon snack – My husband is in charge of this, so while I think it is something along the lines of cubed cheese and freeze dried fruit pieces, it is probably more like mini-marshmellows and lots of goldfish crackers. Cup of water.
Dinner – usually a variation of whatever we eat, and I’ll try to include whatever food group he is light on for the day. Cup of milk.
Can’t speak to what my now-2 1/2 year-old ate at that age, but I remember it being more than now, which is next to nothing except jarred sweet potatoes, raisin toast, and anything snacky-carb related. He was a preemie. He ate more than most kids his age and never gained a bit. He still weighs what he weighed a year ago. I imagine someone professional will be concerned about that soon.
My 13 month old (age-adjusted 12 months) currently is being weaned off formula and not only 1) hates regular milk, but 2) HATES the sippy cup even more. She does like the cups with a spout that is non-sippy, but those are messy. And she still doesn’t drink milk.
I don’t measure what she eats. Lots of cheerios, dried fruit, pasta, and anything we eat. Has never, not once, wanted to eat baby food from a jar. I know (from experience) in preemie-land it is different, and some pediatricians freak out about weight where others like it as long as they’re still *somewhere* in the 3-100% range.
The best advice I’ve ever been given on toddler eating is that you can’t force a toddler to eat anything he/she doesn’t want to and to look at their nutrition as a whole instead of day by day.
My daughter is 16+ months (born on her due date) and eats a baby yogurt/banana/adult-sized handful of cheerios/nutrigrain bar (a combination of those things, never all of them – usually 2 of the above) for breakfast. For lunch she eats a small portion of what I eat (think 1-2 serving spoon sized lumps) or a good-sized piece of cheese (a sandwich slice or 2 good pinches of shredded) and a good-sized portion of fresh fruit (she prefers grapes and bananas). For dinner, she eats what we eat – veggies (usually peas, green beans or broccoli) in maybe 1-2 oz portions and meat/pasta in 2-3oz portions. There are snacks of crackers and toddler snacks (I love the ones made from veggies that Gerber makes) in the AM (after breakfast/before lunch either before or after her nap) and in the afternoon (after her afternoon nap but awhile before dinner or she won’t eat). She gets NOTHING after dinner, which has been the best way for us to encourage her to eat dinner.
She gets 3 8-10 oz bottles of whole milk per day. 1 when she gets up in the AM, 1 after her morning nap (around 11) and one after her afternoon nap (around 4:30 or 5).
This is normal right now, but there are days/weeks/phases where she refuses meat, various veggies and or/won’t eat more than 2 bites of lunch, will only eat a small amount of breakfast, hates dinner. I can always get her to eat fruit and usually get her to drink most of her milk. She loves crackers, but even that varies from week to week – sometimes she’ll eat Ritz, sometimes it’s goldfish, etc.
I figure if she is hungry, she will eat more and she is beginning to learn how to ask for food, so I’m assuming when she wants it, she’ll ask.
Good luck with finding a good balance for Simone. It can be exceedingly difficult.
14 month old (full-term)
He will eat fruit. Any fruit and tons of it. So much that his bottom is rebelling. Whoops.
Generally, I give him a smaller portion of whatever we’re eating. I just cut it up really small. He’ll eat some of it, then decide anything on my plate (or anyone that’s sitting next to him!) is much better. He’ll politely hand over his fork to sample some of my food, then eat about 1/4th of an adult serving.
Our pediatrician says that kids this age eat about one big meal a day, so I don’t worry too much if he just grazes for the other ones.
His sister (age 3) is too busy to eat. She has very important plans, and eating just slows her down. I’m a Bad Mom ™ and I plunk her in front of the tv to eat. That way, she’ll stay in one place and eventually eat.
They love pasta, milk, tofu cubes and fruit.
Q still has an 8-oz bottle twice a day (naptime/bedtime). He drinks from a sippy cup the rest of the day, when he is not sprinkling me, the cat, or his older brothers with it.
Typical day:
breakfast – half a toaster waffle, watered down juice
2nd breakfast (when everyone else wakes up): whatever crusts of waffles others don’t eat, another cup of watered juice. Maybe a quarter of a banana.
lunch: a few (3-5) pieces of pasta, 2-3 slices of apple, some milk (4-6 oz??)
snack: graham cracker (mostly ground into carpet; actual amt consumed: perhaps a quarter of a cracker
2nd snack (when everyone else has one): a couple raisins or an animal cracker or maybe a fruit snack or two
dinner: 4 or 5 blueberries, coleslaw (I KNOW! WEIRD. But I keep it on hand now.), a bite or two of whatever protein (turkey, chicken, or fish) we are having
seriously, that looks like hardly any food but he is fat and healthy and growing. hope that helps. babies – grrr.
also? he won’t even LOOK at baby food and hasn’t for months.
also also, he’s 17 mos old.
Riley is 13 months old and was full term at 37 weeks. Besides consuming copious amounts of whole leche de moo, (seriously, like 40+ ounces a day!) he also eats his weight in cheese just about every other day. In fact, I can’t be certain, but I’m beginning to suspect his thighs, wrists, cheeks and buttocks are made entirely of cheese. He also really loves fish (catfish especially) but because of the mercury, he only gets it once or twice a week. He likes most vegetables but despises all manner of fruit (including juice) so I’ve been giving him liquid vitamin C supplements to ward off the scurvy. He rarely wants more than milk for breakfast (when he does eat, he will only eat scrambled eggs) and for lunch he eats maybe 4 ounces of solids. His biggest meal is dinner where he can eat up to 6 ounces of solids, an entire 4 ounce YoBaby yogurt and 10 ounces of milk. I think he eats a lot for a toddler but he is also a big boy – 29 lbs and in the 85th percentile for height.
Worry not, frazzled one, your plight is normal. And okay. And Simone is reaching the bar just fine (I am not a doctor, and I don’t even play one on the internets, but I can tell by her photos that she’s healthy. And I’m guessing she’s wetting diapers and growing or I would have read something to the contrary).
My daughter is 21 months now and when she was Alexa’s age I went through the same dilemma as you. I consulted online baby sites, books, you name it to find out a) How many ounces of milk she needed and 2) how many calories she should be eating. I couldn’t find a guideline for milk, and the “average” caloric intake recommendation was around 1200 daily calories. At 5′0″ myself, that’s how many I need in a day to get by (if I do no real exersize at all. which I don’t. Cuz I’m allergic to it, it’s awful really. Except not really).
I digress.
I tried counting her calories and at the end of the day we could only find around 800 at the most…and I started to panic. My 18 month old was still not 20#-the critical point at which her carseat could be faced forward, allowing her legs to finally stretch and roam free. My buddies’ son was 20# at six months.
ARGH!
Diatribe aside, you, er Simone, is doing just fine. At least that’s what the not-actually-a-doctor-but-I’ve-been-there-sistah in me says.
ONE chicken finger is an accomplishment. For Real.
oh my gravy look at all the responses, my duaghter is 13 months old, and is a PILL to feed, we are struggling with possible food and/or environmental allergies, silent reflux and I think issues with texture (full term baby by the way)…. will not eat anything “gooey” ugh….my son ate ANYTHING and EVERYTHING.
I recommend the book “First Meals” — mostly b/c the recipes are yummy enough that when your kid won’t eat what you just made, you will be happy to eat it yourself!
Ours is 3.5 now, and has worked her way up to hangaburger, pasta, yogurt, O’s, pizza, and tillas. She won’t touch bananyas, and honestly, if it *looks* like it grew on a tree or out of the ground somehow, she won’t touch it. She drank from a bottle FOREVER (we had her down to *just* water, *only* before bed just before her 3 yr checkup, and when the doctor told her she was too big for bottles, she gave them up).
The hard parts for me have been staying out of a power-struggle over food, and not taking it personally. She’s on the skinny side, but hasn’t starved yet!
Hi Alexa. I think each baby has his or her moments of causing worry. My baby was born three weeks early and just under 7lbs and after a weight dip and some concerns we had her frenum cut (she was literally a tongue-tied baby) and her weight took off so that she has been consistently in 98th growth percentile (even when fully on breast milk) since then. What struck me was the difference in approach here in London, England. Here after a year they tell you you only really need one milk feed a day and if the baby is eating well, not even that. Now I only feed my 15 month old with milk (formula) when we are taking a plane (for convenience) if she is ill or teething or as a special treat. I think the feeding thing is a bit chicken and egg: if you feed them a lot at snack time, they are not going to eat much at mealtimes so then you think it is important to give them snacks, and so on. Some days I find my cherub basically thinks it’s fun to generate her own cookery show as I pull off one meal after another before her on the other side of the counter. On these days I just have to tell myself she is not that hungry and roll with it as more often than not whatever i give her she will chuck on the floor or artfully dodge by looking away faux-casually…
A typical day might be this:
Breakfast: one slice of extra moist and soft Pumernickel Rye bread from the farmers’ market (crusts off so leaves a smaller amount) half a small punnet of blueberries and a little yoghurt or fromage frais.
Snack: Half an apple / a biscuit (regular adult biscuit made of sugar and flour etc.)
Lunch: normally something like a wild salmon fillet (I marinate it in mirin soy garlic and ginger, sounds ridiculous but it makes her eat an entire salmon fillet) or a puree of chicken liver with a mix of pureed sauted vegetables (eg. Courgette, potato carrot and fennel) all veg with lashings of parmesan cheese and extra virgin olive oil mixed in. I would then give her some strawberries or other fruit for pudding!
Afternoon snack: a mini baby bell (mini edam cheese) or some dried apricots / dried apple rings / prunes
Supper: A cup of baby pastina (fortified with iron, you can find this from good importers of Italian food, it is like the little stars etc. you can put in broth) this pasta would be with tomato sauce made by me and sometimes a dollop of pesto. In Italy we put Parmesan cheese on baby food from the very first purees. I find my baby eats with much more gusto when her food is seasoned properly (almost as much as ours) – parmesan is nice and salty full of calcium etc. – in Italy it is advertised as a nutritious food.
Basically I would say seasoning with some basic staples (olive oil, soy sauce, garlic, salt, pepper, grated cheese) is what makes the difference in babies taking an interest. I have to agree with the lady above who said that self feeding helps revive interest – this is the case for us at least. I have to stand behind the baby and help her hold the spoon and map out the actions for her till it comes more smoothly.
Oh yes and she loves houmous and bread sticks to dip in it. Olives, blue cheese. I would recommend being ambitious and giving her the stronger tasting stuff and see whether that grabs her fancy. Good luck!
I stopped reading other people’s comments, because I started feeling stressed. How do people get their babies to eat so much food? My 16 month old is small, although theoretically fine, at 10% percentile in weight, and 25th percentile in height. He was early fullterm. Anyway, he eats baby yogurt mixed with oat cereal, which he can spoon up on his own (messily). Sometimes he’ll eat scrambled eggs, or suck butter off toast, he loves black olives, he’ll sometimes eat pancakes, he pretty consistently likes bananas. As his daycare provider said, (imagine thick Scottish brogue)”He’s no much of an eater, is he?” The doctor is not worried, but when I see the large, diverse lunches that other moms have packed for their kids, and I know that he probably won’t half of the small lunch I’ve packed, I worry.
The only way in which this comment might be helpful is to confirm that sometimes fullterm babies with no known problems don’t eat much either. So, I hope that helps. Also, my baby only makes messes with his sippy cups when he sucks water in his mouth and spits or dribbles it out. And he can control whether he does that or not. Maybe Simone is goofing around, or maybe the sippy cup doesn’t have the valve pushed all the way in? (If you are using that kind of cup.)
oh forgot to qualify my comment with a little self-awareness: I know my baby eats so I may not be best qualified to give advice and have not had my baby have refluc or NICU experiences so apologies if I sounded blasee!
However i also wanted to add that smoothies are a great idea too. You can put avocados in them, berries, bananas, yoghurt, anything really and they tend to love drinking through a straw! My little one had such terrible teething that we had to take her to Accident and Emergency (the ER) as she was projectile vomiting and had diarrhoea and a fever. All she felt like putting in her mouth were those baby food pouches with the nozel that they can suck the puree out of. Here in England there are three brands that have this: Ella’s Kitchen, Peter Rabbit and Plum. I tried to replicate this at home and it worked: I put a pureed food in a little clean food bag, snip off one corner and literally “pipe” the food in to her mouth like I would if I were icing a cake!
I didn’t read all of the other comments-and what my 10 month old eats in a day-but, maybe what she eats will help. i feed her only the things she seems to be crazy about-yo baby yogurt, tofu hotdogs, and everyday- avocado with cream cheese. eating avocado alone made her gain weight. she’s in the 10th percentile.
I hope you get some guidance-oh, and screw the decaf coffee. what the hell advice is that–you need straight expresso.
Reading the comments has made me remember what our “refuse to eat anything” eater actually would eat when she was a toddler. Here’s the list for those still struggling:
Gerber banana cookies, goat cheese, anything with tomato sauce or soy sauce (these both made her skin turn blotchy & bright red, but hey she was eating!), chocolate cookies, mac & cheese, chicken wings (not the spicy ones), the fruit and meat baby foods, cheese popcorn, pickles, Chinese noodles.
Quite the nutritious group, isn’t it?
She hated, hated, hated all those toddler meal thingies. She esp. disliked those toddler sausages and was very articulate at expressing her dislikes. (Our kitchen floor has never been the same.)
And for those struggling, many toddlers do reach growth plateaus in their second year. At least mine did.
I’d say keep offering your non-eaters bites of more strongly flavored food or season their food with parm. cheese or soy sauce and see what happens. Maybe their appetites will improve? Parm. cheese on veggies is still SOP at our house.
Just keep on going and soon you will have potty training to look forward to!
Hi Alexa,
Haven’t read all the comments – so this may be repetitive. At that age range, I really concentrated on nutrient-dense foods. We avoided simple carbs (crackers, etc.) and this was before we knew about the gluten sensitivity/status seizures/brain lesion my eldest was going to be dealing with.
My daughters ate a lot of salmon. We lived on the West coast and I would bbq an entire salmon and give it to them warm (as a finger food) and smash it up cold for lunches. They also loved cooked sweet potato mashed up, lots of fruit, especially berries, peaches, melon and bananas. Brown rice pasta is good; I made it with homemade pesto sauce. My eldest used to love black bean soup. I used to get it freshly made at the farmer’s market and heat up a cup for lunch. It was a bit spicy but she adored it. Brown rice and beans may work as well. Some kids like spice/strong flavours and others loathe them.
I think what worked best for my girls was just letting them feed themselves. Painfully slow and messy, but they loved having control.
Best of luck!
We’re brazilian, so our diets are a little bit different. My daughter (18 months old) would eat *anything* up until a couple of months ago, but now we’ve entered Desperate Mother Land. It has a little bit to do with her learning the words for “good” and “bad” (“bad” being followed by a Vincent Price kinda laughter) and power play.
Normally she would begin and end her day with a bottle of milk. For her mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks, I’d give her diced fruit, a fruit smoothie or yoghurt. For lunch she would have protein (meat, chicken, fish and pork), rice and beans (a brazilian staple) and two different kinds of veggies and all sorts of soup for dinner.
Right now this is all I *try* to give her. For the last two days the mere sight of pans in the stove is enough for her to yell “don’t wanna” or “baaad!”. It’s been buttered noodles all along. And hardly any fruit.
I guess toddlers are designed to make us mad.
My daughter is 14 months old and is still on Formula…she literally drank her first bottle of milk without gagging today…so there is hope lol. She will eat pretty much anything we put in front of her, just not much of it. She exists mainly on bananas, banana cookies, rice cereal with bananas (are you sensing a trend yet?) cheerios by the handful and those baby cheese puff things….almost forgot the love of butter cream frosting we discovered on her 1st birthday….big fan….
Not sure what my ped will say about her diet – her 15 month appointment is at the end of the month. But since she didn’t crawl until 2 days after her 1st birthday she has proven she does things on her own schedule, pediatricians be damned. =)
I don’t know what my ped will say about her die
Coming out of lurkdom to say my daughter was never a good eater – she never finished a jar of baby food. She started eating really well at 2 years old. She did seem to better with smaller meals throughout the day.
My son on the other hand started solids and would eat 2-3 jars of baby food in a sitting!
Hang in there!
My 25-weeker is a rockstar eater, but he sucks at growing.
When he was at 17 months, he ate on average
1. souffle made in muffin tin, yogurt, cheerios and usually a piece of toast. This was spread out over 3 breakfasts.
2. whatever daycare fed him. ranged from veggies to fish to spaghetti. He routinely ate the largest portions, larger than the 3 year old. Plus dessert
3. Snack of some sort.
4. Dinner was usually sweet potatoes and something.
Now, at 27 months? He’s Mr. Picky. Breakfast was yogurt, no cheerios and a banana. Dinner? Rice and zucchini with ricotta and spinach.
That being said, he’s still tiny. I mean, so small and I’m secretly worried that he’s not growing at all. So it doesn’t matter how much he eats, he still only weights 20 lbs and has for 9 months.
His twin? Won’t take anything, not even a bottle by mouth (we have an excuse…. she’s still part time on a vent and has a trache). She’s G-tube all the weigh. She also outweighs him by at least 3 lbs.
I wonder if Noah would be bigger if we didn’t give him table food.
I have not read all of the comments, but I did catch a “Don’t get into a power struggle” as I scrolled down to the “post a comment” box, and I can’t second/third/etc. that one enough. Once Simone gets wind of the fact that you WANT her to eat, you can forget it.
You didn’t tell us in the post what you have tried. I made all (okay, *most of*) my own baby food because my eldest refused all jarred food, and once I’d done it for him, I felt guilty not doing it for the other two when they came along. So, if you haven’t tried throwing stuff in the food processor to play with texture, color, and flavor, do that. I also recommend letting her self-feed if she’s into that. A battle over the spoon is never *really* won by the mother. Finally, keep trying new things. Sometimes it just takes the right food to kick start their interest.
I finish my tome with a little story about our neighbor. His mother lamented to me when he was about 17 months old that he totally refused to eat, and the pediatrician was worried about weight gain. I gave her my best tips (see above), but nothing worked. Then grandmother (well, Babushka, actually, as the boy and his mom are Russian) arrived and began to make these little steamed meat cakes for Maksim and VOILA, he ate not only them but everything his grandmother offered.
So, perhaps the real answer is to get your mom to show up at mealtime with some fondue.
yes, it’s that crazy EI person again. :) i was so impressed that simone is off pulmicort till winter that i almost stopped reading right there–wow!!!! clearly you are doing many things right. and, not to draw too broad a stroke, but *most* pediatricians haven’t a clue about developmental…anything. especially for preemies.
someone, possibly my mom, but maybe my coworker, told me once, “you can’t make kids do three things: eat, sleep, and poop.” so true.
i’ve heard everything from parents, much of which has been said here too. my OT coworker, who has three children of her own, is much enamored of the book “feed me, i’m yours”. i haven’t read it, but thought i’d pass that on. if simone’s interested in your food, i’d say give her that. you’ve got lots of advice to page through up above, so i’ll stop there. feeding is highly individualized. we have some delightful feeding guidelines at work that talk about transitioning kids from bottles to spoon feeding to finger feeding, etc…might ask your EI person if they have those and can share them with you.
as to the sippy cup. i couldn’t really tell if simone can’t figure out how to drink out of one or if she just knows they make a mess and acts accordingly. if it’s the former, read on. if the latter, skip this. our feeding specialist despises them b/c they require a completely different and otherwise useless mouth position and action, and recommends that parents transition their kids straight to a straw cup. i have seen many parents who have struggled with a sippy cup with their child switch to a straw cup and have nearly instant success. then again, the milk might have to have chocolate flavoring to get some kids to agree to it. ;) as for the mess…sigh…straw cups are messy. but then, sounds like sippy cups are too, for you guys. :)
good luck!
My 14 month old eats a lot of yogurt and cottage cheese. He will also eat fresh (real) fruti, but we still have to feed him veggies from a jar. We’ve been slowly introducing more protien sources like eggs and meat, but he’s not taking to those very well. I’d like to soon start transitioning him from jarred veggies to real veggies, but we’ve had catastrophic results thus far. I think what Simone is eating for her age is fine, and yes, my son still has issues witha sippy cup, and will only drink milk from a bottle.
I didn’t get a chance to read the other comments, but if honestly want to treat her like an “average” baby then 5 times a day (breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner) you put mostly healthy food in front of her and leave the room (keeping watch for choking, of course). I honestly find that leaving the room helps – they somehow sense our stress and fuss more when we’re there. Seriously, leave the room (peek around corners, obviously!)
They eat what they want, they ignore the rest, and honestly won’t let themselves starve. Stop giving bottles (she’s old enough by “average” measurements), put milk in a sippy cup, and let her regulate herself. Unless there are problems, she will do splendidly.
ALL OF THIS IS TO SAY: this is how you treat an “average” baby. If Simone’s health conditions warrant more care, obviously I’m not recommending that you ignore it!
Foods my babies loved at that age (one is 3.5, one is 1.5 if that helps at all):
grapes (cut in half)
grape tomatoes (cut in half)
watermelon chunks
melon chunks
veggie burger diced up
veggie hotdog diced up
baby carrots (I know, a no-no)
celery with hummus (great teething tool!)
fried tofu chunks
broccoli (I swear, both of them)
cherries
raisins
sweet potato chunks
canned beans
POPCORN!
I hope that helps at all. You’re doing great!
Foods that were big hits: bananas, raisins, strawberries, whole milk yogurt, graham crackers, (or any other kind of cracker), waffles, soynut butter, toast, dry cereal, bacon
Foods sometimes accepted: baby carrots, peas, cheese sticks, pancakes.
They always drank milk, juice or water out of the sippy cups. No bottles.
Just a word about popcorn. My kiddies loved it too, but you should make sure she doesn’t get any hulls. If you love popcorn like I do this won’t be a problem. You can just bite off the offensive end and give her the fluffy part.
I also recommend an OT evaluation for oral aversions as it is so commom in kids who have spent any time on the vent. I once spent a year as a home health nurse for a micropremie that have been vented for 8 months who had never been trached, a big part of my job was working on his oral aversion.
He had all sorts of interventions designed to get his mouth used to the the joy of food and it did eventually work, so if you think this might be an issue, it was a painless process, more of exposing him to textures that he liked and flavors so that food became a joy and not a trial.
Do you sit and eat with her? I’ve found the surest way to get my 14 mo old to eat something is for him to see it on my plate (not on his) and me eating it. Also, he hates bland foods (save good old fashioned carbs -bread & pasta, he won’t eat steamed broccoli, etc. He loves pickles, olives, lemons, limes. Not intutive but great once discovered.
Ok I’m sure I can’t add anything else more useful, especially since my kid was not a preemie and actually eats like a horse. But I found the food that was the easiest for him to work on eating skills were those Gerber puffs – they rocked. Once the baby gets her hands a little wet they stick to her fingers and are hard to get off plus they are super easy to eat and I didn’t feel bad about giving them to my son because they actually tasted like something (I always felt a little bad about baby food because it just looked so yucky). And they come in a handy container that you can bring everywhere.
Like I said, not super useful but my two cents. someone else probably mentioned them before me, sorry don’t have time to read all the comments. :-)
Simone sure doesn’t look like she’s wasting away to a sigh and a whisper. Unless you’re Photoshopping her pictures she looks pretty chunky. In a good way.
I have one question for you: What are eight whites? You mentioned them in the BREAKFAST portion of the hypothetical menu and frankly, I’ve never hear of them. Are they anything like egg whites?
My children weren’t picky eaters when they were babies but there were some things they still refuse to eat. They include peanut butter, cereal, any kind of fruit and chicken fingers. They also dislike candy. And tuna fish.
Have you tried Simone on miso soup? My kids adored Japanese food when they were little. They still do.
Just an idea–teeth pain is perhaps making it worse? And after the molars are in, it will be less difficult. Only because my non-preemie is having the same issue, unless he gets liberal helping of tempra and motrin.
Oh, and this originally made me fall over and laugh yesterday because I am the number 1 google hit for small turducken and DAMN, now you will be stealing it! heh
I’m a speech pathologist and in grad school I observed a group that treats kids with eating difficulties and aversions. Almost all of them had been intubated, tube fed, on vents or had something go on in the upper digestive/respiratory area.
The treatment is pretty effective and often fun for the kids (there are toys, there is snack, they get used to smells and textures…). It might be worth checking into whether someone there does such a group. Your early intervention therapists would know, but if you need help finding this kind of thing (they aren’t that common), just email me.
If you want a low-key, non-judgemental eval, the folks at the Feeding Clinic at St. Paul Children’s are wonderful. We’ve worked with them alot with our 24-weeker who is still on thickened liquids due to an aspirating issue and I can’t say enough good things about them.
My toddler experience is completely unhelpful: she eats like a linebacker and has since 13 months old.
Her daycare teacher told me that she’s the first one at the table and the last one to leave, and that she usually eats three servings of lunch. One Saturday she ate five bananas, plus her usual meals and snacks.
There’s a section on the daily info sheet labeled “What I ate” and “What I did not eat”, and the second one is always blank. I’m just as mystified by her as you seem to be by Simone.
Pesto was a big hit for MM.
THANK YOU thank you for posting this. we are having eating problems too. looking forward to mining these comments for HELP…
My 34-weeker twins, now almost 16 months, are not great eaters. One, especially, pretty much exists on strawberries, bananas, avocados, graham crackers and mac-n-cheese (only the powder kind). They both also drink tons of milk, mainly from bottles. Lying at their 18-month appointment about their diet seems like a fantastic idea, especially after a nurse had me in tears when I called a couple months ago. She went on and on about everything they should be eating, helpfully ignoring my pleas for help about them not eating anything. Way to make me feel like the worst parent ever.
Robbie is 10-13 months old. I’m lucky to get an ounce of pureed babyfood (he prefers the nastiness smelling jarred meat you can find) per day. Anything with any texture at all and he gags until he pukes.
This preemie eating this is pretty awful.
A friend of mine started a blog for fattening up babies. Not sure that’s exactly your goal but since fattening up babies involves getting them to eat, you might check it out.
http://chunkymonkeymenus.blogspot.com/
My girls are 14-16 months old. They’re very good eaters. One is on the smaller side of things, so we do a lot of avocado and sweet potatoes, things that are more calorie dense. I do straw sippy cups. EI suggested them and I couldn’t jump on the bandwagon quick enough. Regular sippies made no sense to me since they’re practically bottles. What’s the difference?
An average day for us –
Breakfast – 3 pancakes shared, 2 sausage links each, fruit
Snack – Dry Kashi cereal
Lunch – 1 veggie burger each, yogurt, peas
Snack – Peanut butter sandwich, cheese
Dinner – Pasta, rotisserie chicken, mixed veggies
They love veggies and will generally eat about 1/4 cup at meals. Bananas are a huge hit. They’re at an age now where they love to bit chunks off of things, instead of picking up little chunks.
Hi Alexa,
I’ve never commented before, but I love your blog, and this post has inspired me to comment.
DON’T WORRY!!!!!!
The best advice I’ve heard about babies and food is that the parent’s job is to put food in front of the baby. That’s it, wether she eats it or not is not up to you. You do not contol your baby’s behavior. In the long run, she will get enough food, and if you offer her nutritious food, she’ll be fine.
My daughter (now 2.25) wasn’t interested in food until recently. Sometimes she ate/eats voraciously, sometimes she ate/eats NOTHING.
Again, DON’T WORRY!!!
Sallie
Yesterday my baby ate a bowl of oatmeal, a peach, a whole wheat organic pita pizza made with soy cheese, organic raisins, an organic sweet potato, walnuts, and some broccoli. wow this is fun. I should get my own blog.
Is Natalie’s menu (#116) a joke? Please tell me it’s a joke.
Hmmm, so hard. My baby is going on fifteen months and it would seem that the only thing she eats is her weight in bananas, the rest she just moistens in her mouth so as to create a grouty-mold type substance with which to coat all unwipeable things.
I have not read all your 148 comments, and you will probalby not read comment 149, but I am gonna guess most of the comments are along the line of, “hey my baby doesn’t eat anything either!” and lots of stories. So, while I realize Simone had a much rougher start in life, feel at ease that she is growing to be completely “normal” : ie: doesn’t eat anything!!! Totally what most babies do, except for the exceptional ones. You know, the ones who already play the violin and can read Russian literature, unlike our own average, common children.
My kids ate everything until 18 mos. of age. now, I am not even sure why they are still alive as food is of no concern to them. Ah well.
Katie,
I’m betting Natalie’s menu isn’t a joke because babies are fed very differently in Europe and other countries, at least according to my sister-in-law from Belgium and my ped.
No one one worries about withholding for allergies or doing one food at a time, they just puree it, mash it, cut it small and go.
The babies thrive and they have way less allergies than we do in NA, in fact, there was a really good study on this with peanuts.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/38370/title/Food_allergy_advice_may_be_peanuts
FWIW, baby food in jars tastes horrendous. I make mine and freeze it in cubes, cause I don’t have time to make it fresh like Natalie. But yes, I do put lots of extra herbs and olive oil and garlic, and he loves it. And now, I cut up a lot of our table food tiny and he loves it.
Unless his molars hurt badly and then we go for a tylenol appetizer.
Do the best you can Alexa, she looks great from where I sit!
I still stress about P’s lack of food consumption, and she’ll be three (holy hell) next week. With us it goes back to the heady days of bad reflux and lack of weight gain, and this residual paranoia has stuck with me. Though I don’t remember precisely what P ate between 13-17 months old, I do know she went from eating normally up to a year old, and then just gave up. It drove me mad, as I’d made such an effort to only feed her homemade, diverse, flavourful foods up to that point, which was supposed to make her much more likely to have a more adventurous palate. HA!
Here we are, two years after the great food strike, and we’re pretty much in the same place. Breakfast goes well – she generally has a bowl of some kind of healthy cereal or porridge. Lunch is at school and wouldn’t you know, she regularly eats most of that, regardless of what it is. She will quite happily consume bloody shepherds pie at nursery, but if I dared to put that rubbish in front of her at dinner she would never let me forget the injustice. As such, dinner is usually fish, chicken fingers, or fruit. Sometimes sandwiches are accepted, as is cheesy pasta, but that’s our limit. I couldn’t tell you the last time she ate something classified as a vegetable.
Though this entire comment has been about my non-13 to 17 month old, I will say that Simone looks healthy, and certainly has a lot of energy. If she wasn’t getting enough food that wouldn’t be the case, right? Right? Right.
My nearly three-year-old still is a terrible eater. When he was Simone’s age, he would eat banana and plain yogurt with some regularity and beyond cheerios, that was about it. He didn’t start eating what most would consider three solid meals until he was close to 1 1/2 and even now he is lucky to do two solid meals a day. Thank goodness he does like peanut butter since it is pretty good for him. I always say if a kid is growing and staying on their growth chart, don’t sweat it. Easier said than done though as I still stress weekly about the eating here.
Hi Alexa!
First of all, thank you so much for putting this post up. I’m stuggling with my baby’s feeding issues too and I always learn so much from you and your readers. I never would have survived the first year of motherhood without you and your readers!!
I can’t offer any help with the premmie feeding issues other than to assure you that moms of full-term babies are tearing their hair out too!
My 11-1/2 month old still does not ingest anything resembling regular food. She’s great with baby foods, but has lots of trouble with non-pureed foods. She finally is willing to pick up puffs and goldfish from her tray and she can now even get them into her mouth, but she doesn’t have the whole ‘chew’ or ’swallow’ thing down. She moves her jaw up and down, but doesn’t actually gum the food at all. It just sits on her tongue and then eventually winds up on her bib. If I give her 20 cheerios, I’ll find 19 of them on her bib when she’s finished ‘eating’. Her daycare swears she truly does swallow the food they offer her each day, but frankly I just don’t believe them based on what I see at home. I don’t think they are lying to me… I just don’t think they pay close attention to her actual ‘consumption’ the way I do.
All the other moms I know have babies with no feeding problems whatsoever, so I’ve been feeling like a HUGE loser as the mom who isn’t transitioning her baby to solid food properly. I finally decided this week to just stop worrying because no one eats baby food forever. She will both figure it out sooner or later.
I know none of this is helpful to you, but just wanted to let you know in the words of Michael Jackson… “you are not alone”.
I can’t help you much since my daughter is a 13 month old hog and full term and will eat anything if circumstances are decent. But, here are some foods that she will eat even when in the foulest of moods, sick, after we have locked her away from the toilet, etc.:
-Spaghetti (with tomato sauce or pesto)–let her feed herself and get your camera ready
-Oatmeal with cooked banana (she never took more than a 40 minute morning nap until we discovered she loved it and wanted to gorge on it instead of Cheerios and fruit) OATMEAL IS OUR BEST FRIEND.
-Beans (like very flavorful Mexican pintos)–let her feed herself again–often she won’t let us feed her, but will do it herself, even though it’s slovenly
I will 4th the recommendation of “Child of Mine” by Ellyn Satter. I will not mince words. This is by far the best book on babyhood/toddlerhood ever written. This is the ONLY ONLY book that I ever got useful information out of. That includes sleep books, behavior books, etc. YOU MUST BUY IT.
My child was born at 26-3/7 weeks, weighed 880 g, and was very ill almost the whole 3.5 months she was in the NICU. Came home with a feeding tube. She was *NEVER* as chunky as Simone. She has been off the feeding tube for a long time now, thank goodness.
If Simone has had steady and consistent small weight gains over the course of time, there should be no worries on the part of the pediatrician.
I think it’s extremely helpful to remind yourself of things like: ONE-QUARTER OF AN EGG is considered an entire serving of protein for someone Simone’s size.
I know it’s hard to stop worrying about this, but it will pass. I promise. I thought about almost nothing else for 2 years. And get that damn book PRONTO.
I didn’t have time to read all the previous comments. I have seven kids. The last one is so picky when it comes to food. I aim for one balanced meal if I total up all she ate for the DAY! Cereal with milk or toast with peanut butter, juice and vitamins in am. Yogurt for morning snack or homemade fruit muffins. Liquid yogurt,or Kefir with that and again later. Lunch, griled cneese sandwich and fruit, milk. Dinner, cheese pizza. Eversingleday. (Three food groups, right?) In between, fruit, raw carrotts or whatever veg I am chopping for dinner. Homemade bread and cheese as a snack. Voots helps (a vitamin that is natural and supplies two servings of fruit and veg a day) We are mising the protein of meat with this two year old, but between vitamins and constant exposure to new foods (the ones that I am serving the other kids!) eventually we will get there. Good luck!
Having no spawn of my own, all I can contribute is that a friend who has two children (one is 3, the other 8 months) recently commented that she’d read My Child Won’t Eat by Dr. Carlos Gonzalez, and said she wished she’d read it years ago. If you pick it up, I hope it is helpful!
I once described my son’s diet to a co-worker who also has slightly older little kids, and was amused when his face lit and he exclaimed, “Ah, the White Food stage!”
So I’m probably no help.
My GOD! Is that menu *really* what a baby that age should eat???? A WHEEL of Gouda?
As a mom to a 28 month old (had to be induced to get her out) and a 16 to 19-1/2 month old former 1 pound 1 ouncer, food is an issue. The older one lives on one bite of banana or fruit a day. Okay, not really, but pretty close. She doesn’t eat. We used to get teriyaki chicken from Youskyme once a week because she loved it and that was the only way to get meat in her. Other than the favorite of rice and beans as well as mac and cheese. Sometimes it’s just a piece of cheese and a bit of fruit. She just doesn’t want it and will feed it to the dog (the dog is FAT). The former preemie is a different story. She will eat anything and everything (even dog food if I’d let her). She had reflux issues and only has problems with water now. That child can eat. We know when she is getting really sick if she slows down on eating, otherwise, she throws herself at the fridge if we don’t feed her frequently. Our pediatrician told us as long as we don’t feed them a meal of Goldfish crackers, we’re doing okay. Both are gaining we, but the preemie is now only 6 pounds behind the older one!.
First of all, my nephew hasn’t eaten in three years and it hasn’t slowed him down yet.
Second of all, LOOK AT THOSE CHEEKS. That child is getting plenty to eat! When the cheeks begin to deflate, like a neglected houseplant wilting without watering, then I would worry.
Come to think of it, they could be retaining nutrition like camels’ humps retain water. That might be why she sometimes doesn’t have to eat for long stretches of time.
http://chunkymonkeymenus.blogspot.com/2009/06/nutrition-facts.html
this website seems pretty darn cool.