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?
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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.
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