Working moms; What do you send to daycare for lunches and breakfast for your one year old

kkerner87

As of now DD is still getting 1 sippy cup of breast milk and one of formula (formula only for the next week or so until her first bday). We never really did puree's at home. I would send homemade food puree'd food or a jar to her grandma's house (she watches her 3 days a week while DH and I work) just because it was easier on her to feed LO that way. Now that she is 1 and we weaned her from a bottle and puree's i need to start packing a lunch. On weekends I make her scrambled eggs and fruit. Lunch is usually shredded cheese and chopped veggies. Dinner is whatever we're eating (within reason). My real question is, do i buy a lunchbox? Do I have to give her a new meal everyday? I could be overthinking this, but it just seems overwhelming to me. Just adding something to my routine that i barely have any time as it is, but ya know feeding your child should be pretty high on the priority list so they say lolol. So what do you do mama's do?

chaser61

I would send in yogurt with fruit for LO's breakfast and then lunch would be a protein and veggies. Sometimes the veggies would be changed out to switch it up but the protein would be the same. I no longer send lunch in because he would only eat it half the time. (Perhaps he got bored of the same lunch every day for a week!) The daycare provides lunch and evidently he would be really interested in that lunch rather than the one I packed. I feel a little guilty not sending in my own lunch because some of the options are not nearly as healthy but it just made everyone's lives easier.

dmbfan46835

We do breakfast at home. Usually scrambled eggs or I have been making him egg/banana pancakes that he scarfs up (literally just a banana and 2 eggs but they are just like pancakes!). 

I send 2 bottles of BM from my freezer stash in a Medela cooler. I also send 4 silicone containers of food in that same cooler. Today it was turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans and squash. All finger foods and none pureed. Then for snacks I sent half an avocado and 6 steamed baby carrots cut up. They are usually eating a morning snack when I drop him off close to 9 so he got the avocado then while the other kids were eating pudding and teddy Graham's. 

I also had to provide a doctors note to daycare so they would feed him my food and not theirs. The stuff my daycare does is all processed prepackaged stuff, hot dogs and Mac n cheese. No thank you.

The majority of our lunch stuff is made in batches and frozen so I just thaw and send. Saves me time. And if I make pancakes it's usually 2 days worth so breakfast is easy the next day in that case. I just get up 3 hours before I have to be to work. I can usually work out, meal prep for DS and myself a d shower before he is up for the day.  Sending lunch is def a commitment. 

kkerner87

@dmbfan46835 Holy shit! You're super mom! 

dmbfan46835

kkerner87 said:

@dmbfan46835 Holy shit! You're super mom! 

Lol! Nah, I just am lucky enough to not work til 9 am and daycare is only 10 mins from home. If I had to work earlier or had a long commute it would be MUCH harder to stick to it. And DH totally supports my healthy stance and helps me a lot at night if I'm making meals or cleaning everything from the day. Without him I'm not sure I could stick to my guns. Support if def key. 

blizmark

@dmbfan46835 what lunches are you making and freezing?

I'm sort of in this conundrum about food right now too, and I realized my kid is pretty much living on applesauce, shredded cheese, beans, Cheerios, toast, bananas, and oatmeal. And boob dairy. Those are the only finger foods (well not oatmeal, but you know) she will actually pick up and eat. And she's doing this awesome thing now where anything that is remotely puréed, like mashed potatoes, she will spit right out. She is even spitting out things she used to like as purées. It's getting super annoying and I feel like she isn't getting enough to eat, resulting in her waking up 2-3 times a night still to nurse. 

hlb8179

I always cook extra dinner and send her with leftovers for lunch to daycare.  We had mexican shredded chicken from the crockpot with mexican rice and corn last night, so I packed that in little containers for her lunch today.  I then packed a yogurt for a snack as well as one container of cut up tomatoes and one of kiwi for her other snack.  I try to keep it simple by just packing for her whatever we're eating.

gollygeeitsamy

Boy, I feel lazy, daycare provides all snacks and lunch. I'm sending BM until she's fully weaned. 

dmbfan46835

@blizmark I make batches of chicken beef and turkey and shred and freeze lunch size portions of those. Make batches of green beans, cubed sweet potatoes, peas, carrots, broccoli, you name it. And just freeze in my silicone munchkin containers and silicone ice cube trays from when we did his purees, pop em out and put them in freezer bags by food type. That way I literally just grab one of each thing, throw them back in the little munchkin containers for the day and send 4 of them in his Medela cooler with his boob juice. It makes packing his lunch hella easy. The containers stack perfectly in the cooler so 2 bottles of BM and 4 containers plus the ice pack. 

mrsbacz

How do you prepare the meat @dmbfan46835 ? Stovetop, oven, etc? I have everything else figured out but I can't figure out how I should do that haha. And the pancakes are just a banana and two eggs, nothing else? I want to try them this weekend! 

dmbfan46835

@kabaczewski just a banana and 2 eggs! And they are seriously legit!! Baby boy loves them and I add dairy free "choc chips" by Enjoy Life to the ones I feed DH and he loves them too! 

As as far as the meat, I crock pot the chicken, I bake the turkey breasts and I stove top the beef it its ground, otherwise that is crock pot too. But I always do at least 2 lbs of each when I do it so we have weeks of food if I alternate proteins. And if we have something for dinner DS can't have (had a reaction to salmon for example) then I pull from the lunch stash then too. i hope I can keep it all up when we have a second kid because I just love knowing what he is eating. Daycare is now more conscious of the snacks too. I read an article that teddy Graham's and fruit snacks and some other kids stuff causes cancer, and I told them about it when justifying why they can't feed my kid that stuff and they just told me this morning that they were planning on providing healthier snacks to the other kids going forward. So that's pretty awesome!

https://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/top-5-popular-childrens-snacks-made-with-cancer-causing-petroleum-products.html

mrsbacz

You rock! @dmbfan46835 Thank you so much for all of the tips!

CaboBride2015

gollygeeitsamy said:

Boy, I feel lazy, daycare provides all snacks and lunch. I'm sending BM until she's fully weaned. 

I'm with you... I send her formula and that's it. 

lynnaeschr

I was thinking the same thing about feeling lazy.....our daycare provides as well. But they send home a menu and it's really good healthy choices so it makes me feel better about it! 

oceanlove13

We don't do daycare, so I don't know if the lunch can be refrigerated?  When I do pack a lunch for him a few easy things to pack for additional protein is cheese, Greek yogurt plain ( or we have been using Dannon plain because it is not as thick, a little less protein than Greek), beans from a can.  I rinse them well and you can boil them for a bit or I just heat them and serve them.  Any kind of beans and even chick peas, lentils, etc. We also take on the go boiled egg, Avacado, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and all the fruits and veggies you all mentioned.  He eats whatever we eat, so if we have leftovers we pack those too.  All of this I cut into pea sized bites. 

babycreel

Baby girl is 11 months old. I just send her to daycare with expressed breastmilk only. Daycare provides her food, right now they are still feeding her fruit or veggie purées and oatmeal. And puffs for snack. Dads unsure about giving her pieces of real food so she still gets mostly purées. But I'll give her scrambled eggs, pancakes, shredded cheese and small pieces of fruit at home. 

kkerner87

@dmbfan46835 I have those same ones! Never thought to use them for anything else other than her purees! Thank you all for the suggestions. I got this really cool "lunchbox" that has a tray sectioned off in different portion sizes. I send an egg for breakfast (my MIL scrambles it for her in the AM) and i buy the all natural, store baked turkey breast lunch meat and shred that. Along with some shredded mild cheddar and blueberries! She loves it!! Not sending breas tmilk anymore. We're weaning and dropped to one morning feed per day =(