How old was your LO when they started eating the "real" food more than the purees? What kinds of foods did you start with? What were/are their favorites?
Up until a week or so ago G has mostly been eating the stage 2 purees. I've tried a few stage 3's but oddly enough most of them have some sort of gluten in them and the ones that don't he hated so I've been trying to find real foods that he likes and it's been a challenge. Lots of gagging and occasionally even throwing it up. Does that mean he's not ready? Or does that just mean he needs more practice?
Also, a follow up question - around what age was your LO getting most of their nutrition from solids rather than nursing/formula?
Re: Purees vs. finger/table foods. Need ideas.
He started with bananas and graham crackers at about 10 months.
He still nurses at wake up and bedtime but hardly between times (and isn't drinking much WCM...don't know if that's ok or not)
For some reason, it's really hard for me to remember what we started DS with, and it was only a few months ago! Other than puffs and cheerios, I think we just gave him really small pieces of various things to try. I'm pretty sure he started trying "real" food (not purees) around 9 months. Thanksgiving was right before he turned 9mo and I remember giving him small pieces of turkey and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes to eat.
Can you have him try the pureed foods in non pureed form (ie steamed sweet potato instead of pureed, pieces of banana, etc) to see if he likes those?
For awhile now, DS's favorite foods have been: green beans, pasta/ravioli, any kind of fruit, grilled cheese, ham sandwiches, cheese quesadillas, now that we've introduced pb he loves pb sandwiches, chicken nuggets, tater tots, toaster waffles, toast, pancakes, yogurt.
Until he was right around 1, he still drank around 24oz of formula/day and then he started to taper off, as the "real" food increased. Now he just gets 16oz of wcm per day (8oz when he wakes up and 8oz as part of his bedtime routine) and that's it for milk - everything else is food.
My son disliked purees for the most part and pretty clearly wanted to feed himself food at about 9.5 months. We gave him things like chunks of avocado, quesadillas, wheat toast sticks with guac on them, mini pastas, chunks of chicken (his favorite), french toast and soft fruit (peaches). He developed a love of TJ's party meatballs that persists to this day. He loved whole frozen peas and slightly thawed frozen mango. He hated bananas, would not tolerate anything resembling mashed potatoes (and still won't).
He had and still has a strong gag reflex and began to gag and vomit food at about that stage too. For us it meant we needed to go slow, give small amounts on his plate that he could eat and then we'd refresh his plate. The severity came and went and is worst when right around the emergence of new teeth.
I dont know how much formula/breast milk the kids drank versus real food. I tried to start with some of the food that they liked pureed...like pieces of banana or sweet potatos.
For Jonathan I did a lot of purees in bowls and gave him a spoon to see how he did with them. JLK very quickly started eating everythign we ate.
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