Puree vs finger food intake

Lena122

I'm trying to transition him to real food and away from pures. The only problem is that he's eating much less this way. When he was eating only pures he'd eat 4 oz at each meal. Now I'm offering him chunks of banana for breakfast and/or scrambled eggs and things like chicken bits, peas, and sweet potato chunks for lunch and dinner. But he's just not eating enough. He loses interest in feeding himself after a short while and that's if he even likes what I gave him. He loves things like peas, sweet potatoes, and pears in pure form so I know it's not the taste. And he should he used to the texture by now.

His formula intake is normal and he's not waking at night to eat.

Should I be concerned about his real food intake? Should I go back to pures and wait awhile longer to go to real food? I hate to regress because he CAN eat real food, he's rarely gagging, he just can't seem to focus long enough to do it.

ETA: TB sucks and won't let me spell PUREE correctly. You get the point.

amber31288

You just described my DD to a T. I hope other people respond, I am curious as to what they say. I could use some advice too!

Shawnee11507

No advice to give, just another question to add to other responders- How big are the pieces of "real food" you give your LO?

I am so afraid he will choke. I am breaking stuff up into the size of a large pea or puff, but I think it makes it harder for him to pick up.

LO also eats much less since we moved to stage 3 purees and real foods. 

LoveBeingMama

I think that if he was hungry, he would let you know. I would continue the real food, but if you want, add a pur?e with what he eats. Give him scrambled eggs for breakfast, along with a container of fruit.  

kristin172429

Just give him both until he starts taking in more solids.  We would still do purees while he fed himself finger foods.  Helps you make sure they are getting enough until they really get going on solids.

slv0606

LoveBeingMama:

I think that if he was hungry, he would let you know. I would continue the real food, but if you want, add a pur?e with what he eats. Give him scrambled eggs for breakfast, along with a container of fruit.  

This is exactly where we are at. DS loves to feed himself but he's still hungry after a solids meal so we've been offering an additional fruit or veggie pur?e. It's working for us for now. 

hmhiggin

I think at this point its ok to stick w/ the "real foods."  They aren't dependent on it for their nutrition really at this point. Its still kind of a game. We just transitioned to mostly real foods and she does eat less.  If I really feel she hasn't eaten enough I will still pull out a jar of puree to give to her, but I try to keep it to finger foods. 

 One thing I did notice w/ my DD is that she seems to have an aversion to wet, slimy, and/or sticky stuff. So i started coating pieces of food in cracker crumbs. Graham cracker or ritz cracker depending on the food.  It was amazing.  She ate sooo much more. 

 Another thing that I started doing was spreading liquidy stuff on toast.  So cream cheese and yogurt if she didnt want to be spoon fed the yogurt. 

Jen0204

The girls do the same thing. We just do a combination of both, or offer finger foods and then real foods that are easy to spoon feed like sweet potatoes, stuffing, applesauce, etc. I'm not concerned about it, I figure they'll get better at eating real foods as they get older and get more teeth and better dexterity. Pures are easier for them, so as long as I'm introducing more real foods each week and encouraging them to move in that direction I'm happy. I look at pures as a supplement we offer real food and use pures to help get them full and try to round out the meal a little bit.

MollySm

We feed Lucia real food, but we always give her some finger food, and then something from a spoon. She eats more from the spoon and gets hungry and frustrated when she just has finger food. Any meals with pasta or rice we just feed her thise plus the sauce on the spoon, with the chunky meats and vegetables on a spoon. Last night we ate out so we ordered her a bowl of roast cauliflower soup and then gave her finger foods from our plates.

sunnyday016

I always offer both. I think if you want to only offer table foods, that's also fine and you don't need to worry about how much he's getting. Babies are great at self-regulating. He'll eat when he's hungry and stop when he's done. They are more likely to take more puree because it's being fed to them- it's "easy".