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Parenting after 35
M.Amy
member
Help with Operation Hanzel and Gretel
M.Amy
member
So after seeing everyone's baby's sizes I realized I need to change up Matty's diet so he gains more weight. He hasn't gained weight in two months and his % keeps getting lower and lower. He eats very healthy foods and I need to bring in foods that are still healthy but carry a lot of calories.
Yesterday I bought fresh guacamole and today I added butter (!!!) to his steamed veggies.
What is a typical meal for your LO? Any food suggestions?
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Re: Help with Operation Hanzel and Gretel
Formula, formula and more formula
The rate my Thomas is growing, by the time he gets to eat "real" food he'll be eating us out of the house!
Like you, I BF - when she's with me all day, she generally nurses around 4x a day.
In the morning she nurses and then gets 1/4 c. rice cereal with a stage 2 fruit mixed in.
At lunch I'll give her a stage 2 fruit and veggie, or yo-baby (just started that this weekend). She also nurses before lunch.
She nurses in the afternoon.
For dinner, she gets a stage 2 meat and fruit or veggie. Then nurses before bed.
Sometimes instead of a stage 2, she'll get 2oz. of a homemade fruit or veggie. This is how she eats when she's home all day with me - it's pretty similar at the sitter, but she is supplemented w/formula at the sitter.
I wouldn't worry too much of he doesn't seem hungry and his pedi doesn't seem concerned. Some babies eat and grow at different levels.
typical day:
9am - 6oz formula with 1-2 spoonfuls of cereal in bottle
11am - small bowl of 1/2 a banana mixed with either cereal or apple/pear sauce
1pm - pureed veggies (with chunks) and chicken or meat chunks, 6oz bottle of only formula & then naptime
3-4pm - small "snack" (apple sauce, yogurt or cheese)
6-7pm - dinner (anything from small bowl of mac'n'cheese or 1/2 grilled cheese, to small portions of what we are eating)
9pm - 6oz bottle of formula with 1-2 spoonfuls of cereal in bottle
bedtime
I've stayed away from any butter & all seasonings and formula will be replaced by whole milk once i'm done with the can.
DD lost four ounces between her nine month and twelve month checkups, so we are also working on "fattening her up."
If he finishes the food you give him, offer him more (unless he signals he is done, of course). When DH asked about serving sizes, the pedi said "as much as she wants to eat." I was honestly stunned at how much that can be. I never would have guessed she would eat an entire slice of bread at once, or a half-cup serving of cereal, or a freaking half a pint of blueberries (that was her "dessert" last night)!!
We have increased the amount of food we send to daycare and added a meal and a snack at home. She now gets bread with peanut butter and some milk before we leave for daycare. She eats breakfast, lunch, and two snacks at daycare. I was not feeding her dinner after daycare because she usually had a bottle right before I picked her up. Now that we have dropped that bottle, I feed her dinner. I keep giving her food until she gives us the all done sign, or plays with the food instead of eating it.
What do you consider healthy? Are you worried about organic, low cal, low fat, no meat, are you trying to avoid lots of processed stuff? Don't stress about a bit of butter - the fat is actually good for him right now, you put it on steamed veggies, and by just using a little you are already teaching him about moderation (okay, maybe not quite yet, but as he gets older and pays more attention to how you prep his food it will register).
Can you offer Matty more of foods he already likes? DD loves loves loves blueberries. DD isn't crazy about the whole milk yougurt (the only flavor I could find is plain), but she will eat blueberries that have been dunked in the yogurt.
We found some organic peanut butter at CostCo. She LOVES it on bread, panckase, and apple slices (we nuke the apple slices a bit first to make them easier for her to chew).
One meal she loves is ravioli filled with cheese and veggies (we have found spinach and asparagus varieties) or pierogies with potatoes, cheese, and spinach.
Also, keep trying with foods. Last week, DD would not eat chicken and last night she gobbled it up (we just pulled it into pieces for her after we grilled it). We try to look at what she eats over the whole day, and not focus on one meal.
ETA: DD got BM until she turned 11 months, then we started the transition to whole cow's milk. She now gets one or two bottles of cow's milk along with sippies of water or milk throughout the day and nurses first thing in the morning and before bed, at her lead. This morning, she did not nurse, but last night she did.
Thanks for all of the suggestions! We are feeding Matty organic, non-processed or low-processed foods, no added sugar and low salt food items oh and no hormones or steroids. There is nothing he doesn't like to eat. He gets finicky eating the same thing two days in a row so we mix things up.
A typical day for Matty is:
7:30 Whole milk (usually 3 oz) used to be BM before we switched over
8:30 Container of YoBaby yogurt mixed with cereal, 1/2 fruit, breakfast os (organic Cheerios)
10:30 Milk and cheese
12:00 Jar of level 2 baby food, protein (grilled chicken, fish or beef), steamed veggies, hummus, whole fruit & milk
3:30 Milk & hummus & crackers
6:30 Jar of baby food, protein (grilled chicken, fish or beef) mixed with salsa or guac, veggies, rice or pasta, cheese or hummus, a whole fruit, & puffs, milk. Last night he ate a whole fish fillet and the other day he ate half of my hamburger.
8:00 Milk
We spend about an hour feeding him at dinner to make sure he is absolutely full before getting ready for bed. We joke that he has a five course meal. When he stops eating the protein for ex, I add salsa or marinade to it and it is like a new food for him that meal. Same with the veggies. When he stops liking that we move onto another food and just keep going down the line until he rejects his cinnamon puffs (which he loves!). He does not get really hungry between meals but we have told the nanny to offer cheese or hummus.
We do something very similar at dinnertime, moving between foods, although I didn't think of mixing in the salsa or guac - I will definitely have to try that!
That is pretty similar to DD's eating schedule, and she is close to Matty's age. The only big difference is that she gets peanut butter toast in the morning as a pre-breakfast "snack". We go back for a weight check at the end of July, so I won't know for sure if this is working until then.
Do you have a set serving size that you offer and that's it, or do you replenish his tray until he rejects that food?
Mikey is just a few weeks younger than Matty, and here's what he eats:
Nurses then has handful of Cheerios.
Nurses again then has toast with cream cheese, 2-3 oz of plain, full-fat yoghurt and 2-3 oz of apple sauce.
Nurses and banana and/or handful of puffs or Goldfish
About 5 ounces of whatever we're having for dinner
Nurses again before bed and usually once during the night.
My Blog
It sounds like he eats like a champ! Is it really a problem? I don't really have anything to add, except maybe if you are giving him chicken breast try chicken thigh instead?
I love the idea to mix in salsa or guac, I hadn't thought of that! I try to mix up the spices when I think she's getting bored, like adding a bit of cumin to the chicken, or allspice to the sweet potato.
We feed Maddie the same way and she is small, but does gain/grow from appt to appt and is meeting or exceeding her milestones. Her pedi said he does not think it is a matter of failure to thrive, but that some people are just small. He said that EBFed babies follow a different curve than FF babies and babies that get food earlier than 6 months. She has done exactly what he said she would as far as the growth curve goes, so that made me feel more comfortable.
She LOVES avocado and she usually gets one just about every day. I feed it to her with a spoon right out of the shell. I have heard that you can add some healthy oils like olive, avocado or flaxseed oil to their food to up the calores and get them some healthy fats/omega 3.
*ETA* I should add that we do give french fries when we go out to eat and one of us gets them with our meal. I get sweet potato fries when they have them. I tell myself that is healthier!
I would hesitate to add butter because I would rather she like the taste of foods without that. I would drizzle with olive oil instead.
At my youngest 9 months appt the doctor told me we needed to fatten baby up too! All my kids are on the petite side, so they are not too worried.. but he is the smalles at this age. We do whole milk cheese sticks, organic whole milk yogurt, he loves loves loves hummus, cream cheese, butter on everything, toasted cheese on bread (cut up), avocados, veggie stix/chips.
I should add that I am breastfeeding & baby does not stop moving! We feed him until he pushes food away (or in his case throws it on the ground). The problem we have is he does not like to be spoon fed once his brothers start eating.. he then wants to do it himself. So I try to stuff down mashed up baby food until then - yogurt or organic baby food that has fat in it!
We feed Matt until he literally throws the food off of his tray. We do a combo let him feed himself and we feed him with a spoon. I have no doubt that when he leaves the table he is absolutely full.
I worry that my concern about raising him eating healthy foods is causing him not to get the fat and calories he needs.
I agree with the pp about adding oils/butter to make things fuller fat. I still don't like using butter since I want my kids to like tha natural taste of food. But as they have gotten older I have added full fat dressing to their veggies to dip food into. Once we were able to introduce peanut butter & whole milk it helped too. I may start looking for nut free alternatives for my youngest since they are concerned about his weight. I am trying to relax because all of my boys have been in the 10-15%, but he was only in the 5th & I have nursed him the longest. Everything we offer we try to do with full fat in it - at this age they just burn it off anyway! It can still be healthy.