Slow eater with few teeth

imsoexcited915 · November 2016

DD has 6 front teeth with 2 more now just coming in. Some of her daycare friends have 13+ teeth! She is a pretty good eater but has been slow to get there and is still not fully on adult foods. She never tolerated stage 3 baby foods because of the chunks. She would gag and vomit and we think it's that she's not ready since she doesnt have that many teeth. We recently retried stage 3 foods and she will only tolerate a little then push away. It takes her awhile to try new finger foods and often after playing with them for awhile, they wind up just thrown on the floor. She's a good eater but a lot of her foods are oatmeal, yogurt and stage 2 foods. Hoping once she gets more teeth eating won't be much of an issue. Any thoughts or anyone else with this issue?

momofsweetps · November 2016

My dude only has 6 teeth as well and eats everything and has for awhile. He still doesn't have molars. Some babies take longer to eat certain textures but I would definitely mention it to the pediatrician at your next checkup because there are exercises to kind of help with that. Just keep trying. With a lot of other things, sometimes it just clicks literally overnight.

LoveLee85 · November 2016

My LO only has two top, two bottom!! All the sudden he eats anything. Pizza, burgers, chicken, crackers, crunchy cereal. I know only having 4 teeth doesn't slow him down. I think some kids just eat slower than others, despite teeth. My LO did projectile vomit thing but it's a texture thing. If it's too mushy, it's bad. Crunchy or crispy he loves.

amp61470 · November 2016

Mine has 8 front teeth and only eats crunchy finger foods but will gobble up the happy tots stage 4 pouches. At his 12 month check up his doctor said just keep offering still nothing. His molars are coming in, I hope things change when he gets them.

jen83mn · November 2016

Mine has 7 teeth and another on the way (no molars) but has been eating soft finger foods for awhile. He eats crackers (graham and Ritz), fish sticks, pasta, ground beef and turkey, green beans, banana, and then the spoon fed stuff too (yogurt, applesauce, oatmeal). I cut everything up pretty small so it's not a choking hazard and make sure it's soft enough that he can gum it, but he's pretty good at the whole "chewing" thing and when he eats crackers, he flips them vertical so he can bite down on them with his front four teeth, haha. But I'm waiting for more to come in so he can eat everything we eat, because even now I feel our options are limited.

Sounds like it could be more of a texture thing with your LO rather than the lack of teeth. We never actually did the Stage 3 foods and went from Stage 2 to very soft finger foods. We started with some of the melt-in-your-mouth baby foods, like the puffs, munchies, baby crackers, etc. Once he got the hang of those, we started doing soft pasta (macaroni, cut up rotini, etc.) in small enough pieces so he couldn't choke, with marinara sauce or cheese. We did lightly toasted bread with taco meat spread on top or cut up spaghetti on top, then cut the bread into small pieces so he could pick it up. His favorites have definitely been the mac and cheese (we buy Annie's whole wheat so it's a bit healthier at least) and the fish sticks (we get Wild Alaskan Polluck fish sticks from Costco in a huge bag). We also did whole wheat pancakes pretty early on - I spread Stage 2 fruit on top of them and just cut them up into bite-sized chunks for him. Scrambled eggs with shredded cheese are also pretty soft and easy to chew once babies get the hang of eating other things. Hope that gives you some ideas at least!

(Perhaps she doesn't like the Stage 3 foods? I bought some meat purees initially to try and tried a bite myself and it was TERRIBLE! I threw them all away and cooked actual ground beef and turkey instead.)

Good luck!

LoveLee85 · November 2016

I second some of the stage 3 taste AWFUL. I taste everything before I give it to LO. If it's nasty, I can't bring myself to feed it to him. A lot of the stage 3 with meat is gross. He refuses. We thought he didn't like meat, nope, it was just the stage 3 flavoring mixed with other stuff.

jen83mn · November 2016

LoveLee85 said:

I second some of the stage 3 taste AWFUL. I taste everything before I give it to LO. If it's nasty, I can't bring myself to feed it to him. A lot of the stage 3 with meat is gross. He refuses. We thought he didn't like meat, nope, it was just the stage 3 flavoring mixed with other stuff.

Ditto! I have tried every single thing I've given to LO and if it's gross, I'm not feeding it to him! We bought the Earth's Best brand so it was literally just fruit and veggies with water, so all those tasted good! The pureed meats on the other hand - eugh! There was no way I was feeding that to him! You're better off making your own meats and grinding them up in the blender if you need to, because the baby food ones are not good!

lynnaeschr · November 2016

We only have our bottom 2 teeth and he eats almost everything!! I cut it up pretty small still because I'm paranoid he will choke, but he can do the baby goldfish and earths best crunching crackers as is. He also does Ritz, graham crackers, and all cereal.

imsoexcited915 · December 2016

Thanks ladies! We are doing better eating wise. Glad to hear some of your LOs don't like stage 3 foods too - and I agree they are pretty gross. Thanks for all suggestions.

Slow eater with few teeth

Re: Slow eater with few teeth

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