Friday, January 4, 2008

Finger foods

I think I might be starving my son. Not from lack of food, but from lack of variety. Don’t get me wrong, I never thought The Baby would go from eating purees to eating a steak dinner, but somehow I just never really considered the interim - or that it was approaching so quickly. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I’m responsible for a whole other life.

Lately, The Baby’s taken to slapping the spoon out of my hand pushing the spoon aside during mealtime. My husband and I have come to the conclusion that he really wants to either feed himself or live entirely off of YoBaby blueberry yogurt (no spoon slapping with the yogurt). Honestly, we aren’t sure which is the issue. Since he (The Baby, not my husband) doesn’t seem to understand that the big end of the spoon is the side that goes in the mouth, we’ve taken a step up the food chain to finger foods.

We started a few weeks ago with puffs to get him use to chewing and handling food. Over the weekend we started adding some more finger foods to his diet: the “meaty” part of a green bean (if you’ve ever picked them into tiny chunks, you’ll know I’m not crazy), chunks of cooked carrot and sweet potato and pieces of spaghetti. The process of him feeding himself takes sooo much longer and he can’t be getting half the amount of food that he was getting before by these little bits of food. I try to offer purees at the same time, but he’s much less interested. This evening, for instance, he ate about 2 Tablespoons of pureed veggies, but only because I dipped puffs in them and let him eat it that way.

I’m so afraid of him choking… and I don’t know what else to add that is nutritious and palatable for a 9 month old who wants to feed himself. It will be easier when he can actually use the spoon. Until then, I am going to worry that he’s not getting enough food.

Also, when I reheat cooked carrots and sweet potatoes in the microwave, they make zapping electric sounds and put off sparks. What the heck is up with that? Is this one of those Dear Heloise things I should know about???

3 comments:

Shauna said...

Wish I had some advice. Luckily Chicka does let me feed her but I have to give her some finger food before or after to make her happy. We tried chunks of banana today and she seemed to really enjoy it. Cheerios are full of good things too. You've probably already tried those though.

Good luck!

Vanessa said...

I hear you on the zapping carrots thing, and here I thought it was just me. :)

Some food suggestions, we have fed little man large curd cottage cheese (rinsed to get the goo off, less messy) ground beef, peaches, microwaved pears, peas, corn (not sure if we were supposed to on that one) cheerios, oyster crackers, mashed potato, boiled potato, avocado, mango-fresh and frozen, chunks of bananas (1/4 inch slices quartered-does that even make sense?) graham chrackers, nilla wafers, cooked carrots,hmmm.. I'm sure there is more. Oh, turkey and chicken too. Oh, and rice krispies (kind of fun to watch, he has to work so hard to eat them) rice chex, fruit loops and those gerber zwiebeck toast things. I'm sure I'll think of more. We asked the doc and she said pretty much anything goes, as long as it is in small enough chunks. Pears are kind of hard, Fin gums one little pear for like two minutes just to get it mashed enough to eat, so I would steer away from anything hearder than that.

Little man also smacks the spoon or tries to grab it away from us, making a HUGE mess. It is annoying.

Anne B. said...

OMG... I'm so glad you said something about the carrots. I didn't know if it was my microwave or what!

Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't done any cracker kind of things yet, except Puffs. I'll give him something new (small bits of bread or cooked carrot for example) and he'll get it caught on the back of his tongue and start gagging and choking and I take it away. I'm so afraid of him choking. I guess I have to get over it and give him a chance to learn about what he's eating. I immediately just start thinking, "Oh, he isn't ready yet."