10.5 mos and daughter is regecting purees

My girls were in a great pattern 4 bottles/day and 3 meals a day. They eat approx 4 oz of food at a sitting, plus some finger foods for practice and fun.

My one daugher is starting to be a huge pain and refusing her rice cereal/fruit and any meat/veg purees. Depending on what it is I can sometimes coax her into eating it, but she is mostly closed mouth. Turning away, fussing. I know she is still hungry because if I offer her finger foods she is happy to feed herself. The problem is she is soooo slooooow and it takes forever. She doesn't really eat enough finger foods to sustain, plus some of the veggies are slippery and hard to hold. I feel like mealtime is a battle.

What can I do? Do I let her feed herself and starve? I thought at this point we would be upping the food and lessening the bottles. When do you go to 3xbottles/day?

Thanks

 

my girls both started refusing to let me spoon feed them anything around 10 months as well. i fed them toast with a fruit and/or veggie puree spread on top & cut into strips for almost every meal for a good long while. at least until they were more proficient with self-feeding. i also know moms who had a lot of success with giving finger foods on the tray while offering bites of puree between attempts to self-feed.

and honestly, i wouldn't worry so much about quantity right now - they don't need to continue to eat the volume of food they did in the FY as they move into the SY because their growth slows down considerably. babies/toddlers won't starve themselves. as long as you are offering a variety of healthy foods throughout the day, they will eat what they need.

 

I agree with pp. I would skip the purees all together. Annabella was the WORST to feed baby food to. She just wouldn't have it. It was a struggle to get four bites into her. So by nine months, I moved onto finger foods. She got everything we got, just cut up into smaller pieces. It's a new world for them, so she'll be learning as much as you will be! As she does it more and more, she'll get the hang of it. Annabella HATES when we try to feed her. She will let us on rare occasions, but RARELY.

As for bottles, I think around 9/10 months we were finally down to three bottles/day. It might have been a little bit later. She of course was different than the boys!

 

Sounds like she wants to feed herself. My son did the same around 8 months, and I switched him over to all finger foods. He was slow at first but caught on fast. One of my twins is starting to refuse purees now too. She is prob ready to be off of purees

 

We are just the opposite. My boys are 10.5 months and I feel like I am wasting food and throwing money out the window. I bought all the 1st finger foods in the baby isle off the shelf at Target & Publix....I had been presenting them with some sort of finger food at every meal. I even start them with finger food and the rest of the family sits and eats dinner. Still nothing, they just wait until the family is finished eating and then I give in and feed them the #2 foods. They will not eat the #3 because of the texture!!
I got inspired this morning after reading this post and again presented them with breakfast.....eggs, avocado, peaches, & toast. I gave my 2.5 year old the same breakfast. None of my kiddos would eat!!!! After I finished I feed the twins oatmeal and #2apple/peach. They finished all of that. My 2.5 year old wants yogurt. (he only eats yogurt, cheese, turkey hotdogs, some fruit, peanut butter & chix fingers)

I do not want picky eaters and I am worried about the twins not eating any finger foods!

I guess I wish we could get our kiddos together and meet in the middle solving both our problems!

 

This is just the beginning mama. Just wait until she insists on putting on her own clothes, buckling her own seatbelt, etc. Yes, it takes 10x as long and makes you want to scream. But eventually they get good at it and it makes your life easier. I would dump the purees.

 

Mine will let me feed them things like small shell pasta with marinara sauce. It might be the taste of the purees- if you give her some stuff with some flavor, she may let you feed her again. ardon:

 

I've been making my own food, so its extra frustrating when she wont eat it. I guess I'll try more finger foods and just let her be slow. My husband is the other issue. He is terrified of them choking and I find to please him I cut the food so small its hard for them to pick it up. Her sister still doesn't mind the purees. I tried to make some chunkier, but they actually hate that, rather just have pieces than lumpy mush I just worry that they get enough!!!

 

I think giving more finger foods and allowing extra time is a good idea. You could also try giving her a spoon of her own (give her a bowl with just a little bit of food so it doesn't matter if she spills it) and see if you can feed her inbetween her feeding herself. That has worked well for me in the past. The added bonus is that they master self-feeding earlier.

 

I agree with cutting out the purees. The more practice she gets with finger food at this early age, the easier your life is going to be down the road too! Mine started wanting to feed themselves most of the time around 11 months and although mealtime is generally a huge mess, it's nice that we can all sit and eat as a family or that I can get dishes done or something while they're having lunch. It seems like struggle now, but it's actually a great thing!

Also, she's still getting most of her nutrition from formula right now, so let her practice and stick with 4 bottles for a while.

 

I agree. Ditch the purees and move on to finger foods. The same thing happened with my kids at that age. I had a freezer full of homemade pureed food and no one who wanted to eat it.

 

I think mine were completely off of purees by the time they were 8 months. I know that at their 9 month checkup I thought it might not be good that they weren't eating baby food or baby finger foods anymore, but the doctor said that it was absolutely fine if they were eating real food. Like shredded cheese, lunchmeat, toast, pancakes, veggies, pretty much everything an adult would eat they were eating. We fed them yogurt and applesauce for a while, but even then, they wanted their own spoons and would try to scoop between mouthfuls.

 

If she wants to self-feed and you want to make sure she is getting the nutrients from cereal you could make these awesome baby cereal pancakes from wholesomebabyfood.com. My girls adore them. I make small pancakes and then freeze them and then toast them in the toaster for a few minutes to thaw and reheat them. Then I spread some pureed fruit thinly on top and cut the pancake into bite sized pieces. Then I let them go to town!

 

Thanks for the link to the baby cereal pancakes. I used to check out that site we we first started purees and kind of forgot about it for my current issues. That way they can still get the benefit of the iron and stuff thats in the cereal. Love it!! :thanks: