Help with Feeding

I need some ideas for meals. My boys are 13 months old. They hate being fed babyfood but, can't quite seem to get fingerfoods really well. I ahve tried diced carrots and apples from Gerber. I will be making my own soon. They hated them. Trying to feed them babyfood is a total nightmare. One hits the spoon and the other just spits it out. Any ideas, help or encouragement that this will get better is appreciated.

 

It does get better. Are there foods that they enjoy? At 13 months my two enjoyed scrambled eggs, waffles, pancakes, cheerios, yogurt, cut up fruits & veggies and cut up meats. Do your two enjoy smoothies (milk, yogurt, & fruit mixed together?)?
Good luck! Hang in there Momma!

 

:hug: the transition from baby food to finger foods can definitely be rough!

Nancy gave some great food suggestions. another thing that i found worked well was to spread fruit or veggie purees on a piece of whole wheat toast & then cut it into strips/pieces. it's easy for them to handle and gets them a couple of food groups at once.

i also know some moms have a lot of success with giving finger foods on the tray & then sneaking in bites of baby food in between their attempts to eat the finger foods.

the best thing is just to keep offering the finger foods - it takes a lot of practice to figure out how to pick those pieces up & get them to their mouths so even if they don't eat much, having the opportunity to try will get them there eventually.

 

They do the finger foods to a degree. I worry that they are not eating enough.

 

:hug: I think that is a common worry at this age but several people, including my pedi, told me that they will not starve themselves. I just kept offering a breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack or two. Even at age 2, we have days where they cannot stop eating and days where it seems like they barely eat a thing.
Another piece of advice I read was to look at their eating not day by day but week by week.

 

i agree with Nancy - try not to worry about their intake! toddlers know what they need & they won't starve themselves. as long as you're offering a variety of healthy foods at regular intervals throughout the day, your job is done. it's then their job to decide if, what & how much they'll eat. also, as Nancy said, it helps to look at what they're eating over the course of the week rather than at one meal or even in one day. the other thing to keep in mind is that as babies transition to toddlerhood their appetites decrease quite a bit - they don't require the same volume of calories in the second year as they did in the first because they're growth slows down significantly.

 

Just keep offering; practice makes perfect! Fruits and veggies can be kind of slippery and hard to grasp when they are first learning how to self-feed. I did a lot of puffs, Cheerios, bits of bread, shreds of meat, crumbled sausage, and tiny cubes of cheese when my guys were starting finger foods. You can also crush up Cheerios and dust pieces of fruit to make them easier to pick up. I love Rachel's idea of putting fruit/veggie puree on toast as well! :good:

Nancy is right that they will not starve, and at a certain point you will need to "trust" them to eat what they need. At that age I would always offer finger foods while we ate our meal, then "top them up" with baby food and yogurt afterward. If your boys refuse to be spoon-fed at all (and you can't sneak some bites in), you can always ask your ped about giving them something like Carnation Instant Breakfast Mix with their milk for added calories. You could also get some baby forks and "preload" them with bits of food and have them practice eating from them. Sometimes this makes it fun and encourages them to eat more.

Good luck; it will get easier and your boys will be eating champs before too long!