Feeding Time part 1

Infant Feeding (birth through a year old)

Baby Food

It was important to me that my son had healthy foods from day 1.  Since I was unable to breastfeed as long as I wanted, I knew the next best thing I could do was to give him healthy foods.  When he was 4 months old he began eating rice cereal.  Slowly we introduced fruits and vegetables.  All of his food was homemade.  He was not a “Gerber baby”.  Several people have said, “It’s too much work.  I work and don’t have time.”  It really doesn’t take that much time and I work full-time as well and found the time. 

To that I say it’s all about prioritizing.

I looked through several different books with recipes to help me understand what was involved with making my own baby food.  The book I eventually purchased was entitled Blender Baby Food by Nicole Young.  It had all of the information I needed to begin this process and several recipes to get me started.

http://www.healthcastle.com/baby_foods_commercial.shtml

After I began my baby food making adventure, I found ways to make that even easier.  Here’s how:

• Use ice cube trays and plastic wrap to freeze in small portions. (each ice cube is about 1 oz of food)
• Once it is frozen, store it in Ziploc freezer bags labeled with the contents and date.
• Use frozen fruits and veggies whenever you can.  I still purchased organic fruits and veggies.  I cooked up the veggies and then pureed them with some water.  I thawed out the fruits and pureed them as is.
• Applesauce: I fed him (and still do) natural applesauce, no added sugars, just apples and water.
• The Magic Bullet!!!  Worked much easier than the blender.
• I spent Sunday’s preparing several different kinds of food and freezing them.  This way he was set for the week.
• I still sent home made food to daycare!  I just labeled the bags and my daycare provider let me know when she was running low on certain foods and I replenished.
• Once he got to the next stage when foods were chunkier, I pureed whatever we were eating for dinner and fed it to him.

Finger Food and Sippy Cups

Around 6 months old we started giving him finger foods, Gerber Puffs and Cheerios.  He also started using a sippy cup.  It was important to me that he did not use a bottle once he was a year old so starting him with water (no juice) at 6 months old in a sippy cup was a good way to help with that.  He only had water in a sippy cup and formula in a bottle.  Sometimes he got formula in a sippy cup because he was starting to not drink it anymore.  This way he would associate being a big boy with the sippy cup.  We did not (and still do not) give him juice.  His choices are milk or water.

http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/fruit_juice.htm

Once he turned about 8 months old, we introduced meat.  Some of it was chunky pureed and fed by spoon. He was not a big meat eater (and still really isn’t but he does much better now).  We started giving him pieces of ground meat (turkey, chicken, beef).  It was easier for him to chew (with his gums).  We also began giving him chunks of tofu for extra protein.  At this time, he started eating more foods off of our plates including vegetables, pasta, and bread.  He was quickly off of the pureed baby food.  (He was probably on pureed food for about 3 ½ months.)  This made meal times easier because we were all eating the same foods and he was feeding himself (with his hands of course).  It was definitely messy, but that’s okay.  How else would he learn?

Self-Feeding With Utensils (and Eating At the Table)

He had been grabbing for the utensils for a while and we did some shared feeding (2 spoons: one for him, one for us).  At around 10 months old we started letting him try to feed himself the majority of the meal.  At this time we also gave him a plate or bowl and had him sitting up at the table with a placemat instead of in the infant highchair with a tray.  Naturally, this was a messy adventure, but that was okay with us!  We just cleaned it up when he was finished.  It wasn’t too long before he was able to feed himself even better with the spoon (and now the fork as well).  He eventually stopped dumping the food off of the plate or out of the bowl.  Now he places the food he doesn’t like on the placemat!