CM CLUB: Need advice about baby

[looneytune]

Baby is 11 months and currently mum provides food (her choice) and I give odd bits of finger food. Mum provides the BEST food, all sorts of great home made things and she even provides the juice for mealtimes which is squeezed fruit, diluted with water.

Right, my problem is mealtimes. Baby goes MENTAL when I try to feed her. She's teething which doesn't help but I'm sure there's more to it. We've had this with teething before but she seems more stubborn now. As soon as I hand some kind of finger food to distract her, she immediately cheers up.

She LOVES having carrot stick, cucumber, toast, wholemeal pita bread, rice cakes etc etc and you can see how clever she feels. I think it's a bit of teething but also her wanting more finger foods and just fed up with warmed mush/mush with bits.

I've only ever gone through this with ds and he was so much younger when he started eating all this stuff so I've not really experienced this.

Please can you give me some advice. Those of you who've been through it several times, do you think it's time for more finger food? If so, how to you suggest this to the parents?

Baby is only with me 3 days a week but on those days, if baby plays up like today, I can't ask parents if she does at home as she's here from 6.45am - 6.30pm so they only really get her in and out of bed.

I'm trying to find out if baby is like this when not with me but it's such a recent problem and recently, they've had other people (family) having her extra days.

What do you think???

I think the baby is telling you that they want finger food. Why dont you show mum how she reacts next time you feed her? Can you do that. It may help her to see the issue. My dd is doing the same , shes 10mths. She only wants finger foods at the mo.

I would agree this is her way of saying she wants finger foods. This sounds to me as her first move to independence with eating. The worst thing to do is to battling with a child over eating habits, the adult can never win and it could set her up for eating issues. The best thing to do now is allow her to dictate what she eats within limits. As long as the finger food provided is healthy then surely it is best she eats some finger food happily than nothing of the food provided and mealtimes are stressed.
I would suggest that you tell the parents this is what you are going to offer as well as what they provide and slowly over the next couple of months i bet that she will move completely onto finger foods.
Remember even though we are to work in partnership with parents we also have to take the childrens lead not to mention try not to have a stressful environment.
HTH

Oh thankyou thankyou. I'll admit to being very stressed out today (all started with breakfast and made us late for school again!). She really has a set of lungs on her and knows how to throw her body about!!! (it's amazing as she's so small still, was 2 months prem). She's being the same with being put in pram and car seat etc. I definitely thought it's her independance and she's TELLING me what she wants/doesn't want.

I just hate the thought of telling parents what to do but as you say, I have to think of everyone and I'm not getting to eat til bloody 2/3pm, the other kids are complaining their ears hurt and the whole mealtime thing is doing my head in. She was lovely and now she's turned into a monster - only joking, still gorgeous!!!

Thank you again, I now have the confidence to deal with this. I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to let mum witness it unless they arrived much earlier. Hopefully she'll understand and even see it for herself at home on Fri. I've agreed to have baby on Saturday as one off but I said I had family plans (which I do) so I think I'll insist that I have finger foods on Sat to avoid a nightmare with mealtimes - dh wouldn't be too happy if he had to witness it!