Tips needed please on food to offer my dd - thanks!

[MammyShirl]

I have posted many times about my dd and the trouble I have and still go through with her feeding. I breastfed her until she was 8 months. When breastfed she was just not intertested in solids at all. I tried many times and she always refused. I wanted to wean her off the breast anyway so my hv suggested dropping feeds to make her more hungry which i did and sure enough at 7 1/2 mths she slowly started to become intertested in food. She is now 10 months and still not that interested, she never gets excited about food except for fruit - she loves bananas! I have spent many hours making her food using all the best ingrediants from baby books - she spits it out! The only thing she likes is Heinz Mums Own "Sweet & Sour Chicken" - but she has this week decided she has had enough. So now Im lost and not sure what to do. I know babies her age are eating mashed dinners, she did start late but I cant beleive she is not skinny, she hardly consumes anything in a day.

Breakfast - a few baby spoons of Readybrek/weetabix, few bits of banana and juice

Late morning - 5 ozs of milk

Lunch - She did eat a 4mth pureed jar of Heinz Sweet and Sour. Greek yougurt with pureed apple (but has now gone off that too) and juice

Late afternoon - Pureed fruit or banana bits or orange bits / cheese sticks and juice
5ozs milk

Night - 6 ozs of milk

To me that looks like nothing and some days she will only have 2-3 mouthfuls of it all.

I have been encouraging her to eat lumpier and hand food. She only likes sweet things. I give her dried apple rings, bananas, sticks of cheese, toast (which she never actually eats just plays with)....

I want to try and make her a dinner today with food she can pick up and nibble - any ideas?

also can she eat tinned pineapple rings? i looked on the tin and it said pineapple in its own juice - can babie eat this? i was thinking of adding it to some chicken - she will eat anything with fruit.

in babies books, they suggest cottage cheese and pineapple but all the cottage cheese in sainsburys and waitrose have salt in them, do you if you can get no salt?

Sorry for the long mail - I need to get this sorted out soon.

Anyone?

Know its a bit of along one but Im going to sainsburys in a few hours and would like to take some new ideas along.

Thank you :0

DD1 (who incidentally now eats nothing) used to love Annabel Karmel's pureed cottage cheese and Sharon fruit - not finger food, but it's sweet, has some nutritional value and is quick to make so you're not fuming if it gets rejected!

Have you tried her with sweet potato or butternut squash as she seems to like sweet stuff. Also Annabelle Karmel has a receipe for home made sweet and sour chicken that uses apricot jam and is really easy and quick to make - do you have that?
How about baked beans with melted cheese (i'm trying to think of quite sweet tasting things as she seems to favour them).

Prunes and banana whizzed up in hand blender with some cream cheese

jacket potato mashed up with butter and a bit of tuna mayo

jam sandwiches

cottage of shepherds pie with parsnip mash instad of potato on top and add carrot

honey sausages or you can add maple syrup to mini cocktail sausages when you cook them

chicken - bolied in saucepan with pure apple juice
and pureed

root vegetables, boiled together and mashed

yellow or orange peppers with a bit of red pepper homous

By the way, does the organic cottage cheese have salt in it? Can't remember this being a concern, and I know it would have if it were, IYSWIM

I have a recipe somewhere for banarice, ds is a picky eater - only realy eats saussages, mash and peas but I can hide sweed in the mash or add cream or cheese to it and he doesn't know the difference (yet). When I spoke to the hv about it she wasn't concerned not even now at nearly 2 is she concerned that his diet is so poor but he is healthy and happy so I must be doing something right!

He used to only eat mango puree and baby rice (that I made myself) then I thought I'd be clever and hide stuff in with the mango puree, ha never again did he eat mango puree. Dd loves chicken coated in mango puree it's like sweet chicken, must admit to putting it on my sanis from time to time, don't knock it till you've tried it!

I used to give DS2 fruit and custard, I made the custard using follow on milk and then mash tinned pears or a banana or similar.

How about doing some mashed sweet potato?

The only other thing I could suggest is to keep trying with new things to find other stuff she'll eat - why not adapt a bit of your own dinner each night so you aren't constantly cooking food for her to reject. You might find something completely unexpected!

Wish I could be more helpful, I'm going to Sainsburys myself in a minute so if anything hits me as I walk around, I'll let you know

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Oh yes and for some reason sticky rice is sometimes eaten but not others, don't know why but it's heaps of fun just sticking it in to balls and making shapes with it........ sorry not much help but it is a bit sweet and if she doesn't eat it she can model with it for a couple of hours

Trying to cast my mind back to when my two were this age (now 10 and 7) - I used to puree lots of different fruit and veg and freeze them in ice cube trays then store them in freezer bags - dd would eat most mixtures as long as it had at least one cube of either apple or pear in it. One of their favourite finger foods was pasta - spirals or penne are a good shape - this could be mixed with bits of chicken, chopped apple, sultanas etc. I can see no problem with tinned pineapple and chicken - maybe you could make a mild malaysian type curry with some rice - peshwari naan bread was another finger food favourite - naan bread filled with fruit. What about bread sticks? - I used to make a dip which comprised of pureed veg mixed with natural yogurt - sounds disgusting but they liked it and a cunning way of getting veg into them.
I will try and think of some more things.

Twiglett - that is interesting. Thank you.

That IS interesting Twiglett. 7 doesn't really seem a lot does it and your right , knowing that does calm you down. I'm almost positive Lottie eats more than that. How many teaspoons are there in a table spoon - 3, 4?

get some frozen mixed veg & boil up a few, plop them on the table/tray in front of her & see what she does. my dd (9 mths) loves playing with and then eating grated cheese the same way (but be standing by with dustpan/brush for the mass of mess )
I'm not a Gina Ford fan (!) but I've been reading her book on weaning (it's sort-of work related, honest!) and she says some sensible things about children like yours. she's also v anti mass-produced baby foods because they're full of 'fillers' (ie don't have the same calorie-loaded content as the stuff you home cook, therefore not as nutritious). I went to sainsbos last night and looked at the labels of the organic baby foods (I usually have a couple in for standbys) and the top ingredient for most of them was: water! lots of the rest which sounded good on the label were mostly comprised of the cheaper ingredients eg carrot, with eg organic lamb in a moussaka one being just 8% of the total recipe.
sorry, rambled on a bit there. if your dd is weeing and pooing and growing I wouldn't get too worked up, but i realise that's easier said than done..

My ds (2 and half) was difficult to wean but one thing he loved was avocardo and banana mashed or pureed together. I used to use a whole banana and a whole avocardo and it went down a treat - avocardos are full of good things so although it's still sweet, baby will be getting lots of nutrients.

Good luck. Lots of good ideas to try. Agree with what people are saying about jar food, I ended up using quite a lot of jars with ds and it proved difficult to move him over to 'normal' food. HTH.

thAnks everyone... trying to type with wriggler on my lap.

ive tried sweet potatoe and cinnamon
mixed veg, chicken and butternut squash with apple and on and on...

today i feel so ill, went for nap with dd at 11am and woke up at 1.30pm!!!! i usually get dressed etc when she is asleep. got up, chucked some jeans on and went to sainsburys with nice greasy hair. looked around at the fresh food and thought "i just cant be assed today" so went to the jar food shelf and picked up organix fruity chicken and rice and a jar of summer fruits. came home, dd ate two spoons of food and whole jar of the fruit

feel bad now but i feel so ill today, sore throat etc..

i need to get on teh case, i know its important toget her in good food ways now or ill end up with more hassle. i will try the pasts and frozen mixed veg thing, she hates avocado (spits it out and gags!)
chicken in pureed mango sounds good. i cant give her what we eat, we always have lots of spices etc pkus we eat at 9pm.

ill try your suggestions and hopefully something will work. i just want her to be one of those babies jumping up anjd down for the next spoonful...

Mammyshirl - when you get to the point of wanting to give her what you eat - take her portion out before you add the spices and either freeze or fridge it and warm up next day.

Thomcat I think a table spoon is 4 teaspoons or 2 dessertspoons.

BTW I too was interested in that stat Twiglett. I will tell DH that when he's getting all het up at tea time. Yesterday DS had porridge with a handful of his raisins (ie his podgy little hand packed full ) and a petits filous for breakfast. At least 2 bourbons at M&Ts. Tuna and sweetcorn followed by a full, smallish banana for lunch. 3 grapes for a snack. Beef cobbler for tea. He finished breakfast and lunch but only ate about half his tea. But I'm sure that must amount to more than 7 tablespoons. Hmm will definitely tell DH.

BTW what does the "one proper meal in 48 hours" bit mean?

My DS has just turned 1 and eats quite a bit. For finger foods likes grapes, apple, cheese, rice cakes, chicken breast, v healthy homemade carrot cake, toast with vegemite (of course), milk-soggy wholemeal cornflakes.

He eats a variety of jarred food and hates nearly all the proper meals I cook for him - though I of course beat myself up over it and keep trying. It is tough as he eats and 5 and I usually eat on my own at about 8.30 and DH is only home weekends, so motivation to cook during the week is not what it should be (think I'll go beat myself up further now).

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AussieSim, please share your recipe for a healthy carrot cake. I love cc but don't eat it often so would be grateful for a good recipe.

MammyShirl, have you looked at the Organix website which has the recipes for their food?

Hercules, I actually got it out of the What to Expect in the First Year, book. It is the one they call First Birthday Cake. They have icing that goes with it too for the party, but it also recommends cooking and freezing squares for snacks. Let me know if you don't have access to the book and I will type it out for you on here.

have you tried annabel karmel's courgette & pea souper - easy to do so you dont' mind if they spit it out and all the babies I know seem to love it. You can vary the consistency to syit yours. When my ds was doing the same I stopped home cooked all together and stuck with jars - too depressing cooking for it to end up on the floor every time! And like someone said - I'm sure they actually prefer the jars. Beechnut are particularly good

MammyShirl, don't have any better suggestions for you than you've already been given. But I do want to let you know that it does become less and less soul destroying as time goes on. I used to be in tears about my dd's dreadful eating. And I've posted on it here numerous times! She's 15 months now and v. faddy still and not a big eater but it somehow doesn't bother me as it used to. I've sort of got the confidence that if she IS hungry she WILL eat and she can survive, obviously, on less than I would imagine. And certainly less than most of her friends!

Mammyshirl - she is still quite little. I would say that as long as she is eating some solids she is doing ok. Also wouldn't worry too much about making it with lumps - it could be that she's not keen on them. Once they start getting a buzz out of holding their own stick food then they learn to cope better with lumps. If anything I think I would be inclined to stick another bottle of milk in somewhere - perhaps when she first wakes up?

She'll be through this phase in no time - as long as shes gaining weight she'll be just fine!

havent read the whole thread so apologies if I repeat!
sweet veg - like sweet potato, butternut squash, yellow pepper (maybe...?), parsnip, turnip
butternut squash mixed with pear was one of ds's favourites
at this age, we used annabel karmel's book quite a lot with great success
also liked the gina ford weaning book (not a big gina fan but this was really helpful for us) - some nice recipes and advice on how to wean

Many sympathies - DS is/was also horribly fussy and it can drive you nuts. Reiterate all that is said here, just keep experimenting. DS did like lentils and sweet potato with apple (think this was an AK recipe), and chicken and coconut, which is almost like real food. Have you tried her on rice cakes and bread sticks - the universal standby? DS lived off bread, yoghurt and apple puree at one stage!