Feeding babies

Libby Pritchett

Libby Pritchett

New member
Chloe is 8 months old now, and she's really over the purees. She still appreciates fruit in her oatmeal for breakfast, but most of the time, she wants to eat things that she can feed herself. The problem is, I'm running out of ideas! Some things we've tried (all diced into little bits that she can pick up and feed herself):

puffs (obviously LOL)
cheese
green beans
sweet potatoes
avocado
banana
zucchini

Plus, I've given her little bits of what we're eating, but most of that has to be eaten with a spoon (ie beef stew) or isn't baby appropriate (chicken tacos).

When my older daughter was a baby, I did lots of processed foods (chicken nuggets, mac & cheese, etc), but I really want to avoid that with Chloe for as long as possible.

So, what else do you give your babies?
 
My babies never like puree for very long...if she is good at gumming things, some of these might work... but I don't know if she's ready yet.

beans
pasta
pears (you can even cook them a little bit to make them softer... and apples too)
eggs
toast

I don't know, it's tricky because some babies are ready for things like that and some aren't at that age. I hope you figure it out!
 
Casey had a thing for cooked, but plain, pasta. So I would cook up some whole wheat elbow macaroni or rotini and she would eat those. Sometimes I'd warm them up but she actually liked them cold, lol
 
mine were big on plain pasta too
scrambled eggs
tortillas (madelyn still eats just plain tortillas)
cheese sticks
those little meat stick things
hard boiled eggs
...i'll try to think of more
 
how sad is it that I can't even remember... geez, my memory isn't worth a darn.... but I had to chuckle at the Puffs (obviously)... J went through so many cartons of them, he was like a squirrel - ever so often I still am finding puffs in the car!
 
french toast
scrambled eggs
turkey ham chicken (they preferred thin slices from the deli, I always got low-sodium)
blueberries
strawberries
melon (honey dew, cantaloupe, watermelon)
peaches/nectarines
sweet potato
potato
roasted carrots
broccoli
green beans
peas

For Ben, he still loved his veggies pureed at 8 months. He especially liked a garden veggie one by Gerber with spinach in it. For Grace, I refused to spend money on baby food at that point. She ate whatever veggie I was serving for dinner... either mashed up or cubed.
 
You might also enjoy the book: The Best Homemade Baby Food On The Planet by Karin Knight and Tina Ruggiero. It is written by a nurse and a nutritionist. It is more than purees (even though it looks like that is a huge focus on the cover). It has recommendations for children up to 23 months.
 
Cheyanne was an anomaly for me - she hated all of the cereals and jarred baby foods. She was born at 30 weeks and I wanted to be careful about what I fed her, etc. etc. because she was just so small, but at 6 months she was ready for more than the disgusting special preemie formula that I had to add to my milk along with iron drops (the stuff smelled so nasty that I didn't blame her!).

By the time she was 9 months she weaned herself from the bottle - just chucked it in the trashcan one day with an emphatic NO!:D From that point on she started drinking whole milk and eating whatever we ate. Seriously, the kid was eating garlic dill pickles at 9 months!

So we just gave her whatever we were eating (and vegetarian at that). Her pediatrician was very supportive. At 9 months she started eating vegetable stir fry with everything from pea pods to bamboo shoots to broccoli, quinoa, any and all vegetables, beans, pastas, etc. cut or smashed appropriately for her age (and she didn't even get her 1st tooth until she was 12 months old). To this day the kid will eat just about anything except for black olives and mushrooms.

Okay, sorry that was so long :D
 
my kids loved deli meats and I just pulled them apart in to little pieces....my kids also loved dill pickels LOL!
spaghetti was a huge hit with all of them at that age!
muffins of any sort too
 
Just don't be like my brother & SIL. My niece is almost 3 and most of the stuff she eats is still things like cheerios, yogurt, muffins, fruit...she never eats what we eat when we get together. No turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies or anything for Thanksgiving! Not good and drives us all crazy, but we really can't just tell them that they're feeding her wrong. Whenever we mention that Rae should have something, my SIL just says "Oh she won't eat that" Well she won't because you never introduced it to her when she was little!
 
MamaBee said:
how sad is it that I can't even remember... geez, my memory isn't worth a darn.... but I had to chuckle at the Puffs (obviously)... J went through so many cartons of them, he was like a squirrel - ever so often I still am finding puffs in the car!
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This is me, too, Rebecca! I do remember Luke didn't do puree for very long at all. I just gave him what he could eat from our meals- so I'm guessing anything that is soft and can be gummed. ?
 
we'd do alot of veg/pasta soups and just drain the liquid.. :)

Lucas is 4 and trying to get him to eat veggies now is such a battle - he has some sensory stuff but yea. gags on SO much. can be really frustrating.
 
If she really wants to feed herself, give her a spoon. Camilla has been eating with a spoon since around then because I just couldn't handle the fighting while I was feeding her. I would thicken up soups and stews and yogurts with the baby cereal so that it would stick to her spoon. She is really good now at 17 months, and some moms are really surprised. She wanted that independence, and showed she could do it. Now, my son at still has trouble eating with a spoon at 3 (he can, he just makes such a mess that we have to tell him to put his chin over his bowl). Give her a chance. We have these little toddler silverware that are short with a chunky grippy handle that are perfect for chubby little hands, and the fork has rounded tines on the edge so you don't have to worry about her poking herself in the eye. Once I switched her over to what we were eating we were all a lot happier.
 
I'm starting to think about it too. Olivia is 7mo, but she just LOVE purees and baby cereal. I tried once to give her pasta and she refused it. Then I tried not to blend her soup very much and she refused it. Now I'm afraid to try things different from purees. Maybe she's not ready. And I don't even know what to give her, how to give her and when. Need to learn everything again. :/
 
my kids didn't eat purees for long - i really hated them :) LOL!

some of their favorite foods that haven't been mentioned above (and we did A LOT of what has been mentioned - and they started w/ a spoon around that age):
mashed potatoes w/ carrots and peas mixed in
couscous w/ diced tomatoes and cucumbers and feta mixed in
ground beef w/ black beans, corn and salsa mixed in (still a favorite meal!)
yogurt
smoothies w/ mixed and frozen fruits
 
with e - she ate everything we ate, just cut up really small. i never made a special meal for her and she is the.best.eater.ever. so whatever we were eating, she would have some of it, but i would substitute in stuff - cheese slices, lunch meat, black olives... baby yogurt was also popular.

jillian - i did do separate meals for her and well, she's picky. go figure.
 
These are REALLY great ideas! Thanks ladies!!

Our plan is to start giving her our food when we can (ie I'm making zucchini eggs for dinner tonight, and we'll probably give her a little). But it's nice to have some "go to" things for when we need to substitute something. Even simple things like pasta and beans are great ideas that I hadn't thought of.
 
Oh, I forgot to mention pancakes, too... I baked up a homemade batch once a week and froze them. Then I'd pop them in the toaster. Grace ate them plain all the time.
 
I fed baby food for about six months or until they started getting teeth then they ate whatever we were having. If it was to hard to chew Id puree slightly. But fruits & vegies were a favorite for all three of mine. I figured get them to eat the vegies while I could because I knew eventually they would hate them.
 
I used to make some pasta and put some gravy from our pot of food on it. I'm sure I did other things, I just can't remember
 
I'm considering trying Baby Led Weaning. I'm reading the book now, and it advocates skipping the purees and giving them food they can put in their mouths by themselves. The author says that babies don't need food outside of milk until about 9 months, so at about 6 months (or whenever they start reaching for food, like Ariana is now, sob) give them big pieces of food, like carrot sticks or a chicken bone, that they can experiement with trying to get it in their mouths and gumming it.

John & Sherry of Young House Love wrote about their experience with it here, and I first read about it at Simple Bites.
 
Help a mom out: what kind of cheese can I give to Olivia (besides cottage cheese)? Can I give hard cheese to her? Can I give cheese to her at this age, anyway? She's 7mo... :confused:
Thanks :)
 
Kellie, I've read about BLW (just online, not the book), and I've got a friend that's doing it. She really loves it!

Giselie, Chloe really likes string cheese. I just cut it up in tiny little bites that she can put her in her mouth by herself. I've only started giving it to her in the past couple weeks (she's 8 months), but she really loves it. I'd say if Olivia can sorta use her jaws to mash foods a little, she'd be ready to try it.
 
giselie - we did all sorts of cheeses. most often we had pre-sliced cheese on hand for sandwiches & i would rip that into tiny bits that my girls could pick up and self-feed.
 
joelsgirl said:
I'm considering trying Baby Led Weaning. I'm reading the book now, and it advocates skipping the purees and giving them food they can put in their mouths by themselves. The author says that babies don't need food outside of milk until about 9 months, so at about 6 months (or whenever they start reaching for food, like Ariana is now, sob) give them big pieces of food, like carrot sticks or a chicken bone, that they can experiement with trying to get it in their mouths and gumming it.

John & Sherry of Young House Love wrote about their experience with it here, and I first read about it at Simple Bites.
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This is what we're doing, and I LOVE IT!!! I can not say enough good things about this process. I was totally going to make my own purees and all that jazz, and then I heard about BLW and I threw it all out the proverbial window.
Callen loves it too. I don't do 3 squares meals with him, but he gets at least 1 BLW meal a day, sometimes 2 depending on when his naps fall and when I eat myself. He's almost 8 months (WHAT?!) and is still mostly just sucking on things, but I don't think it'll be long before he's really and truly chewing and eating. I love how easy it is, and that we can go out to eat and he can have some of whatever it is that we're having. It makes it so simple, and it just makes sense to me.
 
Also, as far as cutting up foods go, I'd be careful of cutting things up tiny. With Baby Led Weaning they get sticks of things and break off what they want so they can learn what is an appropriately sized piece of food for their mouth. Too small pieces can get moved to the back of their mouths too quickly and be choked on.
Also, with anything that's like a cyclinder (hot dogs, banana, string cheese), make sure you cut it in half so it's a semi-circle. Otherwise it can get caught in their throat wrong and choke them.
Not trying to scare anyone! I just thought it was worth mentioning.
 
ColleenSwerb said:
This is what we're doing, and I LOVE IT!!! I can not say enough good things about this process. I was totally going to make my own purees and all that jazz, and then I heard about BLW and I threw it all out the proverbial window.
Callen loves it too. I don't do 3 squares meals with him, but he gets at least 1 BLW meal a day, sometimes 2 depending on when his naps fall and when I eat myself. He's almost 8 months (WHAT?!) and is still mostly just sucking on things, but I don't think it'll be long before he's really and truly chewing and eating. I love how easy it is, and that we can go out to eat and he can have some of whatever it is that we're having. It makes it so simple, and it just makes sense to me.
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SO glad to hear this! Plan on hearing from me a lot in a few weeks! I'm glad to have an expert so close by!

I really want to do it, but I'm afraid I have way too high of a freak out factor to
really make it work.
 
I'm pretty much a laid back freak for a first time mom, lol. I worry about VERY little. In my mom group I'm the one that calms everyone down and tells them it's gonna be ok, lol.

Obviously you have to watch them, you can't just plop them down with some steak and then go do the dishes or something. But Callen has barely ever even gagged on anything, and never choked. We started with him around 5 months because he was interested. I knew it was a little early, but he was sitting pretty well enough on his own, so I figured why not. You can always stop and come back to it later if they don't take well to it. It's so easy to make a salad and just chop some peppers and carrots into sticks for him. He's also had cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce, croutons, chicken, steak, etc. He loves carbs because they are so easy. They are easy to handle at first, and then they get soft and he just sucks up the mushiness, lol. It is a very messy method though too. I keep the thin baby washclothes in the kitchen now and use them to mop him up after a particularly messy meal. The other week he had chicken parm for lunch with me. I gave him a piece of chicken, some elbow pasta (the curve makes it a little easier to grab), and a spoonful of sauce on the tray, and he LOVED IT.
I really just have fun with it. He loves Wheat Thins and it cracks me up. He'll gnaw on broccoli florets and makes a face at the stem (who doesn't, right? LOL!). I love just watching him explore and figure things out. He tries to eat the banana peel instead of the banana, and MUCH prefers green apples to red (like his momma). Tomorrow we're gonna try pears. He liked avocado ok, and then I got to make guacamole, lol.
My favorite is just being able to go out and not stress. Last weekend he had some of my sweet potato fries and steak from Uno's.
 
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