Back when the girls were six months old, we introduced them to rice cereal. Last month, we added bananas, apples, and peas. This month, we’ve continued with the vegetables and more grains, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and barley. All this time, Miranda has been pretty enthusiastic about everything. She regularly finishes a 2.5 ounce container of Gerber baby food twice a day.
We’ve hinted in past updates, though, that Eleanor has not been so gung-ho. In fact, after initially being okay with some rice cereal, she started clamping her mouth shut. She would crack her lips open just a tiny bit to blow outward, sending anything on the spoon spattering away. We decided not to stress about it, and so we just offered different kinds of food every now and then. Generally we got the same reaction. Every now and then, we would sneak a spoon into her mouth while she wasn’t diligent about keeping her mouth shut, but this would result in crying, and drooling, and not swallowing, and then the food would all run out of her mouth onto her bib. Eleanor seems to particularly not like apples. Even though I’m pretty sure they’re sweet, she reacted as if they were really tart.
A couple of weeks ago, Agnes’ mom was able to feed Eleanor about a teaspoon of something (about 0.5 ounces). She was using our Gerber baby spoons and just barely got any food on it. Then she would play with Eleanor, make smacking noises with her lips, and tried to entertain her. Eventually, she would get the spoon into Eleanor’s mouth and Eleanor would swallow the food without all the crying and fussing. Feeding Eleanor like this takes quite a long time, but Agnes’ mom is a patient person.
Since that time, we’ve gotten mixed results. Sometimes Eleanor will eat about a teaspoon, sometimes she won’t eat anything at all. The people at our daycare were getting the same inconsistent results. Since she’s not eating her solids consistently, Eleanor has been getting hungry in the evenings. We’ve started adding a fifth bottle at the end of the day to give her another two or three ounces of formula, for a total of almost ten ounces before she goes to sleep (that’s a lot, for those who don’t have a sense of these amounts).
Finally, today I was feeding Eleanor some squash, and she didn’t seem to mind it at all. She was opening her mouth on her own to take more from the spoon. She liked grabbing the spoon and putting it in her mouth herself (though I kept a hold of it to make sure she didn’t gag herself with the spoon, or drop it). She ended up eating about 3/4 of the jar of baby food, which is quite amazing. She repeated her performance later in the day with another half-jar of squash. The only downside is that the food really gets everywhere. It was all over her hands and face, her high chair, and her outfit. Then she grabbed her ear with her squash-covered hand. It took quite a lot of wiping to get her clean again before I continued her meal with her bottle.
Anyway, we’re hopeful that this was some kind of a breakthrough with Eleanor finally eating her solids, but I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.
hahaha… she knows what she wants. she’ll learn how to eat by herself really soon then. she’s actually pretty good. lucas didn’t start eating cereal consistently until 9mo. just keep trying and get a big bib. what you can do is cut a bigger tshirt in the back (straight down the middle) and slip it over her as a bib so she won’t get her outfit dirty. i also put a mat on the floor to catch all the things lucas throws (still does). when they start eating more, i found that baby bjorn bib works the best. it has a big pocket to catch all the droppings and very easy to clean. it’s expensive but i didn’t like the vinyl ones b/c they all have fabric edges or back and they get really gross after a while. lastly, they might not like gerber baby food soon. i made a concoction for lucas before and he seems to like it before he went to table food.