Hey there, y’all! How’s it going today? Remember last week when I shared all about Andee’s struggle with formula lately? Well I’d like to catch y’all up to speed on what’s happened in the last week.
If you remember, Andee was refusing her bottle, like hardcore refusing her bottle. She would drink a bit of it here and there, but for the most part I was mixing formula (powder and mixed) into other foods like purees. It was a struggle every. single. day. for almost two weeks. She would fight against me, thrash around and cry profusely.
As I was finally getting into more of a rhythm with feeding her lots of purees with formula mixed in and trying to not worry about the actual bottle so much, she suddenly didn’t want me to feed her anymore. Annnnddd she started to push against purees too! Like what the heck, Andee? I know people always say, “She’ll eat when she’s hungry,” which I totally get, but that’s not what was happening with Andee. At this point, I was worrying about her nonstop – am I feeding her enough, is she getting the correct nutrients, is she sick, am I doing something wrong?
Well fast forward to this week and homegirl has finally decided to cut her mama a break… thank you lawd! She finally started to drink her formula more regularly, which I am attributing to a change in nipple size. I had tried to change the nipple size during those hellish two weeks, but she just wasn’t having it. I stayed persistent and tried the next size up once each day, and it finally clicked for her. She is back to drinking 4 bottles a day with around 170-230 mL (5-7 oz) per bottle. Yippee!!!
Now, don’t think that my girl is letting me off easy just because she’s drinking her bottle more regularly and normally. Oh no, no, no, that’s definitely not her style. She’s gotta still make me work for it a bit. She now basically only wants solids – as in no purees. This is because she mainly only wants to feed herself. See ya mom! So now I am feeding her solid foods (strawberries, sardines, couscous, bananas, etc.) three times a day. This is a whole new experience for us and has been so much fun! My only worry with this is that she still needs 5 tablespoons of baby cereal a day for iron intake, and this is more similar to purees. So far I have found that she will still eat it by shoveling it into her mouth if I make it with yogurt and very little water. This makes it pretty thick and somewhat sticky, so it’s easier for her to actually scoop it into her mouth. Let’s hope this continues to do the trick for us until she gets better at using a spoon.
To help with ideas of what solids to feed her, I purchased the meal and recipe ideas kit from SolidStarts.com. It has 50 different breakfast, 75 lunch and 100 dinner ideas. So far I have made her blueberry oatmeal and broccoli and bell pepper egg bites. Andee has tried both of them, but I won’t say she loves these two meals yet. I think it’s just something new for her to get use to. I will continue to serve her these recipes as side items so that she is constantly exposed to them. I think she will eventually love them both!
Have you all experimented with solids with your child(ren)? Drop a line below and let me know about your journey; I’d love to hear it!