My son is just over 5 months old. We started him on rice cereal (perhaps early but by recommendation of the pediatrician - he is also underweight and that is the main problem, getting him to eat anything except for "snacking" and one big meal at night!) He does not open his mouth and often bats his hand and cries when I feed him. Sometimes I have more success than other times, but it seem to be getting worse not better. Could it just be the rice cereal and maybe I should try something else? Is there a way to get them to eat from a spoon? Is this an idication that he will have trouble with any solids? I appreciate any advice or feedback especially if you have had a baby that just doesn't seem to care to eat much.
None of my 3 kids liked rice cereal plain. I always made it runny and mixed it w/ a little fruit to start. Good luck.
He's pretty young so, despite what your ped may say, he may not be ready for solids yet. This is not necessarily an indication of how he will treat solids. My son was about 7 months before he started eating, he hated rice cereal (who can blame him?) and is a great eater -- always has been once he was ready to eat. You might try offering another food, or just giving it a break for a while. Breast milk or formula have much more nutrition in them than any foods. At this age, the vast majority of their calories should be coming from you or formula and NOT solids.
Regarding eating one big meal vs snacking.... his tummy is very small. Really, at this age snacking is pretty normal. Even when you do have a child eating solids at this age, it shouldn't be that much anyway. Solids do not offer as much nutition as breast milk or formula and some are not more than empty calories.
If you want him to eat from a spoon, then that is what you should use to feed him. Don't use a bottle to feed solids. Let him self feed as well. Yes it does get messy, but if you have a dog you'll be ok.
My son never liked the rice cereal, but did well with the oatmeal. They tell you to start with rice because there is less chance of allergies, but if you don't have any family history of allergies and your son doesn't have a history of allergies, you might want to try oatmeal with him. I was just last week asking my pedi about it because my daughter is getting ready to begin rice also and I checked with him about using the oatmeal instead if I needed to. Good luck. We are starting tomorrow!
I had the same problem with my son Jake
and this is what we did...
we bought Dannon plain yogurt
and put 2 heaping tablespoons of it in his real formula bottle and added rice cereal
thinner than you would feed w a spoon and cut an X in his nipple
he could not get enough of it!!!
we thickened it a little at a time
it helped him sleep longer
and the healthy yogurt helped him digest everything easier
please try this
it works so great!
Neither one of my two girls really cared for the rice cereal. They both perfered the oatmeal. They would only eat the rice when I mixed it with a fruit or veggie. Mine are now 7 and 4 so I don't really remember how early to start giving them the other grains and fruits but gerber used to have a chart on their website. And my pedi gave my a handout. I would check and see if it was save to go ahead and try something else.
Maybe he's just not ready for it yet. My older son didn't take to cereal until 7 months and is a very good eater now at 3 years old. My younger one was ready at 6 months. Unfortunately, my younger one has food allergies even though there is no family history on either side. The earlier you introduce solids, the more risk there is for food allergies. Trust me, it's worth the wait to potentially avoid the allergies. My son is allergic to dairy, wheat, whole eggs and nuts. It is the biggest pain and causes great worry.
I say take a break and try again in a few weeks. If you're breastfeeding, try mixing the cereal with you milk.
T. this may not be the best advice, because there are a lot of mama's out there and Dr. that would disagree with me, but I had the same problem with all of my children. It is most likely the consistancy that his is not liking. I made larger holes in the nipples of the bottle and just added enough ceral to make it a little thicker. I made the mistake of trying to get all of my kids to get with the spoon first. Even on the last one when I should have known better. After a couple of weeks and making the ceral and nipples thicker I would able to start spoon feeding them. This is all new to him and he is not liking it. Very few babies that I know of went to ceral without a little fuss. You can also try adding a little baby food in the mix. I daughter believe it or not loved peas and carrots in her ceral. I hope everything goes well.
I never had this problem with my little guy, he loved almost all baby food. Although, I didn't just give him the plain rice cereal, I mixed it with applesauce. Some will tell you don't do that because they get the taste for sweets and won't eat the vegetable. I had no such problem. They like what they like. Maybe try mixing a little applesauce in there and try to get him to taste it. Hopefully that works. I'm sure some other Moms will have some great ideas too!
I agree with Teresa. I have 3 kids, 2 of which are twin 6 month olds and they are 15 and 17 pounds (6 pounds at birth)so we don't have weight issues. One is a whiz on the spoon, the other isn't. The first baby uses a big kid spoon and eats rice and veggies well with it. For the other one, I use a small baby spoon and I put much less food on it. Once he starts to fight and fret, I empty a little of the rice mixture into his milk bottle and give him the bottle to finish. He still gets the food and many doctors are suggesting this now to battle constant spit-up that some babies do. The rice in the bottle helps to keep the fluid down and they don't spit up as much--so it's pretty safe as long as you don't put too much in at one time. Also, try adding baby juice to the rice cereal. My daughter liked it that way.
We started with steamed broccoli stems and mashed potatoes mounded up in front of Sierra on her Bumbo tray. (We skipped cereals - it's hard for the young digestive systems of babies to process cereals without discomfort. Also, I learned that purees are mainly for 4 to 6 month olds with pediatrician OK and that a 6 mo old can handle all types of finger foods with their incredible gag reflex - even without teeth!)
The approach is called baby-led weaning. I call it "Finger Foods From the Start." (I found out about it on Mamasource!)
Check out http://babyledweaning.blogware.com
It's a very informative and funny blog from a Scottish mom about her adventures with solid food.
There's a Y! group too. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/B-LW
"Baby-led weaning is an approach to the introduction of solid foods which involves babies from around six months of age feeding themselves with their fingers, thus avoiding the need for spoon-feeding and purees. Babies who are allowed to take control of their eating in this way seem to enjoy the process enormously and to become
less fussy eaters later. It's also less work for Mum! Join the group to share the experiences of those who are using (or have used) this method."
Sierra is the BEST eater. She's not picky at all and she even has multiple food allergies! She loves to try new things, especially if we say "oooh yummy (fill in food here)!"
Bottom line is that she is in control of what she eats and how much. On 2 occasions we tried to spoon feed her and she clamped her mouth shut each time. But when we placed finger foods in front of her for her to pick up she was much more happy and she actually ate her food!
I will be posting more food pics at our blog. (I'm way behind on our blog. Sierra just turned 15 mo and I'm posting 9 month entries!)
S.
Baby Sierra updates can be found at our Pregnancy and Birth Blog:
http://360.yahoo.com/ut96grad
Latest entry 7/1/08
