On feeding children.

I have previously written about the many ways of trying to feed children. At this juncture I have a few thoughts to add


The twins have been an interesting micro-study on just how different babies can be. Since their first feedings in the NICU they have been very different.

In the hospital Amalia was aggressive, she would get hold of her bottle, drain it dry, and very often bring it all back up in just as aggressive a manner. A.J. took longer to be strong enough to eat, he ate slower and spent more time on the feeding tube, but he always kept down everything he took in.


Once they came home it was a similar story, Amalia wanted to eat everything, so we kept feeding her and she kept spitting it out. Once we took her to the breastfeeding clinic where they weighed her before and after eating we realized she was eating twice as much as she needed, we tapered her down on ounces and she kept it in. A.J. kept on the "slow and steady wins the race" approach and it has worked for him.


Now here we are at 8 months and for the past 2 months we have been trying to feed them rice cereal etc. baby food. Amalia wants it all, any flavor, any time, she will eat it hot or cold.
A.J. does not want it ever, as soon as a spoon approaches his mouth it shuts, and to the delight of his older sisters he will sometimes also shake his head "NO" causing baby food to be spread across his face, often in a thin mustache . He likes teething biscuits and baby snacks that he can pick up and gum, but try to squeeze a little strained peas in there and the fun is done. He resists airplanes coming in for a landing or choo choo trains coming to the tunnel. I have to get him to smile with his mouth open and try to sneak it in.
There is only one way he has willingly ingested baby food, and I am not willing to prepare this method every night. You see one night we were eating corn on the cob, and as A.J. was watching me eat very intently, I gave him my empty cob, which he attacked with great energy. I snuck some mashed squash on the cob and he slurped it up. I was able to get him to eat a whole (baby-sized) bowl of food, something that hadn't ever happened before. I imagined myself cooking corn on the cob every night and having to make extra trips to the grocery just to make sure I always had a cob, then I remembered, babies grow up.

SO when we are having corn on the cob, A.J. can too, and in the mean time I will be happy that he is such a happy boy that it doesn't take much to make him smile so that I can sneak the food in.