My baby was a picky eater from the moment she was first able to eat food. Actually even when she was breastfed she was fussy. I had some issues breastfeeding. She was never satisfied and I never could pump enough. Not an ideal situation.
Once on bottles she ate like champ. She would regularly slurp down 8 ounces before falling asleep almost immediately. We would call her the world’s worst dinner guest. She would be wide awake and then fall asleep while being fed. Napping and bedtime were a snap for the first 6 months due to her voracious appetite.
She was our first child so we waited until 6 months to start any solid food. I began with watery, mostly formula rice cereal. Hated it. Spat it out. I thickened the rice cereal — she liked it a little better. And by liked I mean to say that she ate two spoon fulls and then stuck out her tongue. I tried to tempt her to eat it by thickening it to the point where she could eat it with her fingers..think wallpaper paste consistency…no dice still hated rice cereal.
After a week we decided that we had “done” rice cereal. We moved on to oatmeal…and you guessed. The same thing happened. So rice and oatmeal were not very successful. We moved on to fruit. I have a suspicion that I was supposed to do vegetables first. Ooopsie. So Stage 1 fruit it was. She liked apple sauce. Cringed at peaches. Was indifferent to pears. Prunes she liked…but I did not like the aftermath. Vegetables were hit and very much a miss. Peas, green beans were O.K. but then carrots and sweet potatoes were a hit.
I should point out that my 6- to 7-month-old never finished a jar of Stage 1. Those jars are so tiny! It got to the point where I would put half in a bowl and then save half in a jar. The amounts she ate were microscopic.
The bottle was still her main source of nutrition. All 40 ounces worth. Yea, I agree that is a lot of formula for a 7-month-old to drink, but we were in a Catch 22 as we didn’t want to cut her formula in the hopes that she would eat more in case heaven forbid she actually ate less.
So, we kept on going with the 40 ounces of formula. Reducing it to about 32 ounces. Even with a reduction and a move to Stage 2 foods, she was still barely nibbling at her baby food. Our one successful attempt at getting her to eat an entire jar — was a Stage 3 jar of Blueberry Buckle. Loved it. In fact I bought several jars to keep at my mother’s house, so that she would have a reliable source of food for my baby.
Oh, I still presented my daughter with jars of baby food and I still watched in amazement as she ate the smallest portion possible. Later with my second and third children I was aghast the first time each ate an entire jar of baby food followed by another jar. Both also drank the same amount of formula as well.
It proved the old adage…every child is different.
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