Ok yesterday Tatum ate food at daycare twice, this is what we wanted her to do but she did cut out a bottle. Do you think I should cut a bottle out and keep the extra feeding or leave it how it is? I know the formula has more calories but the Doctor also told me at her 6m visit that she needed to eat more food because she needs the vitamins in it. Kind of a double edged sword if you ask me. Any suggestions?
Oh yeah and a correction to yesterday...She does 25oz a day not 30 I counted better, last night. :) She is also a very "Happy Spatter,” Emma was too. I think they just like to throw up on Chris and me.
6 comments:
Go with the food... If you're nervous weigh her today at home, do the more food thing then weigh her at home in a week or so. You'll see if she's having issues. They're going to be giving up these bottles in general anyway in time... this is just moving her forward.
How cool she is eating so well!! Maybe with the cooler air...
I also say go with the food for with food she is learning about different textures in her mouth and she is having to coordinate getting the food in the mouth and swallowing it...all sorts of Occupational Therapy things. You also could try to get her to drink from a sippy cup. We started to try and get Jaxson to drink from one around six months...it helps to "strengthen" their sucking reflex.
Have a great day.
susan
I will forget about this when we talk, so I decided to send my thoughts. If she enjoys eating solid food keep feeding her the solid food. It is all part of growing up. Tatum is just too cute.
Love, Mom
Ah feeding dilemmas! I have told you time and time again...I think you should stick with the food! The one piece of doctor’s advice I wish I had not taken. He was eating foods at 5 months then we had to cut out all foods and go with formula only. Now here we are at 19 months old, and we can't get Daven to eat foods at all!
Stick with the foods girl! LOVE YOU!
Okay, here's different advice for you:
Clare was almost exclusively breastfed until close to a year old. Her pediatrician, her cardiologist, her GI all agreed that she was getting everything she needed from breastfeeding. They all agreed that solids was only a means of experimenting for future eating pleasure. The only reason we continued to push solids on Clare is that we could fortify it (since Clare would not take a bottle, there was no way to fortify my breastmilk).
Tatum gets EVERYTHING she needs from her bottle. DON'T CUT IT OUT!!!! By all means, encourage her solids, but don't subsitute solids for a bottle. She needs those calories and nutrients from her formula much more than anything she can get from solid food at this point. Yes, Tatum needs to experiment with tastes and textures, but she also needs her formula. Solids should be in addition to any bottles, not in place of, especially since she is only 6 months old. I didn't start either of my kids on solids until after 6 months old (Jamie was 7 1/2 months, Clare was 8 1/2 months.) I do wish I could have introduced them earlier to Clare (because she was so slow in developing her oral motor skills), but couldn't because of her procedures and surgery, just too much going on. But I would never have substitued the solids for nursing. It would just have been nice to have more time getting her used to them. Yet at 17 months old, Clare will pretty much anything. She can physically eat pretty much anything if it's cut into small enough pieces.
BOTTOM LINE - keep on with the solids - with different tastes and textures. But don't cut out bottles yet. If Tatum is doing well with her weight gain, that's an issue I would consider thinking about more when she is around 9 months old. It's not like you want to wean her off the bottle now, so why start.
I just read your post and thought I should e-mail you since I just had a conversation with Emerson's feed team regarding this issue. They told me that formula feeding at this point is all I should be concerned with because it gets her the important calories that she needs. They told me to do solids (aka rice cereal and baby food) 2-3 times a day but to think of it as "oral experience" letting her move the food around in her mouth and to figure out how to manipulate and swallow it. They told me not to think of it as adding vitamins or calories because it is definitely not as important to her at this point. In fact, baby food has very few calories. This also made a lot of sense to me as a speech pathologist. So that is what we have been doing. I would maybe suggest always starting with the bottle to let her get in the important calories and then try some baby food so she continues to enjoy it and get those important oral experiences.
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