all about feeding the baby

So, first, I should probably start off with an update to my pumping saga. If I am clever, I can get a few topics covered in one post without boring you to death!
For some reason, I can only pump about 20oz per day. I have long since left the stage of analysis and have moved on to acceptance. and, I’ll need to stay there because, it seems that for some unknown reason, I will most likely continue to decrease in production. sure, I’ll try the Fenugreek capsules when I can get to the health food store, but I’m trying not to stress about it. It is what it is. This means that I am quickly going through my storage of frozen milk: (Good thing that none of my offers to give some of my frozen milk to Moms with preemies just never worked out). Hopefully, I can hold on until 12months, at least. I got a new Ameda pump (I have the worst time with pumps, but at least I can do both breasts at one time: cutting my pumping time to 20minutes per session). Yet still, only 20-25 ounces per day. So, I supplement with about 12oz of frozen milk per day…. … sometimes more and sometimes less.
I am following the guidelines to first feed my baby milk and then try some food. Here is where I insert a product review; (which, if I was more ambitious, I’d upload to Amazon). The product is the “munchkin Squeezy spoon.” I am sorry, but it just takes too long for me to insert the HTML code into this post, especially when I have forgotten it and — there is nothing worse than spending fifteen minutes trying to remember and still doing it wrong. Anyway, back to the review
Pros:
1. **no bowl! No bowl to keep out of baby’s reach! No bowl to dip my spoon into and then try to make it elusive for Baby to get ahold of! and, while we are talking about dipping the spoon, since you don’t have to “dip” you don’t have to worry about food dripping from the underside of the spoon. No bowl to take with you on trips! No bowl to clean.
2. As a blind person, I admit that it is hard to keep the spoon level when you are trying to feed a squirmy baby. I don’t feed the baby facing me, that leaves his hands too idol and free for exploring. With the Squeezy spoon, you don’t have to worry about spillage. OK, you can spill it, it is just much harder. Hmm, I wonder if moms with CP and other similar disabilities know about this spoon?
3. it is so easy to just fill the spoon, cap it and take it with you for travel and storage.
*cons:
1. The food must be a bit thinner than plain yogurt consistency. I imagine that I’ll have to start using a baby spoon and traditional methods when he starts eating small chunks in his food. I have a baby bullet, so I can puree. But, I tried mashing up a banana with a fork and loading it into the spoon. Note: your baby can get quite fussy if he actually likes bananas, but you have to stop every bite to unclog the spoon, making him wait for eternity for that next bite. Unclogging the spoon does get frustrating.I am sure that they could increase the dial’s functionality not only to close and open the spoon’s squeezy hole, but to expand it to accommodate coarsely strained food.
2. It is difficult to get that last bit of food squeezed onto the spoon. You end up squeezing lots of air and the baby gets frustrated unless he likes to eat air; which mine does not. There is only small tates of food on the spoon. I tried tapping the spoon on the table to get all of the food down to the Spoon’s end, I was just not that successful.
In any case, the baby loves to eat and wants to eat whatever we are eating. steaming and Pureeing babyfood is new for DH who says that his mother just fed her babies table food It usually takes Azaan a few tries to like a new kind of food. He is now eating: Bananas(Kayla) , avacados(DH is not an avid veggie and fruit eater, so don’t know the Urdu name for that one), pears(Nashpati), Peaches(Aroo), sweet potato(shahkar kandi), water mellon(karbooza), other mellon(tarbooz), carrot(gajar), zucchini(We don’t eat that in Pakistan) and today he might try Pumpkin(kado). For a while ago, he was constepated. He had only eaten bananas, avacado and sweet potatoes and I assumed that it was the sweet potatoes. So, I gave him plums(aloo bakari) and prunes(who knows the Urdu word for that). I tried that syrup, but it didn’t work. I am giving him more water in the day. He won’t drink from his newly purchased “Tommy Tippy sippy cup,” but he tries drinking from a regular paper cup, if I hold it for him. [more on water later]. I thought that sweet potatoes were the culprit, but it might have been all of those bananas. In any case, I hesitate to give him iron drop for a variety of reasons: 1 reason is that I don’t want him even more constepated.
He also likes eating from my hand and will eat mellon, avacados (yes, apparently, he does not find them bland at all) and bananas in this way, if I let him. I do have this mesh thing that holds a piece of fruit and the baby chews and sucks until all the juice from the fruit has been extracted. Sometimes, I’ll let him eat like that, but it is just as messy as hand feeding him. I know lots of people say that hand feeding is not a good idea. But, I always do it when he is sitting on my lap, so it is not like he is a dog roaming for people food. And, honestly, it works for me.
I might just invest in a high chair, not to feed him in exactly, but to sit him in while we eat. In that way, he will still be at the table. I might steam some sweet potato for his first finger foods. Oh, did I mention that he still has 0 (ZERO, as in “NO”), teeth. but, he is definitely a south Asian eater: he already has the lip smacking part down!
My daughter seems to think that if I continue to use the squeezy spoon, he won’t learn to eat from a regular spoon and will just try to suck the food off of the spoon. Well, I tried yogurt today. I could not put it in the squeezy spoon because there were some very small fruit pieces which would have clogged the spoon. I sat him on my lap and fed him with a small plastic spoon. Now, I admit that it was yogurt from my refrigerator and probably was sweetened with sugar, so naturally, he would love it! (But, I take comfort in the fact that he enjoys eating avacado from my hand, so is not actually only wanting the sugary foods). He ate about half the container… … sure, it was a small (probably 4oz container— but still) without needing to be cleaned up afterwords. I don’t care if he sucked the food off of the spoon. He liked it so much that he ate it with very minimal mess! OK, we did share the container, so I ate a small bit and he ate a larger bite, until he turned his head and seemed disinterested. I am proud. Now he can eat from both. DH still hasn’t and probably won’t ever feed him yet. But, I have told him that the next time he criticizes the spoon I want to use or the veggies/fruits that I feed him, he can feed the baby himself.
Experts say that we should not give our babies water because it decreases the baby’s milk intake. Ditto about food. Well, leave it to my baby to not follow the norm. It seems like his milk intake has actually “increased,” even though he is eating food and drinking about 4oz of sterilized baby water per day. My routine is to give him a bottle of milk, followed up with food and then topped with a drink or two of water. You would think that he would be getting larger and/or heavier. Probably not. At his last pediatrician’s visit(06/29/2012), he is still in the fifth percentile with his weight: only 15.6lbs. But, he is in the fiftieth percentile in height… DH is five feet six inches; go figure. I am not a big “norms and percentages,” person, I am just wanting to give you an idea of his weight and height, despite his ravenous appetite.
Today is the first day of Ramadan and we will probably go to the mosque later. This will be Azaan’s first time at the mosque and should be interesting. I hope that no one tries to convince me to feed him table food!