Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Trick, no Treat!

It's been challenging, to say the least, to get Kaylani to eat something other than baby food. In fact, it's been challenging to get her to eat at all. Before, we used to just have to act like a clown or rotate through 4 or 5 toys to get her to eat her food. Now, we have to resort to much dirtier tactics, for a much dirtier job. The only way to get her to eat lately is to flat out trick her.

After Kaylani eats a jar of baby food, we usually only get 1 shot to give her something different without any trickery (unless you count slipping in something different while she still thinks it's the same baby food as trickery). If we give her a different baby food from a jar, she may keep going if we rotate through some toys. But if it's real food, then her mouth locks down tighter than a breastfeeding baby latched on to her mom. And the only way we've found to get her to open up is by pretending to give her something she wants to eat (like Cheerios), or by prying her mouth open with a carjack.

Tonight, Mommy made Kaylani a butternut squash and turkey mix, a butternut squash, turkey, and pastina mix, and a bowl of pastina. We hoped that she would eat one of the three, but turns out the pastina was too hard to chew. That meant we were left with blended butternut squash and turkey. After 1 bite, Kaylani decided she'd had enough. But when we took the Cheerios out, all I had to do was hold up a Cheerio in front of her face to get her to open up. Since she can't feed herself yet, she waited for me to put the Cheerio in her mouth. Instead of Cheerio, she got a spoonful of butternut squash and turkey. Trickery successful!

After about 3 spoonfuls, she got a little bit smarter and started to hold my hand with the spoon. But after I switched hands and fed her with my left hand, she ate about 4 more spoonfuls of food before she lashed out for the Cheerio. Then, after getting an actual Cheerio (which she touched and played with to make sure it was an actual Cheerio), she ate a few more spoonfuls of food instead of the Cheerios that she wanted so badly. 15 spoonfuls in, or roughly 2.5oz of food later, she was all done. She was done being tricked.

It's probably unadvised to trick her to eat actual food, but it's the only way we can get her to eat. Hopefully after a few days of this food, she'll eat it willingly since that's how long it's taken usually. But if tricking her is what gets her to eat, then you might as well just call everyday Halloween. Except in this version of Halloween, there are no treats. Not for Kaylani at least.

3 comments:

Lisa said...

We're having similar issues with Aidan-- he is becoming more selective about what he wants to eat. Can you believe that he suddenly decided that he doesn't like bananas? Usually the "choo choo train" works for us when we are feeding him, but finger foods are a different story....

Otter Thomas said...

I hope she gets better. It is no fun to struggle with feeding. When Braden doesn't want to eat he swats everything with his hand. If you are not quick then you get a big mess.

WeaselMomma said...

She's one smart kid.