First of all, before we went to New Hampshire, Mya had a doctor appointment for her 6 months check up and immunizations. She weighted 12 lbs and 2.5 oz! And 24 inches long! Big girl! While we were at the doctor office, we asked when we could give Mya baby food. Doctor said we could start now but recommend rice cereal in the formula. But we could try the baby food, stage 1.
I went to the store when we got back from the trip to New Hampshire, and I was so confused. There was too many brands of baby food and different size. I had no idea what I was looking at. Luckily, Shamere was with me. She said Mya should be a Gerber baby, so that what we went with. Then Shamere showed me the stage on the baby food. I think I saw 3 different stages. Stage 1 came in a smaller size, and it makes sense. I got different kind of food, including bananas, peas, prune, and sweet potatoes. We also got a box of rice cereal that came with apple in it.
Mike suggested that we start off with little rice cereal in her formula. She was fine with it and I don't think she noticed any difference about it. Today, I didn't know that I had pour too much rice cereal in the bottle because Mya was crying during her feeding time and I wasn't sure what was going on. I changed the nipple and she was still crying. But then I realized the formula was too thick with the rice cereal because it wasn't going through the nipple. So next time I go to the store, I am going to get different nipples that has bigger holes in it because I think she is ready for a faster flow.
Tonight, I wanted to see if Mya would take her food by spoon. I mixed the rice cereal and water and heated up for 10 seconds. I put Mya's bib on her because I knew it was going to be a messy one. I put Mya on my lap and Mya's daddy got the video camera on and ready to record. Mya was crying like crazy because she was hungry and just woke up from her nap. She was looking around the room and looking for her bottle that has her milk in it. And then I showed her the bowl and the spoon and she cried bit more. I put the scoop the rice cereal on the spoon from the bowl and put in Mya's mouth while she is still crying. Took about a few minutes to get her realized I had the spoon in her mouth. She licked it and cried even more when she was down. I repeated the same thing and she was still crying after the rice cereal went down her tummy. Every time she sees the spoon coming in her mouth, she will grab it and forced it in her mouth and sometimes she would completely miss her mouth. When she misses her mouth, her whole cheek is wet and sticky. And sometime her hands goes in her mouth while there was food in it.
She ate half of it that was in the bowl. So I decided to stop because she was crying even louder. I went to get her formula and as she saw it in my hand, she stopped crying. She is so greedy. I know she likes the rice cereal but I think she didn't have any patience for it because I was feeding her slow. I had to because I had to scoop from the bowl and then put in her mouth. I think she is used to the formula that is fast in her mouth.
As for right now, we are going to stick rice cereal in the formula until she learns how to be patience. And maybe a little bit older. Or maybe I will try to feed her rice cereal or the Gerber food when she is not crying for food.
Here's a suggestion that worked well when I learned from Larissa when I was pretty much bringing up those girls I babysit for their whole lives. When you feed them with spoon and baby food, you need to be fast... In order to do that what we did was while baby in high chair or while someone else holds them, hold the baby food up close so your spoon doesn't have to go very far and scoop a lil bit and feed. But do a lil bit at a time so they can swallow fast and eat again. For some reason they like to eat it fast like when they drink fast from bottle it keeps going down and they don't have to stop and wait. See if that works and it helps them pay attention to eating and swallowing the food so they don't think about crying. It worked on the 2 girls i babysat for so maybe it will help with Maya. Let me know :) HUGS!
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