My Experiences with Baby Feeding

March 24, 2009 at 11:57 am | Posted in Food, Parenting, Talks about Aryan | 12 Comments

Aryan completed 2 years and 8 months this saturday. I was just looking back at the time that just passed by and I realized that through out this journey of motherhood there is one thing that I did all on my own and I feel most satisfied about. And that one thing was deciding about what should be fed to my child. I am not saying feeding my child because he was fed by my MIL and then his day care people while I worked but I was the one who has always planned his daily meals and i feel pretty satified with the job I have done.

And so I thought I would share my experiences about baby feeding and some things that worked for me. I was initially posting it on healthy and tasty but then I refrained because I am not giving any facts here but just an experience.

One thing that I always believed was that I cannot, could not and should not follow any meal plan or diet chart available on internet. So though I read plenty of material on baby feeding I never really got stuck to one. I just grabbed whatver I liked from each of them.

And one thing that I grabbed was that we should try and include all the different food groups in every day’s diet. But then I was never sat and checked out if I covered everything. I had a broad picture of what foods are rich in carbohydrates ,fats , protiens and I knew that fruits and vegetables are important.

I followed few thumb rules :

Never get overboard with anything , strike a balance between taste ,health and feasibility. Take inputs from everyone but follow your heart.

Respect my child’s preferences and opinion but try to introduce healthy foods to him.Never ever feed him forcefully , if he is hungry he would take it and one day of hunger or junk foods doesnot mean the end of world.

Provide variety to the kid , if I get bored of same stuff so will he.

Your child should get used to your kind of food slowly and steadily.Kids follow by example , if we indulge into loads of junk food , so would they.

So when I stand up in the kitchen in the mornings, I pretty much think this way that if I am giving oats in breakfast in need to give dal rice in lunch , some fruits and bread in evening snacks. And the lunch has to be loaded with veggies as well.

But this need not be fixed every day and so though I cover everything every day I swap timings and preparations like wheat can go in form of bread , paratha, upma, pasta etc. Rice in form of khichidi , uttapam , pulav etc. Fruits should go raw as much as possible. Veggies can be added in breakfast and lunch easily.

For the last thumb rule , here is what I do/did.
I never grinded him food in mixer , I just sieved it out. And slowly started mixing small chunks to it.

I try and make common breakfast for all of us , saves some time as well. Aryan always eats what we eat for dinner from the time he got 10 teeth. Till then as well he used to taste whatever we ate. Plus weekends doesnot involve speacial cooking for him , he eats whatever we eat, be it junk food at times.

Its not that feeding him has been smooth like it feels from this post. I have my own bad days when I feel pissed off and he literally does not want to eat or is too busy to eat and then becomes too cranky. But those days as well are part of his growing up and we cannot really do much about them.Like any mother such days bring stress to me as well but then I have learnt to live with them.

In all I am happy with the way I am doing atleast in this field of parenting..Touch wood ! Any suggestions are always welcome !