13 months: Feeding the baby, part II

Sorting puffs.

Luka's eating habits changed pretty rapidly by 12 months. I knew it would happen around that time, but I have to be honest; the idea of him gaining most of his nutrition from solid foods rather than from his usual formula scared the pee outta me. Solid food? As in, the stuff he wears and smears on things? But it was a relief to learn at his 12 month well visit that his doc didn't recommend yanking his bottle away completely, just reducing the amount of formula and increasing his "real" food. So now he gets 16-20 oz. of formula, plus breakfast lunch and dinner. 12 months is also where whole cow's milk is typically introduced, but of course Lu gets a variety of plant milks instead. So far his favorite is almond milk.

The kid has a great palette! He will eat most anything that he can self feed. Since he's still so preemie teeny, his volume isn't that large. We just let him eat until he doesn't want to anymore, and it's working out fine.


wearing soy yogurt

I'm still working in a larger variety of foods for him. Here are some examples of what Lu eats for meals so far. He will usually have more than one food listed per meal, to keep things square.

Breakfast: 

Oatmeal or multi grain cereal with pureed fruit add-ins, like apple sauce, mango, berries, etc.
Banana chunks (his absolute favorite food)
wheat bread pieces with a very light coating of nut butter (peanut or almond)
Oatmeal with peanut butter
non-dairy yogurt, any flavor (another big favorite)
Fruit smoothie with rice protein

Lunch and Dinner:

crumbled baked tofu
pasta pieces with tomato sauce or nutritional yeast sauce
veggie burger pieces (for store bought, we like ones made of actual vegetables, like Dr. Praegers and Sunshine Burgers)
broccoli tops coated in flax oil
spinach, peas, carrots, all mashed or pureed
mashed potatoes (sweet or white)
edamame, cooked soft
rice cooked in veggie broth or a vegan cheesy sauce
falafel balls, crumbled
lentils, white beans, black beans, pinto beans, corn

Here's his general eating schedule:

6 oz. bottle upon waking between 7-8am
breakfast with plant milk from a cup around 8:30am
5-6 oz. bottle for snack before nap between 11am-12pm
Lunch and 5 oz. bottle between 2pm-3pm
5 oz. bottle for snack around 4pm
Dinner with plant milk from a cup around 5pm
6 oz. bottle before bed, between 7-8pm

 I feel like I'm stuffing him all day long! But he doesn't eat huge portions at all. We also let Luka taste almost anything we are eating, if he shows interest. He loves to share smoothies with us.  Especially if there's a straw involved! For the sake of convenience and also for a larger variety of food, we still keep some organic baby food in jars around. And the organic ones in pouches are really easy for feeding Lu away from home.

What are your favorite toddler foods?


a toddler?! when did we get a toddler?

one year.

Luka John Joseph turned one this week! Amazing. If you would have asked me a year ago if Lu would make it to his first birthday healthy, happy and "normal", I would have said, "enough with the questions- we're on our way to the NICU to gaze longingly at our new baby".



Luka is a really cool little baby if I do say so myself. We had a birthday party for him at Gymboree, and he had a blast crawling around and playing with his guests.











While I'm not normally keen on Lu having sugar at all, I did want to make him a smash cake. I made him a single layer banana cake with vanilla buttercream (all vegan, of course), and his hands were in it the second the cake was placed in front of him. And as I suspected, he didn't really eat any of it. He smashed some frosting into his mouth, made a sour face, then seemed irritated by the stickiness of it all. Ha.





Since the boy is 12 months now, we have been introducing more chunky foods. So far he has liked most everything as long as he gets to feed himself. Even chunks of avocado! Recent favorites are pasta rings (both semolina and brown rice) covered in pureed tomatoes and spinach or nutritional yeast sauce, smooshed blueberries, broccoli tops, tofu, white beans, wheat bread, and more. He also likes self feeding chunks of coconut oil. That's really messy, but makes for a nice smelling baby. Oh, the messes he makes.



Lu enjoys helping out at work. and by "helping", I mean crawling all over the place, making messes and trying to hurt himself on everything. Time to pad him up with packing material!





I have to admit, this year has been one of the most challenging of my life. Raising a little human is no joke, man. But getting to know our beautiful kid is completely worth the stress.



I can't imagine my life without you in it. Thanks Lu.

10 months.

10 months?! How did that happen? This kid has changed so much over the past few months, that we can hardly keep up with his milestones. Luka is completely crazy and hilarious. Now that he's learned to pull up on things, it's all he wants to do when he's awake. And sometimes when he should be sleeping!


He laughs, squeals, and babbles every second of the day. He's so dang busy.



Some new foods introduced recently have been: zucchini, broccoli, couscous, quinoa, pumpkin, cinnamon, and chunks of avocado and wheat bread. And he likes avocado much better now than when I used to puree it. Yay! His favorite are still orange colored foods, though. Sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and carrots rule his solid food world.

One of Lu's christmas presents from his grandparents was this fresh food feeder. It's a pretty cool gadget. Just put whatever fresh food inside the mesh bag, and let the baby chew it. The food comes out of the holes very small, so no choking. He likes eating bananas from it best so far.



And speaking of christmas, Lu's grandparents also took him to see santa. They said he wasn't scared at all, and Lu touched his beard. Ha.



The kid got his two front teeth for christmas, but I haven't been able to get a good picture of them. There has been drool galore, though.



Luka loves having books read to him, crawling around, and laughing with his daddy. That, I think, sums up his happiness. Such a smart kid.

nine months.

Nine months. That is just crazy. Luka has had some more great milestones happen over the past month. He crawls (really fast!), he can get to the sitting position on his own, and he is starting to pull up on things, too. He also recently started babbling the "bababa" "mamama" and "dadada" sounds.


pulling up like a big kid

Oh, and two teeth!!



Happy boy!


And the saddest monkey ever. On Halloween:


Luka's solid food list is growing, and he is slowly starting to get the hang of picking up food with his fingers. Finger foods so far have been peas, fruit puffs, and crumbled tofu. He can handle a sippy cup really well now too, but he doesn't actually drink much from it. He mostly chews on the spout. More pureed solids include: lentils, raspberries, peaches, pumpkin, blueberries, and others.



Miles the cat follows the baby around wherever he goes, and Luka loves it. He's always crawling around with Miles and trying to pet him. It's pretty funny.


a sweet boy in flight

Luka has even slept through the night a few times on his own, which is so cool. We still feed him once in the night if he wakes up for it, because he's a tiny little sprout. He's growing well though, and his pediatrician is happy with his rate of growth. He made it to the 1% in weight finally at 15 lb 7 oz.

What a crazy nine months it's been so far. Full speed ahead to having a one year old. Whoa!

7 months.

our little chipmunk

What a month it's been! Lots of new solid foods being introduced, and some milestones being met. Luka can now sit up unassisted, though he topples over pretty often. He's very proud of himself.



New leg warmers!



He stayed with his Nana and Grampa for a whole day one Saturday, and he had a ball. I was worried he would have some separation anxiety, but he did great. I love that he gets to spend time with extended family, because I never had that as a kid. He has a lot of people who love him very much!

So far his solid food roster goes like this:

Vegetables- green beans, peas, carrots, squash, sweet potatoes
Fruits- pears, apples, bananas, mango, prunes
Cereals- rice, oatmeal, multigrain (barley, oats, spelt)

And this week we will introduce lentils, then spinach. I attempted to include some unsweetened soy yogurt this month for some extra calories and fat, but he hated the taste! Oh, the sour faces he made. I hid it in sweet fruit and even his favorite carrots, but to no avail. I think he hated it worse than avocado, and that's hard to do.




Lu went for some seven month shots yesterday, and while he did gain another pound (he's 13lbs 15oz), his doc wants this preemie to gain a little faster now. Since we are having a hard time getting him to take a larger volume of formula, she gave us instructions on how to mix his formula to a higher calorie per ounce. Also she gave us the go-ahead to add flax oil or coconut oil to his solid foods. Hopefully this will give him that extra push he needs. I hope so, because I feel like I'm stuffing him full of food all the time. Poor kid never seems to get the chance to even feel hungry for a minute.

And no teeth yet! Lu's still a droolin' fool, but not a single tooth has made an appearance. He isn't crawling yet either, though he tries and gets frustrated. But he still manages to get around quick by flipping on to his back and doing a crab-crawl that is hilarious. He tends to aim his head directly at tables, so we have to watch him like a hawk when he's  on the floor.

And Luka has a brand new cousin named Liam Xander! We are excited for him to have a cousin so close in age. Hopefully they will grow to be good buddies.


can't get enough baby feet

6 months.

this kid.

Luka's six month well visit was yesterday, and he's still doing great. He didn't gain as much weight this time (he's 12 lb 14oz) but he has grown 2 inches in length since his four month checkup! All of his developmental milestones have been met, except for sitting up unassisted. He can for a second or two, but topples over quickly. We aren't worried about it though, he'll get there.

Lu's still eating one bottle in the middle of the night, and his doctor thinks we can wean him off once he's up to eating two meals of solid foods a day. His calories are still a concern, so he can't spare the one bottle without making up for it somewhere. We tried him on two solid meals today, and he didn't know what to think about it.


what I wake up to in the morning- a cranky faced monkey butt.

Solids are still going well. In addition to his usual, we've added pears and carrots to the list. And I finally made up a batch of organic peas for him! I need to make more homemade baby food. It's way cheaper than the little jars.


cute!

Luka has still been drooling like crazy, but no teeth have popped up yet. I follow a PPHN group on Facebook, and I recently read some parents talking about the new teeth on their little PPHN survivors. Apparently, tooth decay is really common in babies who had PPHN due to the sedatives and the ventilator they were on during treatment. When Lu's teeth start coming in we will be watching out for that. Hopefully it won't be a lifelong problem, but only with the baby teeth. I hate to think of him having any kind of residual problems from his treatment, but I guess it's better than the alternative.



I can't believe it's been six months already!

feeding the baby.

He loved the sweet potatoes so much, the spoon was yanked from my hand.

Solid food sure is a fun time. Not that Luka's eating all that much of it, but it's still fun to explore "real" food with him. We have been introducing about one food per week, and so far his menu includes:

Organic rice cereal
Organic sweet potatoes
Organic Bananas
Organic peas
Avocado

He HATED avocado, which kind of breaks my heart! We will try it again later, of course. Lu eats a variety of solids once a day right now, in between bottles.

Yeah, bottles. I've been avoiding writing about Luka's food because it's a touchy subject with me. But, since this is one of the few vegan baby blogs out there, I feel like I should tell our food story in case it may help others. So, as most vegan parents know, the ONLY way to feed an infant completely vegan is to breast feed. breast milk is the perfect balance of nutrition for a baby. If for some reason you cannot breast feed, a commercially prepared baby formula is the only safe alternative. Sadly, there is no completely vegan formula on the market. The dairy-free formulas all have non vegan vitamin D3 in them, and the dairy formulas are of course made of dairy.
If you have followed this blog since Luka's birth, then you probably remember my trouble with milk production in the beginning. The cards were stacked against me from the start. I never went into labor, so my body was not ready to make milk yet. Then my baby was isolated from me in the NICU with a serious heart/lung disease, and I wasn't even allowed to touch him for almost a week. I began pumping milk right away, and even at his bedside when I could (since contact with your baby helps stimulate milk production). Once I could hold him, we did skin-to-skin. I had two lactation appointments per week, where we got Luka to latch, despite his feeding tube. I was pumping every 2-3 hours, and producing maybe one ounce per day. Every drop I made went through his feeding tube, and that was awesome. He was tiny, so he didn't need much at first. I would bring all my pumped milk to the NICU for them to make bottles out of,and we began feeding him by mouth once his occupational therapy was done and he could eat by mouth. I remember one day I showed up, and the label on his bottle was marked "formula". I cried. When I asked why, they said he already ate all the stored breastmilk I had made. He was growing, and needing more than I could make. my lactation consultant told me to think of the formula as "medicine" until we could get my stores up.

I pumped. I took heaps of lactation supplements for months. I nursed him in between bottles, to help with my production. I fed him breastmilk in bottles so the slow flow of my breast wouldn't frustrate him. I even used the most fucked-up thing I called "the inadequacy contraption", seen here. I did my best. Eventually, Lu needed to eat way more than I could make, and my supply began to dwindle. I am very glad that he got breast milk for the first four months of his life, even though it couldn't be exclusively. Now his bottles are filled with organic soy formula, which he has to have until the age of one. I hate that it's not my milk, and I hate that the formula isn't completely vegan, but that's the facts, y'all. Luka is being raised vegan, and will only have vegan solid foods. We are really excited to see him enjoy solids, too.

He's such a happy little boy. We can't wait to get him started on all the good vegan foods that mommy and daddy eats!