Baby Feeding: What Does it Mean When I See Whole Pieces?

Thank you to the parent at a recent workshop in Victoria BC who asked this baby feeding question: "What does it mean when I see whole pieces of food in my baby’s poop?" It’s amazing the topics of conversation that you have once becoming a parent, eh?! This Mom had recently started feeding her baby finger foods and was seeing pieces of food in her baby’s diaper. It’s often not talked about, but when you start to feed your baby solid foods, you will see a change in their bowel movements.

When it comes to baby feeding: Change what’s going in and it’ll change what comes out the other end.

It’s normal for babies to have smellier and more solid bowel movements once they start eating solid foods. This will be particularly noticeable if you were exclusively breastfeeding your baby before introducing solid foods.

It’s also normal for bowel movements to be less frequent. They may not be every day. This doesn’t mean that your baby is constipated. It’s the normal transition from very quickly digested (and naturally low fibre) breastmilk or formula to solids which require more digestion.

Signs of constipation include your baby straining (which is different than the (hilarious) “I’m concentrating” face that many babies make) or being in pain when having a bowel movement.

Baby Feeding: So, What Does it Mean When You See Whole Pieces?

To get back to this Mom’s question, it’s normal to see whole pieces of food in your baby’s poop. Corn is a classic for making diaper appearances. It just means that they swallowed the piece without chewing/mashing it enough for their stomach and intestine to digest it. There’s no harm in this. It’s part of the process of learning to eat.

Another bowel movement appearance that shocks and worries many parents for the first time happens after eating beets. Beets will cause baby’s poop to be dark red. It’s not blood. It’s just the molecules that make beets ruby red coming out the other end. These same molecules can cause urine to be pink too.

The Mom went on to ask me if their baby got any nutrition from the pieces of food. The answer is, for the most part no. The food’s passed through largely undigested so their body didn’t have the opportunity to absorb the nutrients from this piece.

In summary, as your baby starts to eat more solid foods, expect their bowel movements to change.

Looking for more help with feeding your baby? Check out my In-Home Instruction service.

Can I give finger foods if my baby doesn’t have teeth yet?

{Guest Post at Love Child Organics } Both in workshops and when providing in-home child feeding sessions, I’m often asked this question: "Can I give finger foods if my baby doesn’t have teeth yet?

The short answer is: yes! You don’t need to wait until little ones have teeth before feeding them finger foods.

Babies are ready for finger foods by 7 months, if not before. Many won’t have teeth (or very many teeth) by this age.

Your baby is likely ready for finger foods when you see the following:

• She can bring food to her mouth using her hand.
• He can eat thicker purees (the consistency of mashed potatoes).
• She can sit upright with minimal support.
• He is very interested in watching people eat and the food on your plate. He May even be grabbing for people’s food, plates, cups etc.

It’s amazing to watch what little ones can handle with their gums. So go ahead and offer finger food versions of a wide variety of foods that your family eats.

Bottom Line: Enjoy watching your little one discover the amazing variety of tastes and textures that food comes in!

For more info on baby food - both purees and Baby-Led Weaning (BLW), check out this blog post.

Does My 7 month old Baby Need Water?

Thank you to the VIP who asked this question: "Does my 7 month old baby need water?".  The short answer is: No. Seven month olds don’t need water. But, it’ a great time to start offering it to them anyways. Let me explain.

Baby Need Water?

We offer little ones solid foods starting at about 6 months of age for two reasons:

1. To meet their nutritional needs.
2. To provide the opportunity to learn eating skills.

At 7 months old, your baby will still be nipple feeding (i.e. breastfeeding or formula feeding) several times a day.  They’ll be meeting their need for fluids through nipple feeding. So, your little one doesn’t need water to meet their nutritional needs.

Open Cups

Learning to drink from a cup is a learned skill. Any time from 6 months onwards is a great time to start. From time-to-time, when your little one is sitting at the table, offer them a small amount of water (I’m talking an inch deep or less) in an open (lidless) cup. Yes, the first few times the water will pour down their face. A clever mom in one of my recent workshops shared how she dresses her little one in only a diaper when doing this – there’s less clean-up. Over time your little one will learn how to hold on to the cup, tip their head up just the right amount, and close their lips around the cup. It’s amazing how fast and how young they pick up this skill! Now you may have noticed that so far I’ve only been talking about using an open/ lidless cup.

Sippy Cups

That’s because kids don’t actually need a sippy cup. Sippy cups are helpful for parents because it means less spills. But they aren’t actually a developmental need for kids. In fact, sippy cups with the valves/ bladders in them teach your kids to suck – not sip. They aren’t actually any skill progression from a bottle. Removing the valve/ bladder gets kids moving back towards sipping instead of sucking. But it also means more spills. Some speech language professionals recommend cups with straws instead of sippy cups because of concerns about oral movement and development.

The Bottom Line

While your 7 month old baby doesn’t need water yet, it’s a great time to start offering the opportunity to learn how to drink from a cup. Sippy cups and cups with straws are handy ways to limit spills. But they aren’t needed for kids to learn how to drink from a cup.

Beets: What to Do with Them

Aah, beets. These versatile root veggies are one of my favourites! As a dietitian, part of my job is to know how to prepare healthy foods like beets. So I’m sharing a couple of my favourite ways to use them. A classic storage, root veggie, you can find local ones (fairly cheap) throughout the winter here in Victoria, BC.

And, because of their naturally sweet taste, many kids like them.

However, people often wonder what the heck to do with them. Here are some of my favourite ways to use them.

Grated – Raw Beets

Beets don’t even need to be cooked. Simply wash them, peel off the outer skin, and grate them into a salad.

It doesn’t get any easier than that!

Grated veggies are a fantastic finger food for little ones to practice that pincer grasp.

However, be warned – beets stain! Pick up pieces from all surfaces (including the floor) quickly.

Grated, raw beets are a delicious part of my lentil-farro power bowl (full meal salad).

Roasted Beets

When I’m turning on the oven to cook something, I often pop a few beets in at the same time – either for a warm side-dish today, or for chilled as a salad in the future.

1. Wash beets and cut off any long tails or furry top bits.
2. Cut a piece of tin foil large enough to wrap the beet in. Lay it on the counter, shiny side up. Pour a dollop of olive oil in the centre.
3. Roll the beet around in the oil to coat it. Wrap the tin foil tightly around the beet.
4. Repeat for each beet.
5. Place wrapped beets on a cookie tray or in a baking dish.
6. Roast until tender, how long this takes depends on the size of the beets and the heat of your oven – at 350 degrees F it may take as long as 2 hours; at 425 degrees F it may take as short as 45 min.

Beet and Bean Borscht

Check out this fantastic hearty and tasty full meal in one pot, vegetarian borscht here. While the recipe takes a little longer to cook, it makes a lot of soup. And, this soup tastes great re-heated. Freeze leftovers (without the yogurt or sour cream topping) in small batches. I wanted to share it not only because it’s so tasty, but because it’s handy to have healthy meals like this in the freezer when the busy holiday season starts up.

Beans, beets and cabbage are all super healthy (and inexpensive) that I’m always looking for new recipes. I picked up this little pamphlet at the Saskatchewan pavilion at the 2010 Olympics. Did you know that we grow tons of beans, split peas and lentils here in Canada?

If the mixed textures in this soup are too advanced for your little one, simply take beans and pieces of the veggies out of the soup and place them in your little one’s dish/ on their tray.

How to Deal with Throwing Food (and Cups, Plates, Utensils, etc) on the Floor

{Guest post on the Love Child Organics blog: http://www.lovechildorganics.com/blog/ } A parent asked the following question: “How to deal with throwing food and cups on the floor”.  Almost every child goes through a stage where they throw onto the floor anything within reach from their highchair – food, plates, bowls, cups, utensils, etc.

The good news is that you can nip this behaviour in the bud and make it disappear from your mealtime and snacktime routines.

The bad news is that sometimes, inadvertently, you (and other adults) can be fuelling this behaviour.

The secret is to figure out what’s causing your little one to throw food and address the root cause.

Kids throw food for a number of reasons. Here are the 3 most common that I’ve experienced in my years of working with families. And, here’s how to get your child to stop:

[Note that the following are all assuming that your child is intentionally throwing items on the floor. Unintentionally knocking things over as a result of being clumsy and inefficient at self-feeding is normal and expected. Accept your child’s messiness as a part of learning the tricky skills of self-feeding.]

1.  Cause: It creates a strong reaction from you. Toddlers LOVE to cause something to happen. I could go as far as saying that they’re obsessed with creating a reaction. This is why it’s so exciting to push the elevator button – because little ol’ me made the elevator move! If throwing food causes you to react – whether it’s to pick their cup back up off the floor, scold your child, etc, they’re relishing their power to make you do something. As the saying goes, negative attention is still attention. Solution: Ignore the behaviour. Respond with a simple: “we don’t throw food on the floor.” And, don’t give them back their items that they’ve dropped. They may respond with a tantrum or meltdown this time. But they’ll quickly learn to keep things that they want to eat on their tray and the throwing food on the floor will stop.
2.  Cause: The dog eats it. This is similar to #1. Toddlers find it hilarious to feed the dog. Solution: Keep your dog out of the eating area. Either train your dog to lie outside the room during meal and snack times, or use a baby gate to block their access. Keeping the dog out of the room is the only solution that I’ve ever found to this problem. I’ve never found a way to get kids to stop enjoying “sharing” their food with their canine partners in crime J
3.  Cause: It’s the only way that you’ll “hear” them say “I’m full”. I see this again and again. Well-meaning parents won’t accept that their child has eaten enough at a particular meal or snack. They feel that their child needs to eat more (usually due to concern that they aren’t meeting their nutrition needs). So even though their child is giving clear signals, either using words, sign language, or body signals, parents keep pushing their child to eat more. Kids keep escalate their “I’m full” signals until they throw the food on the floor. Throwing food on the floor usually causes their parents to finally allow them to stop eating. As a result the meal is now over and both adults and kids are equally upset. Solution: Trust your child to know when they’re satisfied. Babies are born knowing when they’re hungry and when they’re satisfied.  Allow your child to choose how much to eat at each occasion.  It’s normal for kids to eat a lot some days and very little on other days. You’ll make sure that your child is getting the nutrition that they need by offering foods at about 5 – 6 meals and snacks each day. And, watching their progress on their growth charts. Respect and trust your child in this way. The result is that meals will end with everyone in a good mood (and with less mess to clean up).

Check out my picky eating book for more successful toddler nutrition tips.

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Can I give finger foods if my baby doesn’t have teeth yet?

Thank you to the parent who asked me this week’s question: "My baby doesn’t have any teeth yet. Can I give her finger foods?" The short answer is: yes! You don’t need to wait until a baby has teeth before giving finger foods.

Babies are ready for finger foods by 7 months, if not before.

Many babies won’t have teeth (or very many teeth) by this age.

It’s amazing to watch what they can handle with their gums. So go ahead and offer finger food versions of a wide variety of foods that your family eats.

Enjoy watching your little one discover the amazing variety of tastes and textures that food comes in!

Check out this video for iron-rich finger foods for babies.