General discussion - Mom and Dad Esq.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by truth
replace the crushed school teacher loving father from the original post with the more typical 23 year old crack addict with 3 kids. 1 died, the other 2 in hospital. now does your analysis change? I feel bad for the high school teacher because he's closer to me so its harder to be judgemental, but the crack addict didn't know there was the risk (unless you mean should have known).

Depends on whether the crack addict did something to create the dangerous situation, other than forget. Like having a pipe or two and going into a stupor for six hours while her kids baked in a quite different manner.

Otherwise, if you're just saying "crack addict" to make her less sympathetic as a defendant, you could just as easily have said, "Would you prosecute him for forgetting his baby in the car --- if he were a child molester?"

[viet_mom]

Hi everyone. Vietbabe turned 9 months the other day and though she's 28 inches, I can't get her over 15 lbs. She's "clinging to the 5th percentile" on the weight charts. Still has no teeth but still won't let me put pureed food in her mouth and she can't put it in herself (and doesn't want to). She wants to eat food she can hold and put in her own mouth.

I'm having a hard time and I don't want her to drop weight. Any more suggestions (I know I asked before) would be great. At this point, I have had to stop the wonderful homemade pureed food I was making her (organic veggies and chicken of course) and I'm feeding her things that ghastly!!

Here are the things she'll eat. I'd like to add cheese, but she says no to Mozzarella and Chedder (she can't pulverize it to her liking) so I don't know what to try. What about pieces of tofu?

1. Aunt Jemima's mini pancakes, microwaved a bit and then dipped in the homemade pureed food I had been making her (squash, chicken, etc.) but they don't absorb that much of the pureed food. She can really suck in the pancakes.

2. A product by Gerber called "Meat Sticks" and "Chicken Sticks" that are these awful tiny sticks that look like teeny hotdogs that have a light casing around them that keeps the meat together. I peel off the casing. She sucks down that meat voraciously. It's almost like pureed food she can actually hold and feed herself -- they are in holdable "stick form" until they hit her mouth -- then they go to pureed form basically. Perfect. But oh the preservatives and sodium in there, but....there's protein and potassium too.

3. Same product by Gerber but it's mini pieces of green beans, carrots, apples, pear dices etc. I tried to make them myself but they are not as soft as the ones that come in these jars. They're almost as soft as canned fruit.

4. These popsicle-looking things that are long plastic things that have frozen yogurt inside them she can hold the thing and squish the yogurt in her mouth.

5. A banana - can hold it and squish it in her mouth.

6. Rice - usually the "sticky" kind you get at Chinese restaurants but not much goes down the hatch - more on the floor.

Not so successful with these:

Mini waffles (not as easily eaten as the pancake).

Eggs - but not crazy about them even with the Herbs De Provence.

Ground beef (doesn't seem to go down; it may be too hard).

Someone on here suggested I "pouch" chicken breast so it is squishable in one's finger. Do you mean a boneless think sliced breast? And how do I "pouch" it? I tried a hotdog but it's too hard for her and she can't pulverize it.

Thanks everyone!

is the pediatrician worried about her weight? just a thought, but the growth charts are (I think) based on US population, and maybe she's actually closer to normal percentiles for her demographic.

some ideas anyway:

Land-o-lakes american cheese singles- it has some junk in it, but less than Kraft, it squashes up quite nicely, and doesn't have the strong flavor of cheddar.

pasta of a size and shape she can hold and stuff in her mouth- well cooked it pulverizes well, and the enriched pasta has a lot more protein than you think. Plus you can sneak other stuff on as sauce.

If she's into pancakes, you can make pancake batter with extra egg and some yogurt instead of the milk- she'll never know she's eating eggs.

mashed potatoes that you don't mash very well, so there's some squishy chunks she can grab- again, you can load up on the butter (really, fat is good at this age).

I never understood the baby food meats. They smell like an open grave, and I can't figure out why they don't turn kids off of food forever. I wouldn't sweat the meat group until she's ready to eat the real stuff- others might disagree, but you can sneak a lot of protein into them with other foods. If she's still drinking formula, she's getting most of her nutritional needs already, and just needs calories.

Also, do you eat with her? I only ask because I know when I'm on my own with the kids, I tend to feed them then forage for myself rather than sitting down like we do when the whole gang is here, and at her age watching mom eat sparks an interest in doing the stuff you do- learning how to hold a spoon, etc, and makes eating something interesting to do.

Final thought: if you don't care how much of a mess she makes, she can eat the things with her fingers that you'd rather have her eat with a spoon. Mine sucked a lot of squash off their fingers. I just fed them without a shirt on so I could hose them off afterward.

good luck, and unless the doctor tells you to worry, don't get too caught up in the percentiles.

[bridge of love]

Originally posted by viet_mom
Hi everyone. Vietbabe turned 9 months the other day and though she's 28 inches, I can't get her over 15 lbs. She's "clinging to the 5th percentile" on the weight charts. Still has no teeth but still won't let me put pureed food in her mouth and she can't put it in herself (and doesn't want to). She wants to eat food she can hold and put in her own mouth.

I'm having a hard time and I don't want her to drop weight. Any more suggestions (I know I asked before) would be great. At this point, I have had to stop the wonderful homemade pureed food I was making her (organic veggies and chicken of course) and I'm feeding her things that ghastly!!

my wife listened to our Ped and took our oldest off sole brest milk at 4 months to begin to introduce solids. the kid lost weight and stayed bony to the point where once at an emergency room (out of town bad cold) the attending asked "why are you starving your baby?" then he told us to have her checked for CF. turns out most babies get fat from milk fat for the first year so make sure you don't scrimp on milk or formula to give her all this other solid food. maybe that'll help. once we realized milk fat was how babies get fat and that solids are secondary, our kid did ok.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by viet_mom
Someone on here suggested I "pouch" chicken breast so it is squishable in one's finger. Do you mean a boneless think sliced breast? And how do I "pouch" it? I tried a hotdog but it's too hard for her and she can't pulverize it.

Thanks everyone!

I think that was me, and I meant "poach." Poaching is a method of cooking in liquid below boiling. For chicken, the water temp should be around 185. It's hard to tell temperature of non-boiling water, but 185 is about where small bubbles form on the bottom of the pan and the top of the water steams, but there are no rising bubbles.

Try this: bring a two cups of water to a boil in a fair sized saute pan or saucier. Lay in a chicken breast, and cook on one side for 20 seconds. The water should come up over half the side of the chichen. Too much water isn't something to worry about, but if it's too low, add more. Flip the breast with tongs and immediately turn down the heat to medium low. Let the water drop below boiling until it is just steaming a little with a few bubbles forming. Let the chicken poach like this for a while (20 minutes or so), and then flip and give it some more time (another 10 minutes, but a little longer won't hurt it). Since your water is around the target termperature for the food, it's not going to overcook too readily.

Take it out and let it cool. It will be squishable, especially when cut into small cubes. The first couple of times, you might want to try cutting it open to check for doneness before taking it out - it should be white all the way through the thickest part. One of the advantages of poaching is that it doesn't seem to make much of a difference if you cut a breast open while cooking (cut open a grilled or sauted breast while it's cooking and all the juices will run out).

This method of cooking is also great with fish (for you, and for baby when she gets a little older I suppose), but there the cooking temperature can be even lower.

I learned to poach from watching "Good Eats" on the Food Network. I was going to refer you to the transcript page for the episode, but I notice that it's replaying soon:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/show..._19118,00.html (spree: food)

The show is weird, but the techniques it shows and explanations it gives are great, so I recommend catching the episode if you can.

Hi everyone. Vietbabe turned 9 months the other day and though she's 28 inches, I can't get her over 15 lbs. She's "clinging to the 5th percentile" on the weight charts. Still has no teeth but still won't let me put pureed food in her mouth and she can't put it in herself (and doesn't want to). She wants to eat food she can hold and put in her own mouth.

Little Ritz is also in about the 5th percentile but keeps dropping off the chart. He is on a doctor-prescribed high fat diet with lots of butter, etc. We've had some success with french toast - cut up, chicken nuggets cut up (the purdue white meat kind), mashed potatoes, smiley fries, sweet potatoes cut into large chunks, grilled cheese. Also, Gerber Little Entrees seem to be a big hit (even though they smell like cat food). I have also given him tuna, boneless white fish, etc., which he seems to like. Another suggestion is to make basic chicken noodle soup - chicken and carrots boiled for about an hour with noodles added later - and give it to Vietbabe without the broth.

I wouldn't worry about Vietbabe's lack of teeth. Little Ritz did not have any teeth until about 14 months. He still does not have any back teeth. My doctor wanted me to start table food at 9 months and have him completely off baby food by age 1. I was kind of worried about table food given his lack of teeth, my doctor pointed out that people chew with their back teeth and told me not to worry about it as long as I served age-appropriate food.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

We had one child who hovered in the 5th to 10th percentile (while often in 80th and up for height!) for a long time. Tried a bunch of ways to fatten 'em up, though the Doc said as long as the kid was healthy we shouldn't worry. Sure enough, a time came when the weight just came on; still on the skinny side, but no longer quite so skinny.

I don't think I can offer any advice to help, since nothing we did worked, but maybe it's comforting to know someone else went through the worries for naught.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by yertle
is the pediatrician worried about her weight? just a thought, but the growth charts are (I think) based on US population, and maybe she's actually closer to normal percentiles for her demographic.

Urban legend has it that the growth charts are based on German and Scandanavian farming families. In other words, Vikings.

So while at least 5% of kids are in the top percent in school, and there are at least 25 top twenty law schools, there are also probably 20% of all kids in the US who are in the bottom 5% in weight.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Urban legend has it that the growth charts are based on German and Scandanavian farming families. In other words, Vikings.

So while at least 5% of kids are in the top percent in school, and there are at least 25 top twenty law schools, there are also probably 20% of all kids in the US who are in the bottom 5% in weight.

I thought the growth charts were based on emaciated children of Appalachian miners. L'il Ty has checked it at 95% and 90% in height and weight. Maybe we're dealing with a non-Bell curve distribution? I feel like I hear about lots of kids at either end of the spectrum, but no one in between.

Then again, I live in the Viking neighborhood.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Well, I did a quick google, and learned that the most commonly used growth charts come from the CDC and cover the US norms. But, more to the point, I found a growth chart on a web site dedicated to Vietnamese adoptions that is supposed to be good to consult for kids of Vietnamese extraction.

asian growth chart

Does this help?

[viet_mom]

I can't thank you guys enough. All the food replies were just great. And the poster who said the "meat sticks' smelled like "an open grave" was hilarious. How do you guys come up with these things? Funny because at my sister's I fumbled with the jar which has the meat sticks floating in a liquid (embalming fluid? formaldyhde?) and boom - the liquid went all over me - even in my hair. I smelled so raunchy that night. Thank God I sleep alone.

And yes, I spelled "poach/pouch" wrong. Funny! Okay will try that.

I tried many of the suggestions and had some success so thanks! (recap: 9 month old with no teeth; will not eat anything spoon fed and must hold the food herself; except the food has to immediately disintegrate in her mouth; these are apparently the rules). I've added more to her diet that seem to work:

Potato Knish (defrosted and sliced in long pieces, she can bring to her mouth and suck the potato stuff out of there)

Swedish meatballs (pretty easily disintegrated).

Thanks for that growth chart for Vietnamese kids. Hey! That's Allison Martin's site (I know her and Vietbabe's picture is on there somewhere). I can't seem to figure out that chart as I'm bad with that stuff. Vietbabe is now 16 lbs (finally past the 15 lb mark) and 28 inches and is 9 months one week. Strange thing is she is walking now. It's kind of eerie to see this skinny little thing walking at you, mouth agape with no teeth in it.

Sleepless at 1:45 am,

Vietmom

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I feel like I hear about lots of kids at either end of the spectrum, but no one in between.

Feel thusly no more. 35% weight; 40% height. Em takes after em's mother, apparently.

[tmdiva]

Magnus, despite his name, has pretty consistently been 80-90th for height, 50th for weight, and >95th for head size. Got the noggin from his 7 7/8 daddy (no we're not Scots).

tm

Turtle no. 2 has been off the charts (big) in all the categories almost since birth, though he's finally growing into his head, which was even more ridiculous than the rest of him at the beginning (ouch, but I'm getting over it). Funny thing is, the pediatrician gave me a little speech at his 3-y-old checkup about how I should be careful not to let people expect too much of him because he's big for his age. All true, but I left remembering that turtle no. 1, equally tall and strapping for her age but a girl, never inspired such commentary. Do we take for granted unrealistic expectations for girls, or do you all think the fact that the dr. thought of it with him and not her was just random?

[viet_mom]

For those like me who go blind reading those "growth charts" you can input your babe's height and weight at this site www.growthpercentile.com and it will tell you what percentile your babe is in for both.

Vietbabe is in the 75% percentile for height; 10% for weight. I still find it freaky she's walking. She even claps her hands when she walks, and dances (just bopping up and down and clapping while standing).

Vietmom
(Still waiting on those teeth)