Munchkin Meals: We Need More Protein!

It’s the first Thursday of the month, and that means I’m hooking up with Brittany at A Healthy Slice of Life for her Munchkin Meals linkup. If you’ve never read about Munchkin Meals, you really should click that link and check it out, especially if you have little eaters!

A proper CF diet is vital to my almost-seven-month-old’s growth and development, and I really want to get him off to a healthy start. We are still doing pureed fruits or baby cereal at breakfast, and we recently discovered that the baby boy loves avocado! He slurps that stuff right up. I mixed pureed avocado with pureed banana, and he ate a big bowl of it!

Banana and Avocado-Frozen Form

Banana and Avocado-Frozen Form

Add a little salt.

Add a little salt.

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"Mmm... Good stuff."

“Mmm… Good stuff.”

I’ve also started giving him small samplings of the foods that I eat throughout the day (as long as I’m eating during the one hour time frame when his enzymes are good!). I give him little pieces of the whole wheat bread from my sandwich or small bites of banana that he sucks off of my finger. He does really well with solid foods as long as it’s mushy. We discovered on Monday that even though he can hold a cracker and easily get it to his mouth, he still chokes on the pieces once he breaks them off. I don’t want him to have too many bad experiences that make him frustrated or scared of eating, so we will stay with the mushy foods for a bit longer!

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Dinner has been a bit of a struggle lately. He was doing well with vegetables by themselves: carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, green beans, etc. However, per our dietitian’s request, we needed to start adding in the meats: ham, chicken, turkey, and beef. We have been using the Gerber brand with the meats and mixing it with homemade pureed veggies, but he doesn’t seem to like the meats at all. (Have you smelled those? They smell exactly like canned cat food. I’ve tasted them too. Bleh!) We are able to get him to eat them, but he definitely doesn’t enjoy it like he used to love the plain ol’ veggies. Sometimes it takes my husband, my older son, and myself all dancing and clapping and acting like complete weirdos to get him to eat without fussing about it. I have thought about making my own meats in a pureed form, but I’m not sure how to do that! Do I just cook the meats, add water, and blend it all in a food processor? I will most likely give it a try with some chicken soon to see if he will eat homemade meats better than store-bought. His body really needs that protein!

"Get that crap away from me, Mom."

“Get that crap away from me, Mom.”

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It's a good thing he's cute. :)

It’s a good thing he’s cute. πŸ™‚

We will continue to work with him on the meat issue this month, and I hope that by the next Munchkin Meals, we will have better success! If you have any ideas or suggestions, I would LOVE to read them in the comments! Thank you!

Happy and healthy eats to you and your family! πŸ™‚


16 Comments on “Munchkin Meals: We Need More Protein!”

  1. Oh wow – what a mess! I remember my children in those days. It’s funny now.

  2. Great comparison to the canned meat babyfood to cat food. Nothing sounds worse than canned meat. Making it fresh sound so much better. Is he able to eat egg yolks? They are very soft and mushy.

  3. Laura @ Mommy Run Fast says:

    I was also going to suggest egg yolks, or mashing up some beans? You probably could throw your own meat in a food processor as well.. He’s a cutie!

  4. SnapInTime says:

    Your own meat blended with some of the baby food veggies may work. Kind of a MUCH better version of the stage 3 baby food. I like the beans idea, and you got lots of great ideas on the FB thread. πŸ™‚ If you try eggs, I think they allow yolks sooner than the whites (the whites are what trigger allergies I think and they want to wait till a year on those.) One of my boys loved cottage cheese, the full fat version- it’s got a lot of protein in it.

  5. Jill says:

    My pediatrician just recommended we give our daughter whatever we’re eating. So, if we’re having meat or chicken, cut it up suuuuper tiny and mush it as good as possible. We’re going to try that because I don’t think she would like jarred meats either! I sure wouldn’t….

  6. […] Last month, we were having trouble with getting enough protein in our little guy. He just hates those plain old jarred meats (the ones the smell and look exactly like cat food… can you blame him??). I think we’ve come to a nice compromise, one that leaves him full and satisfied, and (hopefully) will pacify his dietitian as well! We have a clinic appointment at the end of the month, so here’s hoping! […]

  7. Oh no! I’ve got all this to come again. Eeeep!


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