Penny recently caught the flu which has diarrhoea as one of its symptoms. Her Dr Papadouris recommended more bananas and apples to help with the diarrhoea, and so for those few days I offered her a piece of banana during mealtimes. While conventional wisdom is that food offered to babies should be in small bite sizes, our Penny seems to care little for small bits of fruit, preferring to shave or bite off little bits from a larger piece. As long as we're watching her closely, we figured that it's safe. She's been doing really well at mealtimes, feeding herself bits of well-cooked potato, rotini, pancakes, raisins, Cheerios (we actually buy the no-frills version--Toasty Oat Os--at our supermarket), unsalted soda crackers, soft cheddar cheesestrings, mini toasts, and more. But her absolute favourite is strawberries! She can devour a whole strawberry bit by bit in less than 3 minutes.... all closely supervised, of course. I've also been very much relieved and cheered by the discovery, about 2 months ago, of a sippy 'cup' which Penny can and will drink from. Being breastfed all this while, Penny seemed unable (unwillingness probably playing a part) to drink from a milk bottle or the 2 different sippy cups that I got her. Concerns had been playing in my mind: how was she to get sufficient fluids into her without me having to nurse her frequently throughout the day? And how was she going to drink her milk during the day when I have to return to work in a few months' time? Thankfully, I found the valveless no-spill Nuby cup in Walmart across our place, and she's been doing well with it ever since, enjoying her diluted juices, strawberry milkshakes and weak chamomile tea. And while self-feeding is mainly still a hand to mouth affair, she's been showing great improvement in the last three weeks in being able to bring the food on the fork or spoon to her mouth. Enough said for now... time to prepare her "mum-mum" for the next day...
