OT: Week 23, Apple Juice

After being on vacation and not seeing Frances for 3 weeks, she thought Averi looked older and that her sit was much stronger.  Slow as it may be, I think my baby is growing up.

I kept track of everything Averi ate while we were gone and showed it to Frances.  She is taking much more orally now and will eat a whole 4 oz jar of baby food mixed with a ½ serving of oatmeal at each feed.  I also offer her a bottle once a day and have gotten her up to 3 oz of formula thickened with 3 tablespoons of oatmeal and sweetened with a little strawberry syrup – all within the 15 minutes.

Now that Averi is finally starting to understand the bottle a little and take a few consecutive swallows before breaking the seal, she is old enough to move on to a sippy cup or straw.   Frances got out an apple juice box to see what Averi would do with it.  One of the advantages of a juice box is that you can squeeze it to initiate getting the juice into her mouth until she starts sucking on her own.

Surprisingly, Averi did awesome.  She sucked on the straw all by her self and kept opening her mouth trying to get more.  Of course it was a thin liquid so she choked like crazy, but she still wanted more.  Apparently there is a honey bear with a stiff straw in it that is great for straw training and we can put thickened milk in it.  I’m going to run by the hospital later this week to pick one up.  I have high expectations for this one.

Frances said that Averi is advanced enough now that we should be giving her finger foods.  This will be good for her to work on her pincher grasp, eye hand coordination, and chewing.  We got out some Rice Crispies, the only thing there that she wasn’t allergic to, but she had no interest in eating them.  She did, however, exhibit some great pinching techniques, such as index and middle finger, both thumbs, and poking until the moisture made it stick to one finger.  We’re going to work on it.

We also got out a bottle and tried feeding it to Averi without adding the strawberry syrup, since that may not be the healthiest long term solution.  She did better than I thought but wasn’t quite as interested.  Then Frances suggested adding some of the apple juice to flavor the formula.  She did really well with it and took a total of 3 oz.  Seriously, why is it so hard for me to come up with these things?  Apple juice is way healthier than strawberry syrup.  We are going to use apple juice to sweeten from now on and hopefully we will be able to increase her formula intake a little this week.