"Thoughts on low iron and "toddler" formulas" X-post with Feeding

[brittone2]

DS never acquired the taste for juice either, so I know how that goes. It makes it hard to sneak stuff into him that way ;)

For smoothies, you can make them as easy or complicated as you wish. We often do yogurt+some frozen organic berries and enough water/milk to make it blendable. She may like it thicker or thinner, and if she won't drink them that way, Logan will sometimes eat it if I put it into a pyrex container, freeze, and then scrape some into a bowl and call it ice cream ;)

For non dairy, you can just do orange juice and strawberries or blueberries, or OJ and banana, or rice milk and banana or berries for example. Frozen fruit makes it thicker so you can freeze the bananas first if she likes it that way.

If you want to add more stuff, you could try grinding flax seeds in the blender first, then adding your usual stuff. If you want to sweeten it, add some maple syrup or we use xylitol sometimes (I think we talked about xylitol before?) for Logan's teeth.

Other smoothie add-ins around here are our probiotics and hemp oil (more bio available than flax oil), as well as pharmaceutical-grade sodium ascorbate (especially this time of the year). You could add a little of her iron supplement if you go that route or a few drops of floradix.

To start though, just try it w/ some sort of dairy sub like rice milk and frozen berries or frozen banana. Play with how thick (add small amounts of water to thin it at a time) she likes it. If she won't drink a smoothie (like my DS most of the time!!) try freezing it into a popscicle mold (probiotics should still survive freezing) or scraping it sorbet-style after freezing in some sort of container :)

[daniele_ut]

What about eggs? When we were concerned about DS's iron intake, the ped asked about eggs since DS doesn't eat a lot of red meat. He said to aim for eating eggs about 3x a week, in addition to the other iron rich foods he likes. DS loves scrambled eggs, so this isn't a problem for us. He usually eats them at least 4x a week.

Here's a link to the iron content in some foods:

http://www.clevelandclinic.org/healt...asp?index=7240

I was surprised to see how much iron Grape Nuts have in them! I used to make hot Grape nuts for myself by microwaving with milk. They end up pretty mushy, and 1/4 cup would have nearly a toddler's full serving of iron for the day (9mg)

[lilycat88]

Thanks for the suggestion. She does eat eggs but only once a week. One of her favorite things is a fake frittata I do with an egg, some parmesean cheese and spinach. That would be an easy thing to do more often.


Jamelin
Mom to Susanna born 6/29/2004

[AmyZ]

Another way I get my daughter to eat eggs is to make french toast and I really soak the bread well in the egg mixture. I also add some milk, cinnamon, and a dash of vanilla - she gobbles it up!

Amy Z

"Ma!" to Eliana May 2/5/04