Feeding Infants--If You Provide The Food

[SilverSabre25]

If you provide infant food--a few questions:

1) do you consult with the parents on what's been tried at home, or do you have your own "infant menu" that you follow? If you have an infant menu, can you share it with me?

2) do the parents LIKE not having to provide it themselves?

3) do you buy jarred food, or do you make your own baby food?

anything else I should know about providing the food?

After today's encounter with parents wanting me to give a baby pudding (and not the jarred "baby dessert" either--a freaking pudding cup!), I want to look into providing infant food myself. For one baby I can't see it being that expensive and after looking at the meal patterns for the food program, I'm seeing that her parents aren't sending anything that even comes CLOSE to a "balanced" infant diet for her.

[blueclouds29]

i only provide table food. They have to supply the formula, jar food, toddler snacks (puffs, etc.) or rice cereal.
I do ask the parents what the child can and can't eat. My one parent is very picky so i know exactly what he can have/can't have.
To me it makes things a lot easier for them to provide everything but the table food.

[MommyMuffin]

When my daughter was in daycare I provided baby food, 3 a day, as well as cereal. DCP had puffs and cracker treats. She also gave her table food. At first I was sad that she gave her certain foods that I had not given her yet but then I figured it would be too much to expect to be first in everything.

[DCMomOf3]

i only provide table food. They have to supply the formula, jar food, toddler snacks (puffs, etc.) or rice cereal.
I do ask the parents what the child can and can't eat. My one parent is very picky so i know exactly what he can have/can't have.
To me it makes things a lot easier for them to provide everything but the table food.

this is how I do it too.

[nannyde]

If you don't have the provision of food built into your fees I wouldn't start providing it now.

Here's the guidelines for infants:

http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/care/programbasics/meals/meal_patterns.htm

There's a lot of labor involved in home made so be beware that it will take time. Making small amounts of the veggies and fruits and purchasing the fresh to make it is time consuming.

I would tell them you need them to bring food on Monday for the week.

One box of baby cereal.
eight jars of fruit
eight jars of vegetables

ALL baby food needs to be single ingredients. If there is any other ingredients besides the fruit/vegetable and water then you can't serve it.

NO combination fruits, vegetables, dinners or deserts. ALL single ingredient.

NO YOUGURT. Yogurts are filled with fillers and sugar. NO puddings. NO bringing you a big jar of applesauce for the week.

They may try the deal where they bring you vegetables and no fruit. It's common for them to bring you the harder to get down foods and save the sweet fruit for their time. They will want you to get into the child what they don't want to mess with.

Have them bring on Monday for the week so you don't have to do daily discussions. If you have leftover at the end of the week you will tell them the count for next week on what you need to get the 16 jars in. The sixteen jars need to be the 3.5 oz containers of stage two or stage three.

[AnythingsPossible]

This is my infant menu for the past week. I currently have two 9 month old that I serve lunch and snack, their parents serve them breakfast before they come.
Some of it is pre-packaged infant food, some of it is what I am making for the dck's only minus the spices or other things.
We have to have a check list for infant foods that the parents have to sign off on every time a new food is introduced, this is per our licensing regulations.

Chicken and Mashed Sweet Potato (soft boiled chicken pureed in FP, roasted sweet potato mashed up)
Apricot and Formula

Beef (again, roasted beef pureed in FP) Jarred Carrots
Pears and Formula

Ham and White Beans
Applesauce and Formula

Mixed Vegetable and Oatmeal Cereal
Peaches and Formula

Squash and Brown Rice
Apricots and Formula

I am on the food program and based on their recommendations, I should be giving a cracker for infant snack. I personally don't like giving them crackers, so I have been giving fruit. We will see if it gets denied!

I will not serve baby desserts, I think it is ridiculous that they even make such a thing.

[MyAngels]

If you don't have the provision of food built into your fees I wouldn't start providing it now.

Here's the guidelines for infants:

http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/care/programbasics/meals/meal_patterns.htm

One box of baby cereal.
eight jars of fruit
eight jars of vegetables

ALL baby food needs to be single ingredients. If there is any other ingredients besides the fruit/vegetable and water then you can't serve it.

NO combination fruits, vegetables, dinners or deserts. ALL single ingredient.

NO YOUGURT. Yogurts are filled with fillers and sugar. NO puddings. NO bringing you a big jar of applesauce for the week.

I provide the food for all infants, and this is the way I do it. For the jars of food I do not feed any type of combination food at all, only single ingredient fruits or vegetables, and tend to stress the vegetables over fruits, although they get both at each meal.

[nannyde]

I will not serve baby desserts, I think it is ridiculous that they even make such a thing.

Amen sistah

Although back in the day they made a desert called Blueberry Buckle and it was DELISH

[SilverSabre25]

Thank you all so much for the input!

Nanny--technically since I DO provide the food for all the older kids, it *is* built into my fees. I just haven't done it for infants prior to this out of sheer laziness. I do know how much work goes into homemade baby food as I made 70-80% of my daughter's food and will make probably the same amount of the food for this next baby. Thanks for the warning though.

AnythingsPossible--thanks for the menu idea, that looks yummy. I think the "baby desserts" are ridiculous too...and the sad part is that the pudding in question was NOT a jar of baby dessert. It was a pudding cup like you might for older kids! "Baby dessert" I would have rolled my eyes and fed her anyway, probably...but this crossed the line...

[SilverSabre25]

Amen sistah

Although back in the day they made a desert called Blueberry Buckle and it was DELISH

funny that you even know that it was yummy, .

I must confess that I LOVE baby food plums

[AnythingsPossible]

I used to eat my sons plums all the time....a bite for a baby, a bite for mommy...they were good!

[SilverSabre25]

I actually happened to pick up a magazine at the OB's office last week and read the results of a poll from one of the major "parenting" type sites (don't remember which one). It was a poll about children's eating habits and I was horrified at the stat "85% of children 9-11 months get candy/dessert every day". I was determined to believe that was NOT true...until today...

First time my kid ever had something artificially sweetened was her first birthday...and after that, it was probably limited to tastes of birthday cake at family parties less than once a month until she was over 2.

[nannyde]

Thank you all so much for the input!

Nanny--technically since I DO provide the food for all the older kids, it *is* built into my fees. I just haven't done it for infants prior to this out of sheer laziness. I do know how much work goes into homemade baby food as I made 70-80% of my daughter's food and will make probably the same amount of the food for this next baby. Thanks for the warning though.

AnythingsPossible--thanks for the menu idea, that looks yummy. I think the "baby desserts" are ridiculous too...and the sad part is that the pudding in question was NOT a jar of baby dessert. It was a pudding cup like you might for older kids! "Baby dessert" I would have rolled my eyes and fed her anyway, probably...but this crossed the line...

Baby food is a lot more labor than regular kid food. Especially when you get into single ingredients and variety.

I make a lot of puree for the older kids and freeze it. When I have a baby who is eight months or older then I start freezing muffin tins of combo foods for them. I make a meat, grain, and two veggies and freeze in a regular size muffin tin. Once they are frozen then I squeegie them out and put in a ziploc. That way all I have to do is pull out a cube and nuke.

It has everything they need in it but I have to supplement it with a couple of tablespoons of dry infant cereal. The food program doesn't allow from scratch grains for the infant cereal. I just use the organice brown rice cereal now.

The parents love the system. I've had them offer BIG money to sell the cubes so they don't have to make the meals.... specially the organic meats. I won't sell it to them though because I want them to have the experience of doing it themselves. They can't really appreciate the work that goes into accessing, preparing, and storing it if I do it for them. I also don't want to take the risk that they may not maintain the food safety after it leaves my home.

The Centers I work for in my consulting business have made a good ofer for me to make their baby food but I haven't made a decision on that. I could get my staff assistant to do the peel and chop but I'm a little nervous about the food safety responsibility. They also use organic apple juice for the liquid in their purees and I don't know how that would affect shelf life and the taste of what I already make.

It's a lot of work but if you are willing to put the time in and do it in batches you could get it down to a reasonable amount of time. Making it fresh daily for one kid could add a layer of time to your cooking that you may want to try out before you offer it.