My son will be 2 in February. He was breastfed exclusively, except for a few occurences of occasional formula, until 6 mos. 6 - 9 mos we began additionally giving him small, token amounts of pureed vegetables. At 9 months he began to take a real interest and began eating tons of purees, applesauce, soup that was put in the blender, with no less breastfeeding. Now at 22 months, he is eating almost everything we eat, only in bite-size pieces.
We never gave him meat until recently except for, after 14 months or so, literally one occasional bite of chicken or turkey, or the very occasional shred that was too small to pick out of the soup. He has had plenty of home-cooked chicken broth, though, and raw milk cheese, and yogurt and eggs, with no noticeable ill effects. Our philosophy was, he will be ready to eat meat when he has enough teeth to eat meat. So beginning last spring, our plan was to gradually and slowly step up his meat-eating.
But every time we give him even a couple of bites of meat, he spends the next two days farting the worst-smelling farts I have ever smelled and his poop is just horrible. It sometimes smells just like cat poop, only WORSE! We lay off the actual pieces of meat for a while, and all seems normal. Anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month later, we'll say what the hey and give him a few little pieces of meat with dinner, and the next couple days he stinks us out of the whole house again!
So what I'm wondering is, is it possible that he's not ready for meat? Or is it possible that by not giving him meat I will make him intolerant to it and he'll have a bad reaction when he eats it in the future? And is it really normal for a toddler to have toxic-smelling flatulence and poop that smells like that of a sick cat, just because he's eating some chicken or turkey?
I'm torn, I don't know what to do about it.
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