[happyday]

Which healthy foods do you recommend for fattening up a mommy and a nearly two-year-old?

I nurse her 2 to 4 times a day and she has a healthy appetite for all sorts of solid foods. Fattening foods that she currently eats include, 100% ground almonds and periodically a bit of avocado or hummous.

The baby is below the charts when it comes to weight and I need to put on a few more pounds as well, as I think it would help our attempts to conceive. Our two older children are, and have always been, on the charts when it comes to weight.

The pediatrician sent us to a dietitian who recommended more dairy foods, but we're not milk drinkers and we keep eating dairy at a fair minimum.
The dietitian also said that I'm giving the baby too much fiber with plain cheerios and all my whole grain bread offerings which isn't helping her gain weight.
She suggested giving her formula, but I've never bought formula and would prefer not to. I read the ingredients to discovery that it is primarily based on skim milk (that won't fatten her up, now will it?!) and oils.
So I decided to put a bit of flax seed oil or olive oil in the rice milk that the baby drinks and hope that helps a bit.

Open to any and all ideas you have.

 

[425lisamarie]

How about whole milk yogurt with fruit and honey stirred in ? She may have fun feeding herself that. Or you can make "ice creams" by blending milk, dairy or not, or juice, with frozen fruits (do this in a heavy blender or mini food processor). You can add fats to this like an avacado maybe.

Bananas, beans, cheese cubes, whole grain crackers with bean dip/hummus. My kids love edamame with butter, and actually they like "shooting" them out of the pods (my 2.5 year old DD LOVES doing this)

SMoothies are easy and good. Just blend fruit, juice or milk, banana, honey

How about eggs? Maybe she'd eat an omlet or scramble

 

[WuWei]

Add fats, especially easy with smoothies. I add coconut oil, olive oil, nuts, kefir, cream, avocado to smoothies. There are protein powders to increase caloric intake also. But, soak some almonds and throw in at least 6 to each smoothie.

What about nut butters? We made some peanut butter balls with coconut and palm oil mixed in. Rolled in unsweetened chocolate. They are delicious.

Full fat cheese, full fat dairy, mayo, butter. Add butter to all vegetables, beans, rice. Add extra oil to baking, pancakes, waffles.

Make dips from beans with fats added, butter, coconut oil, olive oil.

What about hearty soup? Bone broths are nutrient dense and you can add fats to the broth and pour in a cup to sip.

Full fat ice cream?

Pat

 

[happyday]

Quote:

Originally Posted by WuWei Add fats....

Wow!!! I think I need you in my kitchen. All that sounds like it would help us pack in some more calories

 

[ShwarmaQueen]

One thing I did to help DD eat better (learned from MIL) was to cut out the beverages with meals. A little water is ok, but better to have it afterwards (will not cause thirst or dehydration). Kids have such a small tummy that even a couple of sips of water, milk, juice, etc. (low density) can take up precious stomach room!

 

[happyday]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShwarmaQueen One thing I did to help DD eat better (learned from MIL) was to cut out the beverages with meals. A little water is ok, but better to have it afterwards (will not cause thirst or dehydration). Kids have such a small tummy that even a couple of sips of water, milk, juice, etc. (low density) can take up precious stomach room!

it's good advice.
i've been trying really hard to cut down the rice milk, but at least if i'm spiking it with flax seed oil, then i'm giving it a higher healthy fat content

 

[EnviroBecca]

I got too skinny while nursing, too. My best fattening foods were

nut butter and honey mixed together. At home, I'd just eat this by itself, right off the knife!

For work and expeditions, I made cracker sandwiches.

big blob of nut butter mixed into oatmeal.

olive oil or butter on everything feasible! Either of these is yummy combined with nutritional yeast flakes, for instance on Tomato Toast or in this Pasta Salad. Here's a recipe for potatoes and turnips with scadzoodles of olive oil.

dense breads with lots of good stuff in them, like Pumpkin Cornbread or the awesome date-nut bread a friend gave me, slathered with cream cheese or butter.

Then there's the Dale Newfield Diet, named after my friend who kept responding to my complaints of scrawniness by saying calmly, "I think you need to eat more."

He gave me a bigger lunch bag and suggested that I routinely serve my food on my large plates instead of the smaller ones. These cues encouraged me to give myself larger portions, and since I tend to eat what's in front of me unless I'm really too full, this meant I took in more total calories.

 

[happyday]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EnviroBecca I got too skinny while nursing, too. My best fattening foods were

thanks for the detailed ideas...i really appreciate it!!!!

 

[Lunaloca]

Can you swap out the rice milk for something with more calories, like hemp milk? When I was looking for ideas for DD to drink with meals, other than water, because we wanted to pack on some pounds, rice milk was considered one of the lowest in calories. So another "milk" choice like hemp or almond might help?