Darius finally stopped waking up almost every hour last night and today, he didn’t chew on his fingers anymore. He was also less clingy and cranky today. So the teething pains have finally stopped for the time being?

I spotted a little white dot on top of his lower gum and the front part of the gums look a little white. I think it still takes time for the incisors to sprout.

Since we first introduced cereals to Darius, he has been taking well to it. I’d fed him about 2 times since, usually at the 1.30pm feed. He really likes feeding from the spoon. I suspect he’s lazy to suck as sucking requires more work than just having the food in his mouth to swallow.

I mentioned that sometimes, he rejects milk. What he does is,

• He sucks very slowly even when the teat is first placed into his mouth, just not interested to drink.
• He turns his head here and there, very distracted. Had to hold the bottle following his mouth left and right to force him to drink.
• He uses his hands to push the milk bottle, grab and pull my fingers to get the bottle away from his mouth.
• He pushes out the milk with his tongue so they all dribbled down the sides of his mouth and doesn’t want to swallow.
• He pushes the teat of the bottle around with his tongue or just hold onto the teat without any sucking motion.

If he starts doing all these, each feeding session would last more than 15mins til 30mins…grrr. Because I would not let him not finish his feed lest he screams in hunger again in an hour’s time. I’m also worried about him not getting enough amount of milk for his weight.

When he starts turning his head, I will sing songs to him because once I sing, he’ll only look at my mouth. Then he’ll end up not sucking, because he’s too focused on my singing. Scolding him doesn’t work. He only drinks with encouragement! So I have to keep telling him he’s a good boy, must ‘guai guai drink’, then he’ll finish the drink properly, yes, keep saying it for 20ml of feed…gosh, really tiring. Sigh!

So now, I would feed him the cereal mix after he drank the milk and refuse to drink anymore. I pour the remaining milk to mix with 2 teaspoons of cereal and feed him lying down. He feels more comfortable that way and is more willing to eat.

Today, he’s quite naughty as he knows now to grab hold of the end of the spoon. I had to pry his fingers away as I feed him as he won’t let go and wants to push it into his mouth. Luckily, it’s a safe spoon made of soft material. Previously, it was a tug-of-war with the milk bottle, now it’s with the spoon! T^T

After reading from Pigeon’s website, I admired how they help the infant to develop proper eating and drinking skills. The drinking sprout is a step-up from the MagMag so it will be useful later.

The spoon holds the watery cereal very well. Does not spill at all. And the stopper near the handle prevents food being pushed back out as it closed any gap between the child’s mouth and the spoon. Therefore, it had been quite easy feeding Darius as only bits of the cereal gathered around his mouth when he does some tongue pushing. Otherwise, most of it really ends up inside his mouth.

After I finished feeding the cereal, I tried feeding him the milk with the spoon and he drank it without any rejection! -_- That shows he prefers eating from the spoon than sucking. It’s too tedious however due to the small spoonfuls so today I let him suck the remaining milk from the bottle and he wants it, when he just rejected it earlier… O_o. I really don’t know what he wants. When there’s no milk, I just let him drink plain water from the MagMag to wash down the cereal bits from his mouth.

The box says that from Day 7, we can start feeding him tablespoons of cereals.

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