My pediatrition suggested that I give my baby a multi-vitamin with iron. She that any kind will do but to make sure it was safe for infants (she’s one year old).
The kind I saw at Target was something called poly-vi-sol.
Poly-vi-sol is Satan’s vomit in a bottle.
Not only do they taste really, really bad, but they smell really, really bad, too.
They smell exactly like a wet cast iron pan (which nauseates me to no end for some reason). I have to take iron and mine don’t taste anywhere near as bad.
Now if I think they are bad, you know she does, too. She turns her head getting the stuff everywhere (and it stains everything!) I was mortified because it stained her skin, making it look like a bruise! :eek:
There has got to be a better solution.
She only has front teeth, so I don’t think Flintstone types will work.
Any suggestions?
Would it be possible to just try to include more iron in her diet (prunes, red meat, oatmeal, beans, etc.?) If it’s just the iron that’s an issue, you can also get toddler formulas with iron.
It’s not just an iron thing. The doctor suggested she take vitamins because she has had a lot of growth. She’s in the 95 percentile of height and 50 for weight (so she’s really tall for her age and thin - some problem! ;))
The doctor would like to see her gain a bit more weight and is suggesting the vitamins as a ‘just to be sure kind of thing’.
Both my kids were like that. My daughter still looks like a mini-ballerina at 7. Definitely gets it from her dad’s side of the family. Anyway, if he just wants to get more nutrition into you might check into the Pediasure or something similar. I think all children’s vitamins are pretty nasty–the B vitamins have a strong smell/flavor, too.
Oh yeah, that Poly-Vi-Sol is the foulest-smelling stuff. But strangely, my son loved the taste.
Now I give him My First Flinstones, which are made specially for 2-3 year olds, and the bottle says you can crush them up if a child can’t chew them up properly.
I put the Poly-Vi-Sol in with milk or juice, rather than giving to them “straight”. Neither of them seem to mind the taste once it is mixed with something…
FWIW, Gerber makes little snacks called “Fruit Puffs” and “Veggie Puffs” that are iron fortified, and dissolve pretty much instantly when drooled on.
Also, note that generic PolyViSol is even more vile than the name brand. We tried that to start and she just wouldn’t take it. It was detectable at 2 parts per billion when we tried to hide it in drinks, and it made our entire bathroom, where it was kept, stink like a rusting scrapheap.
Thank goodness she decided to accept the name brand stuff. Though I do still give it to her during her bath, in case she spits it out or some spills.
I don’t have any good suggestions for getting her to take it, but it’s possible she’ll get used to it if you do it consistently. Possible. I really just wanted to say that you should put the drops into her cheek or the side of her mouth, since the iron in them might stain her teeth. My son had brown spots on his front teeth for a brief time when he was a baby from just that. They did go away.
Yeah, we have some of the veggie wheels. She likes them, that’s for sure, but I don’t know how hip I am on them. For the most part, they are simply cheetos with a bit of iron (10%). I’m also not sure how much I like that they have hydrogenated fat and high sodium. Granted, I know that she’ll eat junk later. I just don’t want her to fill up on them as opposed to food that is better for her.
The other bad thing (because as a treat they are ok) is that they go stale so quickly! I have never been able to finish a can before the pieces got stale.
IIRC, the puffs don’t have hydrogenated fat, like the cereal squares and wagon wheels do.
FWIW, I called Gerber and told them I’d love to use the cereal squares and would buy them by the case, if they didn’t have trans fat. The phone monkey said she would pass on the message.