My two previous posts on this topic talked about our daughter’s feeding sensitivities — specifically, how we found out about them and some of the therapies we’ve tried. Today, I’m going to take a little walk through my kitchen drawers and do a show and tell with some of the many, many spoons and other feeding supplies we used to help our daughter make the transition to solid foods.

Spoons
At this point, I pretty much consider myself an expert on the infant/toddler spoon market. We have pretty much tried everything. Metal spoons, plastic spoons, take and toss silverware, therapy spoons… the list goes on. The picture at the beginning of this post is only a small collection of Little Miss’s silverware. We’ve actually given a lot of it to friends with babies after finding that Little Misswould not use it. Yes, there’s even one of the famous “maroon spoons” in the mix… she hated it.

The one spoon we have had consistent good results with is the Tommee Tippee Explora, shown on the right. Like the maroon spoons, the Explora weaning spoons have a very shallow bowl — this means that you cannot possibly overfill it to the point where it’s overwhelming to a little mouth. Unlike the maroon spoons, it has a more narrow bowl, which Little Miss seems to like better. The bowl of the Explora spoon is also rubbery — like Little Miss’s chewy tube — and we think that the familiar texture is somehow comforting to her.

Since we started using the Explora spoons, Little Miss is much more willing to try new foods and I now carry one in my purse along with her chewy necklace. It’s truly been a lifesaver!

Cups
Despite going on her third birthday, Little Miss is still very uncomfortable with an open cup. I imagine that it has to do with seeing the water rushing toward her oh-so-sensitive face.

Nuby Trainer Cups

The bottle-to-sippy cup transition actually went pretty well for us, due mostly to the fabulous bottle design by Nuby. These bottles have a wide mouth and interchangeable nipples. You can start with a standard baby bottle nipple and then transition to a flat nipple that looks more like a sippy cup without changing out your bottle hardware.

Eventually though, we were ready to transition to a proper sippy cup. As you may or may not know, the reason for going to a traditional sippy cup is because these cups control the flow a bit more and use the same reflexes/muscles as drinking from an open cup. That’s where things got a little bit more difficult.

Little Miss loved her rubbery sippy nipples and was not willing to give them up easily. We tried to transition her directly into a Playtex sippy cup, but she was not having that. She put the cup to her mouth, felt the hard texture and that was the end of it.

So, we took a step back. Nuby offered a different trainer with a rubber lid, but that leaked everywhere. Plus, we wanted an insulated cup so that we would be able to keep Little Miss’s milk fresh long enough for a couple of errands on a summer day. We eventually found Avent’s insulated sippy cups.

Avent Insulated Sippy Cups

The Avent cups are firmer than the rubber nipples but still rubbery enough to satisfy Little Miss. They worked great for a time and eventually allowed us to transition to the Playtex cups (shown above right). The reason why we did eventually transition over to Playtex is because Little Miss destroyed several of her Avent cups by throwing them. Unlike the virtually indestructible Playtex cups, the Avent lids will shatter with a good impact… and Little Miss knows how to make a good impact!

I have a ton more feeding supplies I could go through, but the spoons and cups were really the most significant. I hope this information can help other parents of children with feeding sensitivities save a little money.

This post will conclude my series on feeding, but if you have more questions that you’d like to share, please leave a comment. I promise to do my best to answer it!

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