Saturday, March 6, 2010

Starting on Solids

My neighbor Kendra is looking for tips as she prepares to start her chubby wubby on solids in the next couple of months. Could you all respond with your experiences of those very first meals? Maybe include when you started feeding solids, what your first foods were, did you make/buy/combination, etc.

Our experience:
We started Lucas out around 5.5 months. He didn't really show an interest in solids, but I really wanted to reduce nursings while we were on vacation in Vancouver and in general. We started him off on gerber applesauce and pears mixed with organic rice cereal. Strangely he did not like bananas and even had a reaction to them once in the form of a brief rash.

Lucas was not a huge fan of solids for a while. He was so off and on, I decided not to make most of my food. I ground steamed apples in my baby food grinder (this I would recommend to have on hand - you can quickly mash whatever is on the dinner table - veggies, chili, etc .) Other than that I mostly bought organic jarred food and forgot about it.

Soon he was eating non-pureed foods and this was a better stage for me. I cooked with reasonable amounts of butter, broth and even salt making healthy stuff taste good. He LOVED soups and this is what I would order for him at restaurants before he could even walk. We tended to introduce foods early, like eggs, yogurt, etc. He was a berry monster and would devour mass quantities of blueberries on almost a daily basis.

I uploaded this video of my little angel eating yogurt in the tub at around the age of 10-11 months.