Baby food

HorseLover11

I can't believe its almost time to be able to start introducing real food!! I'm leaning heavily toward the baby food route and I see most of the beginning foods are sweet tasting where I would prefer to start her on the greens first so she will likely eat them again. I'm curious to hear what you all plan to do. I feel a bit overwhelmed and undereducated right now and I want to be prepared to ask her doc questions t her 4 month to get his approval.

lmimms87

I'd like this info too because I'd prefer to start with less sweet veggies.

amom2four

I have always started with sweet potatoes or squash and then moved to peas, carrots etc and waited to add fruits until there was a good variety of the healthy veggies going first. Occasionally I have mixes some pears or apples in with oatmeal but not all the time. My kids dr recommends whole grain cereals over rice also due to rice cereal having really no nutritional value.

I would like to think this has been successful as my kids weren't picky eaters until the oldest started giving me trouble around age 10. They eat carrots, broccoli, onions and most foods.

amom2four

Monicavickery said:

We're doing baby led weaning, which skips baby food altogether and goes straight to table food. There's lots of Google-able info about it.

I guess I did a combination of this with my youngest dd. She was acting like she was always hungry so I started giving her baby food early, around 3 months, once she had good head control and after she was doing really well eating and swallowing, I started giving her what we were eating at around 6 months. I also started giving her a spoon around the same time and she had excellent ability to eat with utensils by 1yr. My cousins kids were started on baby food at 6mos and not given spoons until closer to 1. There is a noticeable difference when they eat. I'll do the same this time with this guy but he isn't quite ready for solids yet.

kaleb87

My experience sounds pretty similar to @kaitlinr87. I waited until 6 months, and even then my dd didn't show much interest. I tried rice cereal with her once, and then went to oatmeal. To be honest, my dd hated all food in the beginning. She didn't care if it was a fruit, vegetable, sweet, or bitter she disliked it. However, today she is not a picky eater. Things she didn't like as a baby she now eats. Then only thing she hated as a baby and still hates to this day is cooked carrots. She will eat them raw, but hates them cooked.
Just wanted to add, I can't say I did total baby led weaning but I mimicked some of it. I never bought any store baby food, but made my own. I used my food processor, and once she got used to the different textures, and good at swallowing, we just mashed/rough chopped the veggies and stuff we were eatting.
Another thing to add, don't worry if your little one doesn't take off it right away. Like I said at 6 months my dd still didn't have much interest, so some days she would refuse all food and I was okay with it since I was still nursing. I wish I could remeber the exact words of her pediatrician, but it was something along the lines of when your little one starts food the beginning is more about learning than fulfilling their main nutritional needs.

ashaw512

I never did cereal or oatmeal. My pedi says it doesn't matter if you start with fruit or veggies first but I started with veggies. I did green then orange then yellow. Then I did fruit, yellow, purple. At 6 months I did mashed foods. DD didn't get a tooth until 8 months so my ftm jitters got the best of me, I was terrified of her choking. I still did mashed food until she got her first molars at 10 months. Then I did soft foods.

She eats fruit and veggies over anything else.

I'm not sure if I'm going to baby led weaning with DS or not, I don't have the ftm jitters anymore.

kaleb87

@Ashaw512 ftm jitters or not it was definitely scary whenever my dd choked, so I know exactly what you are saying! Once we quit doing mashed food my dh did a better job feeding than I did because I would freak out so easily over her choking. I had kind of forgot how scary it was until you reminded me.

JustCricket

We're not starting until 6+ months... but at our 4mo apt, the doc gave us a pretty informative chart (I think it has a gerber bias, but still good info) about starting baby food for when we wanted to. She told us barring any medical reasons, we're free to start whenever we want. (but said with us it may be better to start later)

portentosa

I started solids with DS a week shy of 6 months when he was showing signs of readiness...

*doubled birth weight
*sitting up on own
*loss of tongue thrust reflex
*pincer grip
*interest in food

We started with avocado and sweet potatoes. If you're overwhelmed by what to introduce and when and how I highly recommend https://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com. There have great recipes for home made baby food for babies of different ages, but more importantly there is a ton of information about when and how to intro first foods and different types of foods as baby grows.

ETA: Also, definitely talk to your pedi about this because every baby and situation is different.

emmylu30

I started cereal with DS1 around 5 months but he still had the tongue thrust reflex until about 6 months.  Once he started to actual eat the cereal we moved onto avocado and sweet potato purees.  I used the Super Baby Food Book as a guide and really liked it.  I did not adhere to her exact diet but used it as a guideline of when to introduce certain foods (she has it organized by age) and how to prepare them.  When you do start introducing foods its a good reminder to introduce one food every 3 or 4 days to ensure no allergic reaction before moving on to next food.  

lbonga1

With DD1 we started around 6 months and did a combo of purees and BLW. We started with sweet potatoes, but carrots were her favorite. She loved cheerios early on too.

DD2 will be 4 months on the 3rd, and she's nowhere near ready for solids. She still has the tongue reflex and would just push the food right back out. So we'll wait until 6 months for her too, which I believe is the updated recommendation now anyway.