Solids/Purees

Aloe0l

For those of you who waited until 6 months to start solids, did you use purees, and if so, for how long?

I'm still debating on the whole puree/table foods issue.  We'll probably attempt solids this weekend for the first time, but, I'm wondering if I should bother with trying to make my own purees or just steam a bunch of stuff and smash them up as we go.

I don't want to overload my freezer with a bunch of purees if she'll be ready to move on before we use them up is my point I guess.

So, what did y'all and your LO's do?

p.s. I think we're going to skip rice cereal 

emmettmom

At 6 months we started with avocado and then some bananas. Moved on from there with the purees (mix of store and home made) and also giving him food we were eating (mashed potato, sweet potato etc, peas mushed up).

He started eating bits of food around 7 months and now has a mix of both. Neither of my kids were huge puree fans.

It's fine to skip rice, the main reason i give it is for iron. 

MNgirl326

I made my own purees. It wasn't that hard and actually it was kind of fun.

LO is starting to do finger food, but still gets a few purees everyday.

 

CityGirl07

We just started too. I'm giving her purees just so she gets used to the feel of it. She has had oatmeal (hated rice cereal), applesauce (store-bought) and sweet potatoes (homemade but pureed in food mill). She is having a hard time adjusting so we'll continue with purees but mix up the thickness until we find what she likes.

plainjanie1

We started with veggie purees at 6 months, and skipped the cereal.  I've been gradually making the food chunkier, doing a lot more mashing than pureeing now.  She currently gets a variety of textures a day, including some finger foods - broccoli, bread, carrot sticks, apple chunks.

MWoodside

We started with BLW, but honestly all the gagging (which is normal for BLW) made us terribly nervous.  We did purees instead & still are.  They are pretty chunky now though.  She also eats little graham crackers & stuff like that now, too.  We use the mesh feeders for her to self-feed.

Edit:  We added rice cereal & oatmeal at 8 mo for the iron. 

Angela814

We're doing BLW so no purees here. I'm amazed at how well DD is doing with it. There hasn't been much gagging at all, and it's so cute to watch her concentrate on chewing her food, even if most of it gets spit out.

shirls

DS started with oatmeal (for iron). He didn't seem to like it at all so we moved onto the veggie and/or fruit purees. He still didn't seem to like those so I just started giving him little bits of finger foods (toast, rice crackers, puffs, asparagus spears, sweet potato fries, mum mums etc.).

Now we do a combo of table foods and purees. He is still pretty picky with the purees, but he hardly eats any of the finger foods...just sorta nibbles and tastes them.

STAR15

I tried mashed sweet potato just before six months, and she wanted nothing to do with it.  I was thinking about skipping the rice cereal as well, but then I decided to give it a shot since it's comprised mostly of breast milk and perhaps it would be easier to transition if it had a familiar taste.  We did rice cereal for a week or so, and then tried store bought pureed sweet potato.  She took to that as well, and I believe it was a texture-thing for her.

Once she got used to store-bought purees, I started making my own, and I pureed the hell out of it to get it as smooth as the store-bought.  I would even strain peas at first to get rid of the skins.  Now she'll eat some mashed food instead of pureed foods, so I don't have to drag out the food processor every time I make her food, and no more straining.  With each new batch of food I make, I make it a little chunkier.  So far so good, she's eating all of it.