questions re: Solids

octbride1234

Hello,

My girls are almost 5 months old. Their doc suggested I start them on cereal and fruit. I did this a couple of weeks ago.  I went with oatmeal and started with pear for four days, then banana and then apple.  My girls have had a rash through out all of the diff fruits but it became more moderate with certain ones.  So I recently stopped it all including the cereal. I don't want to start them again until the rash is gone, trying to determine if it is a food allergy or a virus.  When I start them up again I am trying to determine if I should go back to oatmeal or try rice. As for the fruit, I think I may stick with 7 days before switching to another type of fruit so I can be certain if there is an allergy.  My question for you is when did you start them on solids and what type of fruit and cereal? When did you start veggies?  Did you run into any problems? I hear that sometimes the digestive system is not fully developed until 6 months of age, I don't know if being a preemie has an impact on that as well ??  Just a little unsure with this.....  Thanks!

leviandlandensmom

I'm personally not going to start them on any kind of solids until they are 6 months adjusted age.

 That being said, I would just take it slow and not introduce things so quickly. Do just rice cereal initially and after a week introduce a fruit or veg and see if there is a reaction. Then add another, etc. HTH!

SoldiersGreenBean

Being a preemie will likely have an impact on when they're ready.  We didn't start our full-term babies until 6 months.  Part of the wait was due to laziness on our parts, part was that they weren't interested.  Even when we started, DD wasn't interested, so we held off on her until closer to 7 months.

We skipped cereal for the most part, although if stuff was too runny we'd add a little oatmeal.  Cereal doesn't have any nutrition in it of substance, because solids at this point aren't a substitute for BM or formula - they're just for practice.  We mixed fruit and veggies right from the start, too.

My caution would be to not do so many constipating foods in a row.  Rice cereal, bananas, pears, and applesauce are all known to be binders (when you have diarrea, you're supposed to do the BRAT diet - bananas, rice, applesauce, toast).  You may want to keep some prunes on hand (bananas, even 1 day's worth, would bind up all 3 of my kids).

My advice is to take it slow.  There's no rush to start; it's not for nutritional benefit at this point.  Let them lead the way.  If they're not interested, don't push.  It'll come eventually.

Rangergal9

When we started solids with my older DD we started with oatmeal because the rice cereal can cause constipation, so we will be doing the same with the twins.  Our pedi also suggested to start with veggies then fruits.  We won't start introducing solids to the twins until 6 months old, but we'll be going with that.  Did you do just cereal for a week or so?  Thats what we were told to do with older DD.  Then every 4-5 days introduce a new food so it would be easy to tell what was causing an allergy.