Cereal?

Neighner20

I was reading the post about how much food does your LO eat and most of you said something about cereal.  I only gave her cereal when I first gave her solids and that was only for a week.  Now we just do purees.  Is there a purpose/benefit to still giving rice cereal?

MHeming

We don't do rice anymore. DS hates it. He gets gerber oatmeal with fruit for breakfast and whole wheat cereal for lunch & dinner.

jcole32444

We never really did rice cereal. We use mixed grain or oatmeal. Most of the time I use it to thicken his puree.

misskristina21

I hope there isn't really a point to it, DD never liked it. She either eats purees, or the same thing we eat. I think maybe it's just more filling?

ValentineGirl

I'm not sure.  Pedi said it was for the iron but we FF so he gets plenty.  DS HATED cereal.  We moved onto purees 1x/day and I may start adding some oatmeal after 6 months once he starts eating more.  

blossom2010

my DD won't eat it alone but i use it to thicken purees, i wouldn't do it any other way since shes a serious spitter, and still spits up a ton when she doesn't get solids

Neighner20

Ok good.  I remember when I bought the container of rice cereal wondering why it was so big if you only used it to begin with!  Yeah E gets grossed out any time I try to thicken anything with rice cereal. 

rgtsmom01

I have never done rice cereal with either boys.  But, I do organic oatmeal every morning with mixed fruit.  I do this because after sleeping 12 hours straight my LO is hungry and I find that this fills him up and he is getting a good amount of fiber.  The fiber keeps him regulated, if he does not get enough he gets backed up so the oatmeal also helps with that. 

MHeming

rgtsmom01:

I have never done rice cereal with either boys.  But, I do organic oatmeal every morning with mixed fruit.  I do this because after sleeping 12 hours straight my LO is hungry and I find that this fills him up and he is getting a good amount of fiber.  The fiber keeps him regulated, if he does not get enough he gets backed up so the oatmeal also helps with that. 

Yup. This is one of the reasons we give him cereal, still.

TakeLuck

Our pediatrician wanted me to give it to him for the iron because he's ebf and I didn't want to give him an iron supplement. I haven't given him rice, only oatmeal.

Wufroggy79

My pedi wanted her to have a serving a day for the iron content. Babies use up most of their stored iron by six months.

teshy1

Baby cereals are meant to be a good source of iron (they're fortified with iron), especially for babies who are breastfed.  Iron stores that babies are born with tend to become depleted around 6 months of age, so that's why health professionals recommend parents start their kiddos on a good source of iron.  Recently, some health organizations have started OK'ing meats as an earlier solid for the same reason, but I'd check with your pedi first.  I started DD on rice cereal, and although she didn't refuse it, I noticed when I tried oatmeal that she preferred it a lot more.  Right now, she gets oatmeal in the morning and either a fruit or veggie at lunchtime.

mbfirefly98

teshy1:

Baby cereals are meant to be a good source of iron (they're fortified with iron), especially for babies who are breastfed.  Iron stores that babies are born with tend to become depleted around 6 months of age, so that's why health professionals recommend parents start their kiddos on a good source of iron.  Recently, some health organizations have started OK'ing meats as an earlier solid for the same reason, but I'd check with your pedi first.  I started DD on rice cereal, and although she didn't refuse it, I noticed when I tried oatmeal that she preferred it a lot more.  Right now, she gets oatmeal in the morning and either a fruit or veggie at lunchtime.

We also do oatmeal or a mixed grain and sometimes barley. But now that she's older we almost always mix in a fruit or a veggie!

WestCoastMommy

jcole32444:

We never really did rice cereal. We use mixed grain or oatmeal. Most of the time I use it to thicken his puree.

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dmurrie

teshy1:

Baby cereals are meant to be a good source of iron (they're fortified with iron), especially for babies who are breastfed.  Iron stores that babies are born with tend to become depleted around 6 months of age, so that's why health professionals recommend parents start their kiddos on a good source of iron.  Recently, some health organizations have started OK'ing meats as an earlier solid for the same reason, but I'd check with your pedi first.  I started DD on rice cereal, and although she didn't refuse it, I noticed when I tried oatmeal that she preferred it a lot more.  Right now, she gets oatmeal in the morning and either a fruit or veggie at lunchtime.

 

Exactly!   But this doesn't mean that it has to be just the RICE cereal.  Unfortunately, when DD was ready to start solids, I got the biiiiig box of rice cereal, figuring she'd be eating it every day for a long time, so I might as well.  And then she hated it.  She spits every last bit out unless it's mixed with a quite generous amount of puree. In fact, the rice cereal was the first solid she tried, and when she persisted in spitting it out every day, we were worried she was going to have problems eating solids.  But no.  It was just the rice that she hates.

Then we tried oatmeal, and the same day she tried that, she had a reaction to something, so we were told to wait a while before offering it again (it's been about 2 mo now, so DH and I are going to pick a day soon here that we'll try it again... when we have time to take her to the hospital if her reaction was b/c of the oatmeal and in case it's more serious this time.  It was hives on exposed skin last time, which points more to something environmental, but there are so many other foods to try and everything that we haven't made our way back to the oatmeal yet). 

So what's a Mommy to do?  The only other cereal in stage 1 is barley, so we figured what the heck?  She LOVES it!  It looks and tastes very similar to farina.  So now she gets barley every morning.  She has moved on to stage 2 foods now, so we got a box of wheat cereal the other day, which we will be trying soon, as well.

DD gets her purees and/or yogurt for lunch and dinner.  Or occasionally when I decide to try the rice cereal again, just in case she'll eat it now.  Haha.  DD spits it back out, I mix the puree in, and we move back to barley the next day.  The rice and avocado are the only things she refuses to eat... oh, and Gerber brand green beans (but she's fine with the Beach Nut), and plain chicken puree, but who can blame her for that?  It's gross.  She likes the chicken mixes.

violaplayer

Iron content, all the way.

We didn't do rice cereal at all. Just started with oatmeal and the guys dig it. Now we've added barley and wheat to the mix. I usually give them a serving with fruit mixed in for breakfast.