Food ?'s

marisuz28

When I was pregnant I was all about making my own food...but I honestly am not sure I will have the time.  So here are some questions...

1.  If you do make your own food, how long does it take you?  What do you use?

2. If you don't make your own, what brands have you had success with?

3.  Has anyone done Baby Led Weaning, and did it work well?

4.  What seems to be the best time of day to feed them successfully?

We tried rice cereal once a few weeks ago and it was a big FAIL.  We haven't tried anything since then.  I did buy a box of Oatmeal Cereal to see if they like that any better (we just honestly have not had a chance yet to try it). 

natb22

1. Yes I make my own, it doesn't take very long..I usually do it during the girls play time so that I can make some noise with the food processor. Depending on the food, some take longer to peel/boil/bake. This is a GREAT website: https://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/index.htm We also love the ninja food processor, way better then the baby bullet, and i've heard great things about cusinart processors. Once it is processed we freeze in ice cube trays and xfer to freezer bags, works perfect.

2. I have also given them store bought gerbers food. We use store bought gerbers oatmeal rather then trying to make our own. My girls hated the rice cereal but love oatmeal and other foods

 3. Havent done Led Weaning (not even sure what that is! I'd better go read about it!)

4. We started with once a day in the afternoon, like 12 or 1 and did that for a few weeks before moving to twice a day which they are still on.

2shihtzus

1) I made all of my own purees (except for eventually green beans and sometimes peas because I had trouble getting the consistency right).  I used my regular food processor, a pot with a steamer basket on top and regular old ice cube trays.  I never bought anything special, I just used what I had and it worked great.  I steamed or baked the vegetable or fruit, pureed it in my food processor and then froze it in the ice cube trays covered in plastic wrap.  Then, I popped them out into Ziploc freezer bags and labeled them with what they were and when I made them.  I did it one night a week (although sometimes I could get away with doing it once every two weeks) and it took me maybe 2 hours or so depending on how many batches I was doing.

2)  I just bought regular gerber peas and green beans but those were the only purees I ever bought.  I did buy Gerber oatmeal and rice cereal too.

3) I never did that so no advice on that.  Sorry!

 4) I started their first meal at dinner time.  For our schedule, this was just the easiest for us.  The second meal we added was lunch.

kafunder

I can only hel pyou on questions 2 and 4. I didn't make our food and I didn't do BLW.

We primarily used Earth's Best Organic jarred purees, although I did do some Gerber purees as well. I got the best prices at Target and through Amazon's Subscribe and Save program.

We initially fed them at night around 5:30pm when we were only doing 1-meal/day. They go to daycare, and I wanted to be the one to feed them the first time they tried foods, so we did it as dinner. I was also helping it would help with night sleep.

Also, talk to you pedi, but my pedi said that you don't have to start with oatmeal or cereal. He said that most babies don't like the taste, it has little nutritional value, and more research is showing that starting with cereal doesn't reduce allergies or anything. He suggested sweet potatoes, so that's what we did, and they got the hang of it pretty fast. We started at 5 months.

jxd215

marisuz28:

1.  If you do make your own food, how long does it take you?  What do you use? We started solids at 6 months. At first, when they were only eating solids one meal/day, it took me maybe 2 hrs every 2 weeks. That bumped up to every week as they started eating more. I steamed things in the microwave, pureed with a stick blender, and froze in ice cube trays - nothing special.

2. If you don't make your own, what brands have you had success with? I bought a pack of Gerber stage 2 peas/beans once when I didn't have time to make enough food before a work trip. I was surprised at how liquid-y it was. My homemade purees were much thicker and the babies were fine with it.

3.  Has anyone done Baby Led Weaning, and did it work well? We didn't do this, so no advice.

4.  What seems to be the best time of day to feed them successfully? We started with "dinner." Like PP said, our kids are in daycare and we wanted them to try new foods at home.

We also ended up using Gerber Oatmeal more than rice cereal. Mostly because I thought the oatmeal actually kind of tasted like oatmeal, whereas the rice cereal tasted like nothing. (If it doesn't taste good to me, I don't feed it to them. )

marisuz28

My girls are in daycare as well, so dinner would most likely be the best option.  They typically have a bottle at between 3:30 & 4 at daycare, and then we give them a bottle at about 7:45 before bedtime at 8.  Did you find feeding them a "meal" interfere with how much of their bottle they drank before bed?  One of my girls won't have a problem (she LOVES her bottles), but wondering if the other would get fuller quicker and not finish her bottle...

Thanks for all the advice!!