Solids/Cereal Questions

Ruthie04

We are getting ready to introduce solids and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. I have a couple of questions:

1. Rice or Oatmeal Cereal? When we were discussing how to alleviate Baby B's reflux, the pedi suggested adding oatmeal cereal to his formula (as opposed to rice because of the news about the arsenic levels in rice). However, when I clarified starting rice/ oatmeal cereal with the NP in regard to solids, she said rice. I'm leaning toward oatmeal because of the constipation issues (Baby A can sometimes get a bit backed up). Is there some "official" rule about starting rice first? Anyone else start with oatmeal?

2. I've read quite a bit about making my own baby food. I'm leaning toward making my own because of the enormous cost of jars upon jars of baby food for twins. I saw the wholesome baby food website, but I'm looking for book recommendations. Any favorites?  

TIA! 

Dragonfly1226

We only ever gave DS the baby oatmeal beacuse of the constipation issue. He liked it when we made it with watery pur?ed apples instead of BM. I also made my own purees. I didn't use a cookbook but love wholesomebabyfood's website. At the beginning you are just going to make simple purees anyway. Have fun and good luck!

ELF4321

We skipped rice cereal and went straight to oatmeal, then to multigrain cereal when she got bored with oatmeal.

I usually just wing it with mixing stuff I think will go together, but I sometimes steal ideas from organic brands like Plum Organics, Earth's Best, Sprout, and Ella's Kitchen. DD loves raspberry spinach yogurt, and I never would have come up with that on my own!

Jenny952

I started giving DD oatmeal and never gave her rice cereal, mostly b/c I had oatmeal in the house and didn't want to buy rice cereal.  I also made all of my own baby food, mostly just mashing up whole fruits and veggies.  We started with sweet potato, bananas, applesauce and avocado.  I never read a book, I just kind of did what I thought felt right for her.  She had (and still kind of has) a strong gag reflex, so she didn't actually get really into solids until around 9-10 months.  There were some days or even weeks when I hardly fed her any solids, just bf and she was fine.  You'll figure out what works for you and your babies.  

BabyKsMommy

Dragonfly1226:

We only ever gave DS the baby oatmeal beacuse of the constipation issue. He liked it when we made it with watery pured apples instead of BM. I also made my own purees. I didn't use a cookbook but love wholesomebabyfood's website. At the beginning you are just going to make simple purees anyway. Have fun and good luck!

This pretty much for us too. I barely gave any oatmeal but just went straight to purees at 6 months. I just made my own from the wholesome baby food website. I just bought a food processor and some ice cube trays. It worked out well. Good luck!

Ruthie04

Thank you so much for the input. I think we will go ahead and start with oatmeal. It's nice to know making the purees won't be too tricky!

RoseHQ12

We skipped cereals & went straight to puree. Neither of mine cared for cereal & had severe constipation that cereals just made worse. I made my own baby food & had one that loved it & the other didn't Things got better as they got older & I still have one fussy eater & one that would eat ANYTHING! I was given a gift of B.aby Love by Norah O' Don.nell & Chef Geo.ff Trac.y the recipies were easy & it gave me a good direction to go in. GL!

kbeach82

Dragonfly1226:

We only ever gave DS the baby oatmeal beacuse of the constipation issue. He liked it when we made it with watery pur?ed apples instead of BM. I also made my own purees. I didn't use a cookbook but love wholesomebabyfood's website. At the beginning you are just going to make simple purees anyway. Have fun and good luck!

Pretty much this exactly, except DS was a peach man when it came to mixing his baby oatmeal.

PrideandJoy29

My kids loved rice cereal.