When to start baby food?

danjou21 · January 2011

Besides wholesomebabyfood.com, what other websites/books, etc are there on when/why to start solids? I know there is "controversy" on when and how to start, but I'd like to do my own research before his 4 month appointment. I have a feeling the Dr. will encourage us to start early since he has already doubled his birth weight and is having sleep problems. TIA!

humynone · January 2011

It's good to research...but in the end, just follow baby's lead. For us, it was when DD was reaching for our food, watching us eat and smacking her lips at 4.5m (she could also hold her head up and turn away, sit up in a chair, etc).

We started slow and ramped up after she started taking to foods with gusto. For us, we went with rice cereal and avocados as our first foods with a new food every few days....but there is all sorts of thoughts about what's best (and imo probably doesn't matter much in the end how or what you start with so don't worry too much! It's all experimenting and practice for baby anyways.)

papagena · January 2011

The current recommendations from APA (and perhaps WHO, but not sure on that one) say to start around 6 months. We followed DS's cues. Around 5 months, he was so interested in watching us eat that we gave him a baby spoon to play with. He still was pretty interested so we started him on his first solids about 5 1/2 months. Really that first year is more for play and practice than anything - they should continue to receive most of their calories from breast milk/formula.

We started with avocados and then sweet potatoes & bananas. We skipped the entire white rice cereal, as there's not really all that much nutritional value in there. They do have brown rice cereal, though, if you wanted to still go that route but have a slightly more nutritious version.

Can't help on the books - we really exclusively went off of wholesomebabyfood for our research. Dr. Sears book has a section on feeding solids, I believe, if you happen to have that around.