Babies: 6 - 9 Months
For those of you who waited until 6 mo for solids...
Did you feel the need to feed your child rice cereal/oatmeal? I am considering skipping them because they don't seem to have much nutritional value. I think I may just jump right to sweet potatoes. What was your first solid food?
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Re: For those of you who waited until 6 mo for solids...
As far as I know they need cereal for the iron, or meat. So maybe a few times a week give LO some, or wait until you re doing 2 solids a day. DD gets oatmeal and a fruit for breakfast and a veggie for dinner. DDs first food was oatmeal then sweet potatos. She looooves sweet potatoes. Random note: Its funny i make her food. I gave her a jar of the potatos one day when we were out and she wouldnt eat them huge difference in taste.
Edited
At my pedi's recommendation I started oatmeal a few days before he turned 6 months to get him used to a new texture. I also use the oatmeal to thicken his purees a little bit and give him a little extra iron. After 6 months old babies need iron in their food because the store they are born with are used by now.
He did really well with the oatmeal and I think it did help us start other purees!
Oh and his first solid was sweet potatoes as well!
They don't NEED the cereal, or even solids for that matter at this age. Any solids they get are additional to their formula or breast milk. We just started last week with our DD at 6 1/2 months. We did a few days of trying rice cereal to see if she could eat off the spoon. She hated it. We just went right to sweet potatoes. We follow this list for both girls on what to feed when and what ages:
https://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/here/solids2chart.pdf
This one is pretty helpful too:https://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/images/FoodChartbyFood.png
You can skip cereal all together. We did.
As for the iron - it's true that babies' initial iron stores from the womb are generally depleted by 6 months, but there is a good amount of bio-available (easily absorbed) iron in BM and there is tons of iron in formula. There are also other, more nutritious foods you can feed LO that have lots of iron.
This is exactly what I did!!
I started feeding cereals around 4 months because my LO was looking at us eating all the time. He is now 8 monhs, still using cereals for iron -he loves oatmeal. I add pureed apple and other fruits right into it and then mix the water in as needed. To me its a common sense breakfast food -as children they will probably eat warm oatmeal so why not get them use to the taste. The added fruit just makes it taste different!
Talk to your doctor about whats required for your LO.
Good Luck and have fun!
I waited until 6 months (okay 4 days prior to 6 months) and started with Sweet Potato then Butternut Squash. I have Acorn Squash, Avocado and Apples coming up!
I did just make barley, she'll start that sooner or later. I also plan on making oatmeal soon.
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This exactly. We started with avocado and sweet potato, and have added in foods with iron over time.
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