Food & Nutrition
lissbright
member
I need help with feeding :-\ PLEASE give advice
lissbright
member
Ok yesterday my pediatrician said I can start adding rice cereal to the breast milk for my son. He said to start with 1/2 a teaspoon for every 1 oz of breast milk. He said at the next checkup (at the end of this month) that he will probably suggest I start with other solids, so I should try to get my son used to a bowl and spoon now with the rice cereal. Sounds like a good plan to me! Well we tried it last night and my son freaked out. He screamed and cried and screamed and cried, so of course he gave himself bad gas and cried some more because of that. More milk/cereal ended up ON him then IN him. So through the night as he woke up I just breastfed him or gave him a bottle (he can go back and forth between the 2 without issues). This morning he was hungry and I tried it and he freaked out again. I stuck with it hoping it'd get better...it didn't....Anytime I try to feed this kid with a spoon he freaks out. Is this normal? Is it just something he needs to get used to?? I tried to feed him before he got hungry to the point where he cried to let me know but that is VERY hard. Most kids will make a certain face, or start sticking their tongue out or something...but my son does not. He is normal and smiley and then bam all of a sudden he is crying from hunger. Normally he would eat 3oz of breast milk like every 2 hours, but I was told the rice cereal would help space out the feedings a little more, so I'm not sure when he would be hungry yet cause we just started so I haven't really been able to see a pattern yet....Please help!
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Re: I need help with feeding :-\ PLEASE give advice
2) You should not be feeding him rice cereal when he's hungry. When feeding you start with the breastmilk - which is nutrient dense as opposed to the rice cereal which has exactly 0 nutritional value. "solids" are just for practice at first and will not help a hungry child. They are far too frustrated to play with solids when they're hungry. So fill them up on breastmilk first.
3) Your pediatrician sounds a little behind the times. In 2012 mine was already going with the more updated recommendations "You can start with rice cereal, but there's no good reason to. You're better off waiting and giving actual food instead." Which is inline with the AAP who has found a correlation between allergies and the introduction of solids before 6 months.
For me it wasn't difficult at all. But I waited until 6 months, so my child was older and more capable. And no. You don't have to get him used to a spoon. The only people who do that are people who start too early. These people also put their child more at risk for choking or aspirating since they bypass the child's natural gag reflex. I never worried about teaching him to use a spoon. Because he was 6 months I just handed him food. He held it and ate it himself. Spoon foods he knew what to do with because he was old enough to direct a spoon to his own mouth.
Here's a picture from the first time he ever had solids. That's a sausage in his mouth.
This is a couple days later:
So yes, you are making this unnecessarily difficult. You are choosing the path of most resistance. And your response goes to show that you don't really want advice. Between that and your initial question which shows you haven't done even the basic research into solids since you're attempting them before giving your child breastmilk, indicates that you're going to do whatever you want regardless of what you should be doing. So good luck with that.