Family Forum / Pregnancy / Breastfeeding / October 2005

The main reason for starting with one of those cereals is because some
babies' iron stores are getting low around the six month mark,
supposedly anyway.  So for iron, I offered several of my babies meat
first.

Some things are inherently less allergenic than others, but other
people here are more knowledgeable on that point than I.  For Lorelei,
I more or less just started letting her eat what she wanted off my
plate.  My other kids liked the cereals and they are convenient so I
tried them with her, but she didn't care for them.  I may try them
again later since I have several boxes.

Leslie

We started DD on banana, but what we didn't know at the time is that banana
can be extremely constipating, especially to a gut that isn't used to solid
food - rice cereal is constipating too. Avocado is a good first food that
isn't constipating. Sweet potato sounds fine to me too, pumpkin is another
one that makes a good puree.
What does your family eat a lot of?

I started  with rice cereal, but I didn't know that it would be so
constipating. So I switched to oatmeal and barley. <<shrug>> My girls liked
it so I fed it to them. You don't have to start cereal, but sometimes the
iron stores are beginning to drop and iron fortified cereal is an easy way
to get it in them. DD1 was/is anemic so the cereal was good for her. You can
start with veggies if you prefer. It doesn't really matter. Some parents
don't even mess with pureed foods and go to table foods that can be cut into
tiny pieces. Keep in mind the potential allergens and go from there. Bannas
are constipating and so are apples. Green beans gave my daughters horrible
gas and they were so uncomfortable that I stopped grean beans and waited
until their digestive systems were more mature.

"Child" wrote and I snipped:

My DD loved sweet potato first.  If you try banana, realize that it stains
clothing/bibs/washcloths very badly.

-Patty, mom of 1+2

I think bananas is constipating.  You should start with something
else, and introduce it slowly to let the digestive system adapt.
I like the idea of sweet potato.  I would also recommend squash or
plums.

Larry

Hunter started solids so late I went straight to table food.

Luke started at 6 months.  I used the babyfood jars for the first few weeks
because it was easy and I could send them to the sitter.  After he had a
round of about 10 new foods with no reaction I started offering him mashed
single item table foods at home and continued with the jars at the sitters
until he was about 9 mos.  Some time around 8mos he started getting whatever
we were eating even if the foods were mixed (like soups and casseroles).

I started with fruits and vegetables.  In no particular order.  He is not at
high risk of allergies.  When we started cereal he had regular oatmeal I
cooked for us all and cream of wheat at the sitters as her family ate that a
lot.  He handled textures well but some kids need the puree longer then
others just on a developmental note but I think earlier exposure to textures
(if starting solids at 6mos) is a good thing as long as the child can handle
it.

I thought starting solids was fun and Luke adored them so that was a treat
for me.  Hunter could have cared less - sucked all the joy out of it, lol.

Cereal is convenient for practice (which is mainly what the first food
is for anyway) as you can make it up in little tiny amounts. Our kids
liked barley cereal better than rice. Both come with added iron. A
high-fiber food like sweet potato can be hard on their bottoms, we
found --  our kids liked it by eight or ten months, but we had to limit
quantities or they got awful diaper rash. For that reason it seems an
odd first choice of solids to me (though the reaction my kids had may
well be uncommon, don't know). I am pretty sure it wasn't an allergic
reaction, since they could eat a substantial chunk without any problem.

If you mix the cereal with expressed breastmilk it will be sweeter and
more familiar-tasting, but it isn't really necessary when feeding the
small quantities most folks start with. I usually just used water.

The later you put off starting solids, the less time you usually need
to spend spoon-feeding them, which is a good thing from my point of
view. My daughters went mostly to table foods and feeding themselves by
eight or nine months, having started at just after six months. They
seldom had baby food. I bought a jar here and there for my son as a
matter of convenience, but he didn't really take to solids much anyway
until nine or ten months.

I don't know about being a Smart Person but we started with an
oatmeal/rice blend cereal. My daughter likes it (I tried it myself,
it's not bad), it is easy to make in small quantities and we could
thicken it up as she got better with the spoon. We did that for a
couple of weeks till she got used to the process and then introduced
things like squash, carrots, green beans, applesauce, pears, banana.
When you start the solids you'll be able to tell whether you should
stick to purees for a bit or if your baby is ready for chunkier table
foods.

With ds, we started with rice cereal, which he did *not* like.  Our ped
suggested we add a bit of carrot to it to make it taste less like paste ;-)
and then ds went after it with gusto!

Heh - we were out for sushi tonight, and ds#2 (5 mo) was being really
grouchy, and the waitress brought us a little dish of ripe avocado on
the house for him. I figured it might be interesting and cool on his
gums, so I grabbed a piece and let him suck/munch on it. He was utterly
disgusted! But he has the chewing method down. I think in my mind this
will be his first solids experience, instead of the french fry dh's
aunt let him suck on at 3 mo (boy was I not impressed).

So, scratch avocado for the time being. In another 3 weeks or so, we'll
start cereal with bmilk and bananas, and take it from there.

Melania