Starting Babies on Solids

Starting solids is one of the first great milestones in raising a baby. And the build-up for us parents is so intense! I remember my son watching me with huge eyes at about five months old as I ate my food. He started moving his lips up and down as he imitated my chewing pattern. It was one of the cutest things ever! However, in all my research, I learned that babies, although they may be socially ready for food at five months, don't have adequate digestive enzymes to handle solids. I was just reading, coincidentally, that new research is showing that formula-fed babies who get solids before four months have a significant increase in their risk of obesity. There are many parts of the country where parents are still instructed to give babies rice cereal at three months old, but this advice is out-dated. There is also no research that supports the theory that starting solids will help babies sleep through the night (although  my mother swears this worked with my brother, who practically lived at her breast). So I strongly advocate for parents to wait until babies are at least six months old. 

A first great food is avocado. Not rice cereal you ask? NO. Now, I know why pediatricians recommend it. It's low on the allergy scale and it's easily digestible. However, there are a lot of doctors and moms who will tell you that grains are hard on babies digestive systems and can lead to constipation. In our house, we waited to introduce grains until eight months. I wanted to wait until a year, but for daycare meals, it's required by law that he have several servings of grains a day (do not get me started on how it's possible that the government can tell me what to feed my child), so we wanted to get him started on them, in case we had trouble with constipation, which we did. So, back to avocado...even Dr. Sears from The Doctors agrees with me! It has everything you need to survive and it's smooth so babies like the texture (and you don't have to puree it, which, if you are lazy like me, is great!). If you do decide to do rice cereal, I highly recommend using brown rice. All you do is grind it up in the food processor until it's a very fine consistency. Then combine in a saucepan with the appropriate water for the amount of rice you ground up. Cook as you would regular rice and voila! Homemade rice cereal in minutes and at a fraction of the cost. And you can make a big batch and freeze it in ice cube trays. This makes the perfect portion serving for babies 6-9 months old. When you defrost it, warm it up and mix in a little breast milk and it's perfect. 

After avocado, banana is great next food. I was worried about introducing fruit, because I had heard that if you introduce fruit early, your baby will prefer sweet foods. But in my research, I found that babies early taste buds are not fully developed and so everything tastes sweet. So, bananas were the second try in our house. 

It is important with new foods, to introduce one at a time and consistently feed that one food for 3-5 days before trying a new one. I swear, those three days will drag on forever, but it's really the smart thing to do. Okay, a few more things on solid food...I feel strongly about homemade baby food. Not only is it easy and cheap, but I have found, just in my work with little ones, that the families that have made their food, have had an easier time transitioning to chunkier purees and then whole foods. There is something about that perfect store bought puree that is hard to wean babies away from. Now this may not be true of all babies, but it is what I have seen consistently throughout my career. The other important thing I have observed, is that there is a perfect window from 10-14 months (although we started at nine months) to start real pieces of whole foods, like cheese, banana pieces, ground meat, pea halves, and small pieces of bread. Scary as it is, it is really important to let babies be able to practice moving the food around in their mouths. They will figure it out. As babies get closer to 11 months, they can be working on taking bites of bread, pasta, and should be able to grind up soft foods like whole peas and cooked carrots, regardless of how many teeth they have. Also, letting babies start to experiment with using their own utensil can be totally fun to watch. It'll be a play toy at first, but after they've seen you eat with a fork or spoon, they'll want to try to. 

One more thing...sippy cups are not a developmental stage. They are super handy when you are out and about because of the no-spill factor, but starting a straw cup and an open cup at the same time as starting solid foods will make so an easier transition to these developmental steps, compared to if only a sippy cup is introduced. Also, at age one, the transition begins away from bottles to cups for drinking milk. We are trying this one this week, so I'll let you know how it goes...

Here's a couple excellent websites for baby food and more...

www.weelicious.com this website had healthy food ideas for the whole family 

www.wholesomebabyfood.com in addition to early foods for baby, this website also address the appropriate ages to introduce certain foods (i.e. spinach has such a high level of nitrates that babies should be 10 months old before eating).