Pediatricians usually recommend giving a baby their first solid foods at around 4 - 6 months of age. Basically, you just gotta take the cues from your own baby of when you think they are ready to eat people food. For us, we were in no rush because well... First off, since we're paranoid first time parents, we wanted to make sure that Madi's digestive system was a wee bit more developed and able to handle solid foods, which is why we pretty much waited until (almost) 6 months. Unless technically you want to say she is 6 months old since she is 24 weeks (25 weeks this coming Monday). Also, we wanted to make sure that Madi was SUPER interested in food, AND we wanted to make sure that she was 100% strong enough to sit up well in her high chair. We were going to start her off on brown rice cereal, since a lot of pediatricians recommend starting your baby off with rice cereal, but after some research (and that baby food making class I took back at the end of July), it really isn't necessary to start baby off with it. The only good thing about starting baby on rice cereal is that it is easy on baby's stomach and easy to digest. Some really good first solid foods to give to baby, other than rice cereal, are bananas, avocados, sweet potato, carrots, pears, peas, and winter squash - like butternut squash.
I read that baby's who are especially breastfed, would probably do better with sweeter foods, like bananas, carrots and sweet potatoes because breast milk is sweet, and it would be an easy transition for them. Babies who are formula fed would probably do better with rice cereal first because rice cereal is kind of similar in taste to formula, which is kind of bland. Anyway, I figured we would start Madi off with sweet potato since it is a vegetable, it's sweet (so hopefully she would like it), and it's packed with lots of goody nutrients, vitamin, and fiber. Sweet potato is suppose to help create beautiful skin too, which can help with Madi's mild caase of baby eczema (dry skin) on her arms and legs. To prepare Madison's sweet potato meal, I thoroughly washed the sweet potato, peeled the skin, diced the potato up, threw them in a steamer, and then pureed the crap out of them with our mini food processor. I then took about a tablespoon of the sweet potato puree, and placed it in a small container and mixed it with some breast milk until it was of thin, semi-watery consistency. As your baby gets used to eating solid foods, you won't have to "water" down your solids as much, and can make it thicker.
OK, enough with the jibber jabber, let's see how Madi did with her sweet potato!!!
Here's Madison wondering what the heck is going on... "Where am I and why am I sitting on this weird thing?"
Why is Daddy making airplane noises and why does he keep saying "yum, yum, yum!"? I guess I'll put that thing in my mouth...
Mmmmm... What was that? That wasn't so bad! Gimme more!
This is fun!!!!
This is TOO much fun!!
What was that you say? I have a little something something on my chin?
And of course, a video of Madison's first bite of sweet potato. She wasn't so sure of the experience at first, but she ended up liking it after awhile.
I love that look that they get, like, "What are you doing to me?!" ... "Wait, hey, that stuff is kinda good!" Has she tried to take the spoon yet? Good times!
ReplyDelete