Eating Solids

Our dinner routine was pretty consistent for a good chunk of time: I'd nurse B and let him digest for a while. Then, we put him in the jumperoo as we ate our dinner. At around the 4 month mark, however, B became increasingly interested in our meals.

Our pediatrician told us that we could start introducing solids to B at around 5.5 months, so that's what we did. We started him off on just a tbsp of rice cereal mixed with expressed milk. Since then, he's tried a few other things:

1. rice cereal
2. oatmeal
3. banana
4. avocado
5. sweet potato (the korean go-goo-mah, yellow flesh kind)
6. sweet potato (the orange flesh kind)

I'd always known that I wanted to make B's food. A girlfriend of mine gifted us Karmel's First Meals and I read it while I was pregnant, but I hadn't thought about it since he was born. After our pediatrician's visit, I quickly skimmed the beginning few chapters of the book to refresh my memory as to what infants can and cannot have and just started making purees using our food processor.

On this week's to-make menu are:

1. apples

2. pears

3. carrots

4. peas

5. cantelope

It is a lot simpler and cheaper than I had imagined! After making batches of different purees, I freeze them into ice trays with lids and then transfer them into ziploc baggies once frozen. When it's time to feed him, I just nuke a cube or two and let it cool down.



We use:
spoons from Sassy
and bowls from Munchkin
The hardest part for us has been trying to figure out how much B should be eating. At our 6 month well-visit, we were shocked when she told us that he wasn't eating enough for his age/weight!! (Have you seen our baby?) His increasing fussiness had been a result of hunger!!

While I was at work (up until yesterday), feeding on a typical day would look like this:
1. nurse at around 6 followed by 2tbsp of rice cereal or oatmeal with 1 cube of a fruit or veggie
2. 5oz bottle at around 10:00
3. 5oz bottle at around 2:00
4. nurse at around 5:00 followed by 2tbsp of rice cereal or oatmeal with 2 cubes of a fruit or veggie (We eat dinner after this feeding and have him continue sitting in his highchair as we eat.)
5. 4oz bottle at around 7:15

Now that I'm on summer vacation, we're in the process of figuring out a good routine. Hopefully it won't be too considerably different from what he's used to. Since I won't be giving him the daytime bottles anymore, I'll have to nurse him more frequently. Plus, we're trying to offer him solids three times a day. These things, in turn, will affect his daytime (or lack thereof) sleep too! Thank goodness babies are more flexible than you think!