>>When you start your baby on solids, would you mind to blog about your approach and how you introduce different foods?<<

This was an incredibly timely request, coming less than half a day after giving my baby solids for the first time!

Generally, my babies start eating solids between 6 and 8 months.  My oldest started at eight months because I had the idea then that the longer you waited, the better.  That wasn’t the case with him; I should have started him sooner but didn’t recognize that and his weight dropped before I realized he needed more food.  My last baby (now two years old) also didn’t really start eating solids until eight months.  In his case, he wasn’t interested, despite being given opportunities periodically from six months and on.   All the others started at six months, at which point they were all showing significant interest.  Last but not least is the current baby, who is starting younger than everyone else at 5 months and one week – and he is sooo ready!  (I think that being born three weeks past his due date is relevant here, since if he was born ‘on time’ he would be exactly six months now.)

A few days ago, my dd was eating something and commenting on how the baby kept trying to grab her food and stick it in his mouth.  (He’s been doing this for several weeks.)  So she asked if she could try giving him something to eat, and after looking in the fridge, asked if she could give him yogurt.  Generally I don’t give dairy from the start, but after my initial hesitation, told her to go ahead since it was homemade yogurt from organic/hormone free milk.  He loved it!  If we had any doubt about if he was too young or not, those doubts were gone within about two minutes.  He kept eating, and eating, and eating – until he had eaten two cups of full fat yogurt.

This is the only time I’ve ever started with dairy.  Generally I start with banana mashed very well, followed soon afterwards by baked (and mashed) yam that has coconut oil mixed into it.  I look at solids as supplemental to nursing, not as the source of their main nutrition.  Avocados and other fruits and vegetables soon follow, all cooked if necessary and then mashed well.  Gradually I mash the food less finely, to give the baby  exposure to food of different textures.  By the time they are a year, they are eating almost everything we eat, albeit in a somewhat mashed form.  I also add in milk, butter, gravy, and stock to their foods, depending what they’re eating.

After a few months, I add in foods like oatmeal.  I don’t feel that cereal grains are ideal foods for a young baby, and when I do serve them, try to be sure they’re properly prepared to maximize absorption of vitamins and to minimize the negatives.  One grain that I very much try to delay is wheat.  Wheat gluten is a very difficult to digest grain, and if I could, I’d keep it away from my babies until they are two years old.  But it’s not so easy when others in the house eat wheat based foods, since they end up finding something and stuffing it into their mouths, or seeing everyone else having some and naturally also wanting some.   This time around I’m planning to  be more proactive and bake biscuits/crackers with alternative flours, keeping them in the freezer so I can pull out a similar looking non-wheat option when he sees his siblings eating something that he wants.  (I have a few months until this will be necessary.)

For a very short time when my oldest started solids, I gave him baby cereal mixed with formula.  I know, I know, the absolute ignorance of youth can be frightening.  🙂  That’s what the nurse at the well baby clinic recommended (additionally, she also told me to give him chocolate to fatten him up – which was probably somewhat better than the recommendation a friend of mine was given, to feed her baby oil) and that’s what I saw other mothers doing so I thought it was the right thing to do. After less than a month, my husband told me he didn’t like it – “I feel like we’re feeding him plastic”, so that was the last of store bought food for our babies.  From there we switched to what I described above.

Aside from that very short foray into factory created baby food, I haven’t bought processed baby foods for any of our nine children.  Besides my skepticism about the nutritional value, it’s incredibly expensive.  How much does a banana cost – thirty cents?  That’s a lot cheaper than a jar of baby food that holds a similar amount of food, and with a banana there’s a lot less likelihood of contamination.

I think parents have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to marketing of baby foods – there’s hardly anything easier than making your own baby food.  You don’t need a scientific formula.  You don’t need a lot of time.  You don’t have to do anything extra to ‘make’ baby food.  You can buy a food mill to grind food up or a blender to blend it, but a fork works just fine.  Since I start with soft and easily mashed foods, there’s no difficulty in manually mashing it immediately prior to serving it.  (The main exception that I’ve had is brown rice – I don’t generally add this in until the baby is very comfortable with texture unless I blend it, since it’s very hard to mash it well with a fork.)

Some parents like to make a big amount, blend it, and freeze it in ice cube trays for small portions.  I’ve never done that, but can see how it would be a good idea.  This would be especially convenient when they get to the point they are eating something like chicken with carrots and rice blended in, since you’re not going to make a recipe of only one cup.

I try to give vegetables like carrots and zucchini fairly soon after they start eating, within a month or so, since it’s easy for babies to get used to the sweetness of fruits and after a period of time, often will turn down anything not sweet since it isn’t a familiar taste.  I’m very fortunate that none of my kids have ever been picky eaters, and part of that probably stems from when they are very little, when they eat a variety of  foods.  I still remember when we had a couple of teenage boys for Shabbos/Sabbath lunch, watching in awe as my then 1 year old infant daughter gobbled down three servings of cholent – “Whoa, your baby is awesome! She can eat more cholent than me!”  Maybe cholent isn’t typical baby food, but all of our babies have enjoyed it!

Avivah