I'm sure this has been brought up before

When did you start solids with your babies? I guess I am a little bit going back and forth. I really want to start because I'm excited, but REALLY want to wait till 6 months until cereal and then 8 months for the rest.

So when did you start....
Cereal?

Veggies?

Fruits? etc....


Thanks

 

hi there! I think it depends on your babies. Our pedi gave us the green light at 4 months. My son was eating a lot and was showing interest in food. My daughter was not quite as interested so we started her more slowly. We did 5 days rice cereal, 5 days oat cereal, 5 days barley and then started on the veggies like butternut squash, sweet potato, carrots and peas. My kids are just coming on 6 months this sunday and we are in the midst of introducing peaches and doing an afternoon snack of cereal and veggie. We don`t eat a whole baby jar worth, about a half each at this point. Some days my DD is not interested and others she wolfs it down. When you start, watch their cues so they don`t get a bad association.

Hope that helps and GL. Also, there is a great website that another twin mom told me about called wholesomebabyfood.com

 

It's a learning process-for you AND the babies. There really is no wrong way about it. It's what you feel comfortable with. I will say, by nine months old, my boys were on almost all table foods. I started with Gerber puffs, and then once they grasped those, I moved onto Cheerios, etc. We were in Italy, and we just fed them everything we ate-pasta, green beans, etc. I still had baby food on hand for emergencies, but it was mostly table food there on out. Same thing with Annabella.

Whenever ou try-make sure you have the camera ready! Good luck!

 

we started cereal around 7 months. i was dreading starting solids - it just seemed like a whole lot more work! :laughing: we did cereal only for a couple of days, and then i just gave them whatever. i didn't really follow the one food at a time rule - i did offer new foods at breakfast or lunch only though, so that i would have all day to see if there was a reaction.

i also started pushing finger foods pretty early - i was pretty bored of feeding them all the time so i figured the sooner they could do it themselves the better. by 10 months, they wouldn't let me spoon feed them anymore which was a-okay in my book! i did have to get a bit creative though because they weren't terribly proficient at finger foods yet - they ate a lot of pureed fruits & veggies spread on toast. :good:

 

I started cereal at 6 months, then alternated a veggie or fruit every 3 days provided there were no reactions. I only had 1 reaction which was to baby oat cereal. I haven't tried it again. I waited also because it seemed like a lot of work and it is!

 

I waited until 6 months and the first food they had was a banana. I never really gave them too much cereal, although sometimes I would mix fruits with the cereal. I also do a lot of finger foods and encourage them to feed themselves. I usually give them some of what we are eating (as long as it's safe. At 10 months they mostly feed themselves, although I still spoon feed them a few things. It has worked well for us because they are slowly eating more during meals and not finishing their bottles. I agree with the PPs. It's a learning process and can be done so many different ways.
I took a lot of tips from this book and really liked it.
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-led-Weaning-Helping-Your-Baby/dp/0091923808

 

i'm totally planning on trying this approach with our next baby. purees were so time consuming! thanks for the link. :good:

 

We've had tastes of mom's dinner but nothing formal yet...it's a lot easier if they can sit up and grasp things themselves. DD really likes teething on celery... I'm going to do the baby led solids approach too.

 

Just a note (as my babies right now are still FF) when you start solids, make sure to do cereal, then veggies then fruit. If you do fruit anytime before veggies - they often get used to "sweet" and then won't "like" the veggies.

 

We did cereal at 4 months actual. But, they were already getting cereal in their bottles due to reflux.

We started fruits and veggies probably around 5.5 months.

 

I wanted to wait until 6 months, but I decided to start at dinner time at five months to see if it would help them sleep better (debatable - maybe a bit). I did a week of rice cereal, and then I have been slowly introducing various fruits and veggies, waiting a few days between each addition. Right now they get a couple of tablespoons of cereal and 1 oz of a fruit/veggie each evening. It's been nice.

 

we got the green light at 4 months. i asked the pedi if that was early since our boys were 6 1/2 weeks early and we were adjusting their age and he said we could give it a shot and if they didn't seem ready we could wait. in the end we decided to wait until their adjusted age was 4 months (actual age 5 1/2). we started with rice cereal but didn't linger. we moved onto oatmeal very quickly and straight into veggies from there. sweet potatoes first, i believe. wholesomebabyfood.com has great info on how to choose which food to start with, and how to determine if your LO is ready.

 

We started cereal at 5.5 mos. Added avocado and banana for a while before moving to other purees. They still eat avocado every day - such a great food with great fats. Anyway, I definitely have heard the veggie before fruit thing. Our pedi said it was a myth, but honestly, I have heard it a lot from others, and as usual differing advice from their pedis on this board. The field seems divided. In our case though, my girls love veggies way more than fruit now, and we started with fruit for weeks before veggies because it was easy to pick up a very ripened pear or banana (or avocado) and puree it, so it now stands as a myth in my book. The veggies I thought were great when they were first eating were yams, squash, and peas, and for fruits aside from the ones I mentioned, pears were great because they are easily digestible. Good luck mama!