Need some tips... what worked for you?

Okay... my girls turn 6 months next week and we have been doing a bit of rice cereal a couple of times per week (typically)... I was wondering... are there some good websites that you have found useful? I plan on making my own baby food.. what did you start with? what progression did you follow? We bottle feed and I wondered.. they take 6 ounces right now 5x/day and I wondered if they will still up the amount of formula they get even though we going to start to introduce solids-? any advice is much appreciated!!!

 

At that age, they should be getting 24-32 oz. of formula (according to our pedi). They may drop back a bit as you add solids - just be careful not to drop them back too much. At 9 months (where we are now), our pedi okayed us to drop back to 16-24 oz.

We started with carrots, then added applesauce, bananas, sweet potatoes, etc. Some people suggest starting with mashed avocado. I made a good portion of our baby food at first (they are on the combo foods now, so I mostly buy now). I had a book called "Blender Baby Food" by Nicole Young that was quite helpful for knowing the proportions of water to food. You can also google and find tons of recipes, but I liked having a book I could just grab rather than trying to get to the computer all the time.

 

Www.wholesomebabyfood.com

We buy jars of pureed carrots for babies due to the concern over nitrates. We make everything else ourselves.

Have fun!

 

They will most likely drop back a bit in the formula department. I would feed them their bottle first, and then a good 30-45 minutes later offer the solids. Don't be alarmed if they are not hungry for them. If they aren't, you could always push it back a bit more, or lessen the amount in their bottles by a little bit. When I started with solids, after the cereal, I always did vegetables first. I would do sweet potato first, then carrots, green beans, peas... My kids all liked sweet potato, and could have cared less for everything else. Once we were done with veggies, I started on fruits-applesauce, pears, peaches, etc.

As for making your own/starting solids, Wholesome Baby Food is a great resource! I personally never used it, but I did look around and know of many people who used it a lot!

Have fun!

 

I half buy and half make their food. I did a whole blog on starting the experience if you'd like to read it: http://doublemommy.blogspot.com/2010/07/tools-for-food.html

My girls are complete chow hounds and still take 26 oz a day as well as 4 tablespoons of solids twice a day. I started with 1 tbsp of cereal mixed with a 1/2 tbsp of fruit or vegetable and then slowly upped the amount.

I give them their morning bottle, wait about 40 minutes then give them breakfast. At the end of the day, they have dinner about 45 minutes before they're last bottle before bed.

 

I used wholesomebabyfood.com and made my own. I didn't really follow the 4 day rule, but I was cautious when adding new foods. I kept them on the same bottle feeding schedule (6,9, 12, 3, 6), and then just started adding in meals at normal meal times (breakfast first, then lunch a few weeks later, then dinner a few weeks after that) without real regard for when the bottles were being given. So now our schedule is bottles at 6:30, 9:30, 12:30, 3:30, 6:30, and meals at 8, 12, and 6.

My twins have dropped down to about 30 oz a day from a high of 35 oz a day, so they are still getting plenty of formula. I read somewhere that you are aiming to eventually get to about 4oz of food 3x a day, and that helped me when thinking about how and when to add food and meals. I also read that most of the babies calories should still come from formula/bm so that helped me not to worry to much about food.

In retrospect, I wish I had followed a baby led weaning plan from the beginning. Making all those purees and feeding all those purees is exhausting!