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With my first baby (13 years ago) I introduced solids at 4 months like they told you to... ugh, what a waste of time... she just pushed it all out with her tongue... we battled every meal because of the pressure of that "guideline" and we were young and inexperienced I guess. Eventually at about 8 months she started to enjoy finger foods but i still insisted on spoon feeding and I was often frustrated.
9 years later and much wiser (and new guidelines) I waited until 6 months. I introduced the same food: rice cereal mixed with breastmilk and my baby ate it all up, not spilling a drop!The joke was that he didn't like to get his bib dirty LOL He was a great eater... still is a great eater... feeding him was a pleasure i think because i wasn't trying to be the perfect parent (I'd worked 5 years in childcare and was a lot more relaxed about everything).
3 years later i had my third child. Being a busier mum i didn't get around to trying solids until 7 months... at which time he pushed it all out with his tongue... wasn't interested at all... oh well, he was a getting lots of BM and didn't seem hungry... why stress? At about 8 months i just started handing him the odd crust, bit of fruit, wedge of avocado, stick of cheese to suck on... and he ate them no worries. I haven't bothered making him separate meals at all... he always just has what we have... I park him next to the table when we all sit down for a meal and put bits and pieces infront of him... if he eats them great, if he doesn't who cares? He's doing fine. Is totally non-fussy about everything... his favourite food now are sushi handrolls. I'm still BFing him as a 21 month old because i think it's important. It seems to be what the human baby is designed to do... and all the time I am hearing of new reasons to continue BFing: "New research indicate that there's stem cells in breast milk!" and of course he's getting my antibodies and not suffering as much from colds etc.
Oh and if he's struggling with something (like chicken) I'll chew it for him. Call me gross... but there are enzymes in saliva which help to break protein down... seems logical to me... I'm sure caveman did it. I also like to chew fish for him to check to see if there are tiny bones. I don't know why more parents don't do it.
ETA: my babies have never been constipated.
Last edited by Bathsheba; April 2nd, 2008 at 04:00 PM.
BellyBelly Member
I pushed solids from 5 months with Evan, he was my first & had to do as I was told etc. But he refused after going well for about 2 weeks & was a struggle & didn't get back into it till about 8 or 9 months with out too much fuss. But I still tried. He is now a fussy eater.
Glenn & Isla (and all future bubs) were just left to pick off my plate when they were ready (after 6 months closer to 8 really). I didn't push it & they both eat well.
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I followed the ABA's advice on introducing solids to the letter (they have a great booklet on this that is worth every cent of the $5). I never bought anything food-wise for my DD that was commercially prepared, with the exception of occasionally adding a teaspoon-ful of rice cereal to fruit that I mashed myself to thicken it slightly. She was exclusively bf for just over 6 mths before I tried anything and I really didn't bother much until she picked things up readily herself at about 7-8 mths.
I only offered DD foods that we already ate. I did mash the occasional bit of fruit or offer her spoonfuls of things like avocado that are already somewhat mushy, but I stuck to finger foods on the whole. Cooked pieces of vegetables, rice and pasta are pretty soft anyway, as are many fruits.
Interestingly I watched some programming on children and toddlers with eating problems and all of those covered had an aversion to getting their hands and faces 'messy' with food and in general. So I took the approach that DD could mush and play with her food as much as she liked! Whenever I used a spoon I gave her one so half of the time she was trying to spoonfeed herself.
I am very glad I stuck to all of the recommendations I got from the ABA. My DD is a normal toddler and will be suspicious of new foods as are most kids but she has a great healthy attitude to eating, is always game to try things and has a wide diet. She's had a couple of colds but she's never been constipated, and she has only had one lovely tummy bug that involved a couple of days of diarrhoea and a spew.
Apart from the food itself I also believe behaviour around eating is very important, so I always make a point of sitting down with DD while she eats a meal (preferrably also with our meals for breakfast and lunch, but with a healthy snack at dinner). Eating a meal only happens at the table and she doesn't get up and down during. If she doesn't want everything on the plate, that's fine. Everything she's offered is healthy anyway, so I don't care when she chooses to eat it.
Snacks are fruit mainly, not processed foods. We allow ourselves treats and I'm not a cupcake-Nazi at morning teas. But on the whole I have to say that taking advice from a great organisation like the ABA and the WHO has led me to (so far) raise a great healty eater!
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hehe I can come out of the closet now and admit to never giving Imran any pureed food. I've always felt a bit guilty because for Yasin I cooked up veges and mushed them in with organic rice cereal and boiled, filtered water but poor old Imran's first solids were bits of mashed up veges off my plate and chicken drumstick bones and cutlet bones. The funny thing is that Yasin is a bit of a fussy, picky eater but Imran gobbles up anything although I've been putting it down to ages and stages and I'm just witing for the day that Imran starts turning his nose up at anything a bit unusual.
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so....this sounds like something that really interests me...
but i'm wondering...how do you ensure that they don't choke?? and what exactly is meant by the term 'finger food'? cos to me it means mini spring rolls lol
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My little person is nearly 10 months and for lunch today he had ............
wedge of red capsicum
carrot stick (steamed to soft)
zucchini circle (steamed to soft)
asparagus spear (steamed to soft)
raw broccoli
raw cauliflower
corn on the cob
He has a great protective gag reflex which makes it look like he is choking but he is just returning the too big / chunky piece to the mouth for *processing* again. It is messier (and we still do some spoon feeding - particularly when out) but moving more to letting him feed himself and decide what, and how much, he wants to eat.
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My son was on solids from just before 5m - he grabbed food and ate it, yum yum. It wasn't a taste or a mouthing thing, it was eating it. That was an apple. Which isn't easy when you have no teeth!
I did a mix of solid-solid food and squishy foods: I did what I felt was right and what DS enjoyed. We did a mix of baby-led-weaning (as in, I watched his cues and all his snacks were adult food) and spoon-feeding (our meals, untampered, but fed on a spoon or squishy food/jar food when we had no kitchen). DS has never had a problem with digestion (aside from the smelly trumps, but then he is a boy!) and loves his food. He does prefer raw veg to cooked veg and started to go off cooked veg before I started mixing them in with other foods to get him to eat them.
As for "they don't starve".... PFWA. My DS was no longer gaining weight despite feeds every 1-2hrs, even overnight. He was famished. He was just feeding and crying. I could give solids or formula, my choice. As DS had already started himself on solids, I went for that option. And still did a bottle of formula too for a couple of months to delay the weaning. Babies DO sometimes need more than just breastmilk - but that doesn't mean every baby does. I wanted to wait for until at LEAST 7m before giving him solids, ignoring the rude comments from people who thought solids should start at six weeks, but DS just wouldn't wait. That makes me a good mother, not a bad one, because I did what my baby was ready and wanting to do.
The real age for solids is different for every baby. Maybe my next one will be fully breastfed for 12 months. Maybe not. Who knows? Who, aside from me, should care?
ETA: DS's favourites are pasta in tomato sauce, apples (but not apple peel), pears, mini spring rolls (seriously!), anything I'm cooking with such as onion, garlic, carrot (yes, raw)... sausages, most meat actually, I just cut it into bite-sized pieces, macaroni cheese and beans, rusks. We now give him a fork and he tries to use that a bit, but then finger-feeds. He's getting better with the fork now, but I'm happy for him to just play with it and if he gets food with it then great.
Last edited by Ca Plane Pour Moi; April 2nd, 2008 at 11:17 PM.
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I was talking about this with my MCHN last week and she went to that seminar and found it to be fascinating. I had already decided this was how we were going to do things (the biggest one being less work for me in having to puree the foods) and it just makes so much sense kwim? We had a huge chat about it - I'm really lucky that this time I got a MCHN that is aligned with my thoughts on things. Although we have only just started on solids late last week and it is cereal, I want him to get used to the idea of swallowing food. He has had an arrowroot biscuit and managed that fine, so I think by next week it will be onto the finger food. Although there will be some foods like my homemade vege soup that will be fed to him from a spoon - as he sits with his siblings and sees them eat soup from a spoon - there will always be some foods that need to be spoon fed if you want them to have it. So overall I am stoked with myself that I waited till 6mths this time as there is such a huge difference in development.
BTW - it has nothing to do with the age of the child for those defending their stance to introduce solids earlier than 6mths, but surely you can see how this all fits together - early infant milk feeding and then baby led solids is all linked together and it is a natural progression for them in their development to move from milk to finger fed solids. As for wether they will 'starve' or not, thats an individual thing, there will always be babies that need something more than what they are getting at some stage and yes, it is up to us as their parents to take that step, but we can't ignore the information we have about early solids and we have to be more aware and take that into account. The guidelines have come about from some serious and in-depth study and research about it and isn't just something 'made up' - unlike years ago when it was an advertising free-for-all and baby food companies could do and say what they liked.
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I have a question that a BB member and I were pondering yesterday while we drank tea and ate biscuits while BF our kiddies. Now the MCHN approach of "introduce solids at 6 months" appears to stem from a concern about the level of iron that babies have stored from birth, and the fear of that tapering off steeply from 6 months. We were wondering whether it is that the human body can only store "6 month's worth" of iron, so to speak, or whether, on average, the amount of iron a baby gets in utero runs out at about 6 months. If it is the former, that seems odd, because cavewomen didn't have vitamisers, so couldn't puree food, and certainly didn't have iron-enriched rice cereal at their disposal. If it is the latter, then surely the amount of iron stored by the baby would be dependant upon how healthy the mother's iron levels were during pregnancy? In which case, if a woman is anaemic in the last few months her bub might really need the iron at about 6 months, or even earlier (?), but if she had normal to high iron levels (as I did, when tested at 38 weeks) then the food-at-6-months-because-of-iron-deficiency argument would really fall down.
I do not mean to add to the debate about early intro of solids or the pros or cons of pureeing, but I am interested if anyone knows anything about this bypothesis. Opinions are welcome of course (!) but if anyone has the "facts" it would be appreciated
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Great food for thought Rory. I would assume that we can only store iron for a limited time and that what stores we have are not infinate - even as adults we need to eat food with iron in it to maintain our iron stores too. Seeing as how there is no way of 'quantifying' exactly what is in breastmilk in terms of nutrition, we just *know* that it is perfectly suited to our children's needs, it would be interesting to know how they came about this idea of iron levels dropping off in exclusively BF babies (on the presumtion that FF babies keep getting iron from iron fortified formulas - not wanting to start the old debate again, simply making an obvious statement about what we know to be true).
In terms of cavemen/women/children, you have to remember that there would have been a high infant mortality rate and it would be impossible to surmise what the cause of this was. I would think that even with their limited knowledge that they would have had some remedy for this, considering that early man ate a lot of meat and so the children would have the same diet, or possibly even that if the women ate a lot of meat that possibly she would have fortified her own breastmilk with iron - does that make sense?
Regardless of the how's and the why's of it all, sooner or later they are going to have to start eating solid foods. simple as that. They can't live on milk forever
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Just popping in to say the paw paw was a success( allbeit a messy success). I'm still mashing his banana (still very lumpy though) because that gagging nose scares the heck out of me but I'm learning to trust that he will spit out what he can't swallow.
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Re the gagging/choking thing, it's just my opinion, but I think because my DD wasn't fed smooth pureed food she 'learnt' to handle lumps and bits much better. The only time she has ever seemed to choke (and I give her everything from apple, to meat, to grapes, etc, and always have) was on a piece of mandarin when she was about 18 mths old. She choked on it quite forcefully, pulled it out of her mouth, looked at the offending piece and stuffed it back in! She's never choked on mandarin since, but she pulls off the stringy bits herself and tells me 'bin'.
Believe me, I found babies could 'chew' quite efficiently, even before teeth!
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So much to say and so little time. So forgive my ramblings.
Firstly, Gracie. Finger food is food that they can hold and eat themselves as opposed to food that we feed them on a spoon. As for choking, I read an interesting article on infant led weaning which explained that kids are less likely to choke when feeding themselves. Putting food on a spoon in their mouth for them is more likely to cause choking.
Next Rory - as I understand it, babies have iron stores for between 6 to 12 months, the exact amount of time is variable and the main determinant is how much cord blood they receive. So with early clamping, iron stores will most likely run out quicker than for babies who have delayed clamping etc. Studies have tested the iron in blood from babies who had delayed clamping and bm only for 12months and the iron levels were sufficient. Another factor is that the form that iron is in in bm is more easily absorbed than iron from other sources, so bf babies usually don't need iron from solids until later either. In fact, the iron in iron fortified foods such as baby cereals, is the hardest to absorb and therefore does not significantly contribute to a baby's iron levels (great marketing though!!).
And lastly - I have found the same as Chloe. DS2 had very little in the way of pureed foods, we pretty much started straight into finger foods, and he is definitely the better eater of the two boys. He eats everything, quantity and variety wise. Could be co-incidence, but who knows?
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Great post Manta!yep, that is what I understood to be true regarding iron stores. It is so much better to eat iron in it's natural state as opposed to via articial fortifications.
Excerpt from a Pharmacy website:
For reasons unclear to researchers, infants absorb 100% of the iron in breast milk (less than 1 mg/L), but cannot absorb all of the iron in infant formulas. Most infant formulas contain approximately 12 mg/L of iron, which usually allows for adequate iron uptake. However, some parents attribute symptoms such as abdominal discomfort, constipation, diarrhea, colic and irritability to iron intolerance. In response, manufacturers have marketed low-iron formulas containing only 2 mg/L of iron. The low-iron formulas may alleviate these symptoms, but they cannot maintain proper hemoglobin status and should be avoided.1,5 Iron deficiency can result in anorexia, failure to thrive, delayed development of the immune system, and impaired psychomotor and mental development.9
I figure that as long as I am maintaining my iron levels while BF then it will be transformed into enough iron for my babies.... in the most usable form. When introducing solids I would focus on offering them green vegetables (we don't eat red meat) to get that extra bit of iron... in it's natural state.
Last edited by Bathsheba; April 3rd, 2008 at 01:46 PM.
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Gracie, I have read that same article as MR, and yes, it would appear that babies are more likely to choke dangerously when being fed from a spoon, rather than feeding themselves with (appropriate) finger food. Think about it, when they are being spoonfed, you are shoving a spoonful of food that they haven't smelt, tasted, or felt, and they are just expected to open wide and gobble it up! They have no control over much you putting in their mouth, and no idea what to expect as it's coming towards them. I wouldn't eat well if that's how I was expected to eat! With finger foods, they get to feel it, smell it, and have a little taste if they like before shoving it in so to speak LOL. The baby is in control of the process. Makes sense to me anyway. If you are interested maybe google 'baby-led weaning' and see what info you come up with.
Like Michelle, there are definitely some foods that we spoonfeed, like yoghurt, soup, and alot of things when we go out. But the majority of the time DS is now having food that he can feed to himself, and he responds much better to eating that way.
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Great. So I ****ed something else up for DS because he never got his cord blood.
What the **** is so wrong with me that I can't do the best for my baby? I can't even give birth and that messed up his iron reserves.
Maybe DH is right and I just can't do it and it would be dangerous for me to try.
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Ryn I am sure that your DS will be getting plenty of iron being BF past a year - you have done a great job to get that far.
I am going to the ABA shop tomorrow and will see what info I can hunt down on this whole iron levels thing and will share what I find....
Life Subscriber
Ryn, the standard practice here in Aus is to clamp the cord straight away, so most babies don't get enough cord blood. As Rory said, you have done a great job to bf for so long, and that means that Liebling most likely has been getting plenty of iron.
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