If she's big, that's evidence enough that milk is doing its job, no?
We did BLW with some puree but never rice cereal. When DS was about 5 months, sitting with some assistance and had several teeth, we just started giving him what we were having. At 1 he can now spoon feed himself cereal with minimal mess. He is no way near fussy, will taste everything and eat most things.
ETA: rice cereal is just a processed, refined 'filler' there is nothing nutritional about it hence all the added iron etc. Also the cereal being an empty carbohydrate is just converted into sugar by the body anyway. Actual food is better, there are lots of different textures, tastes and colours which is a learning experience for kids. If you offer a variety (the full 'rainbow') there will be enough iron, vitamins, folate etc etc to keep baby healthy. You could puree them if you wanted to.
Last edited by lady_neon; October 26th, 2013 at 05:04 PM.
We did a bit of a mix with DS - he had rice cereal, purees and whatever was on our plate that could be finger food! He ate beautifully and tried everything until about 2...but at 3.5 he flat out wont eat fruit, doesn't like things mixed at all and is a pretty fussy kid. It's more of a sensory thing than a BLW vs purees thing.
Sounds like you're already doing a great job feeding your baby.
If you do a nutritional comparison of breastmilk versus *anything* else, breastmilk wins. More calories, more complete nutrition. Saying baby needs 'more' doesn't really make sense at this age, because if she really needed more, the best thing would be more breastmilk anyway. However, since she's 'big' then that suggests she's doing very well on breastmilk alone. Well done.
A healthy, full term baby will need a complementary source of iron and zinc sometime after 6 months. That's basically why 6 months is the recommended time for introducing solids. Complementary means small amount in addition to breastmilk, which remains the most important source of nutrition till 12 months or so. Basically, this is because it provides pretty much everything they need and is the best source of nutrition for at least this long.
When babies are given lots of solids early, this displaces breastmilk in their diet and they actually end up getting 'less', and there's also the risk of precipitating early weaning - the other reason for the 6-month guideline.
Baby's expand their palates through exposure to the foods in your diet when pregnant and breastfeeding, as well as having a wide range of foods available to them when they start eating. If you follow her lead, you can simply let her share in your family meals - no need for pureeing or any extra work like that.
Plus, have you actually tasted rice cereal??? Tastes revolting!
In all seriousness - I always say to myself that I won't feed my babies anything I haven't tasted myself, or wouldn't eat myself, so I tried rice cereal... Blegh. Much easier to just feed them what I'm eating
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