Even before I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to make my own baby food. I wanted to control the quality of ingredients my little one ingested and I wanted to introduce herbs and spices at my discretion.
I was so excited to start Jake on solid foods. Until he turned 6 months. I don’t know why, but I started worrying about it. Should I use purees or baby led weaning (giving them small pieces of cut up food they could self feed with)? What should I give him first? How often do I need to feed him solids? What do I do if he starts choking or is allergic? New moms are probably some of the most worrisome people on the planet.
I did TONS of research and talked to countless people about it. My favorite resources turned out to be wholesomebabyfood.com and Carolyn, who works in the WIC office in Louisville. I still find myself on the website and asking questions every few days, even after nearly two months of solid foods.
I feel like I’m a little behind in the whole scheme of things but Heather put it to me like this, “Food is just for fun until 1!” I’m trying not to compare what I’m doing to what other moms like Brittany are doing (she gives her daughter full out meals each day and Hailey’s only a couple months older than Jake!), but it’s hard.
I decided to start with purees and see how things progressed. We tried rice cereal first and Jake was just not sure of it. We did the whole three day waiting thing and then introduced oatmeal. He didn’t like either one! So bland!
From there we moved on to sweet potato. He definitely liked it better than grains! He only ate a few bites at a time though, which is typical.
Bananas were next and they were a significant improvement over anything prior. Is that surprising though? Jeff loved bananas when he was little. I think his mom told me they were his favorite food. I still love bananas. MMM.
Since then, we’ve tried green beans, avocado, peaches, apples, and prunes.
Want to know what his favorite food is so far? PRUNES! I don’t know why I’m surprised, but I am. I ended up buying a couple pouches of the Plum Just Prunes and was planning on feeding him half of one. After I gave him the half pouch, he was still doing the hungry-bird-open-mouthed-begging-for-more look, so I gave him the rest. He gobbled them right down!
One day, I was feeling particularly brave and gave him some banana to chew on. He did fine this time, but then a few weeks later, I did the same thing and he gagged. Scared me half to death!
So, since then, I have kind of decided to put off finger foods until about 8 months, which is only a few weeks away. I think I’m going to focus on introducing foods and once we’ve gotten further along, we can revisit the matter.
I’m assuming I will start figuring out what works best for me, as I have with every other thing in motherhood. It just takes time. Jake is healthy and happy. That’s all that matters. He gets a variety of foods and textures, which is expanding every day. Soon we will start combining foods (like apples and bananas) and eventually introduce meats and dairy.
Right now, he hates green beans. I have heard that you need to offer foods over and over again because, though baby didn’t like it the first time, it doesn’t mean he won’t later on. I plan to give him roasted green beans next time. I prefer them to steamed. If he still doesn’t like them, I’ll mix a little apple or banana in to sweeten the deal.
Here are my questions:
What has worked for you in the past?
What have you learned from giving your baby solids?
Is there anything you would do differently?
Do you feed your baby “meals” or just a bit of fruit or veggie?
I love hearing what other moms do. I can’t wait to hear from you!
