Starting Solids

The day has come and gone now!  My daughter has started feeding on solid foods.  I was hoping to wait until she was about five and a half months because she was getting to the point of “not completely satisfied” like she used to be just on her formula.  She was getting to the point that when she saw us eating she would get mad, so the other day I told my hubby that I don’t think we can wait.

She was definitely ready for starting solids.  She ate about a tablespoon of Rice Cereal with no problems and seemed to love it!  She took to her food as if she’s been eating like this from since she was born.  I was, for about a few weeks, putting a little bit of her formula on her spoon to see how she would take it.  She always gave me this look like “Hey, this is the same stuff from my bottle!”.  At first she spat out the formula and eventually started swallowing the formula, she was exercising her muscles to change the way she eats.  I do feel this helped her, I will never know if it did or didn’t but I like to think it helped with the introduction to the solids. 

I bought iron-fortified rice cereal to start to see how she would take the solids but my intent is to make all her food.  For me and my family we very rarely eat ready made food, we eat and cook at home pretty much all the time.  So with that in mind I wanted to make her her food as we do our own.  I googled homemade baby food and found some great and very easy recipes, for baby cereals as well as other foods.  I also purchased this book called Cooking for Baby by Lisa Barnes it has some great ideas and good tips for feeding as well as recipes!

The beginning stage foods are very simple to make as well as the later stage foods and not as time consuming as one would think.  My main concern about store bought baby food is that I don’t know what is in it compared to homemade food; I know exactly what’s going in and feel like there’s a bit more control with what she’s ingesting. 

I just started my daughter on solids the other day so I will be adding updates to the site.  So far all is well with her and she’s enjoying every mouthful.  Next up, I’ll be feeding her homemade Oatmeal cereal and I’m hopeful that she’ll enjoy it as much as the rice cereal.  The starting of her solid feeding has come just in time for Easter dinner, traditionally my family has a turkey dinner and one of the vegetables will be sweet potato.  I will be setting some aside for her to make sure they remain plain – no adding butter, sugar or whatever else can be added to them.  First veggie to come on the weekend! Looking forward to seeing how much she loves or hates it!

How was your first time with introducing solids to your little one? What was their first food? What’s your preference – homemade baby food or store bought baby food and why?  I look forward to hearing your comments and emails! Happy feeding!