Introducing Solid Foods

I talked about moving on to solid foods here, but wanted to offer some quick tips to make this transition (once your child is ready for it) as smooth as possible.

First of all, it's important to make sure that your child isn't hungry--especially at that first feeding. Remember that formula needs to remain your child's main source of nutrition for the first year--and, of course, never to feed your child cereal with a bottle.

The next thing to remember is, of course, routine. If you've been here very long, you had to know that was coming :) Try to feed your baby the same amount of cereal at the same time each day. I like to mix mine with a little formula (about 1/2 a scoop) so that the flavor is familiar. I don't know if this helps or not, but Boo seems to like it.

These last two I stole from my friend Christy:
1) A few weeks before you introduce solids, give your baby some supervised play-time with a spoon. I found out recently, that this is actually a good indicator that your baby is ready to start solid foods: if she can reach out, grab an object and stick it in her mouth, she's probably ready to eat!

2) Starting cereal is a milestone for your baby and a messy adventure for the mommy. The baby will instinctively stick out their tongue with every bite, pushing the cereal back out onto their chin and so the mess begins. To help my kiddos learn to swallow the cereal and get the motion down quickly I've come up with a little trick. I give a bite and then very quickly stick in a pacifier for them to suck on. The cereal goes down much easier with less mess. My son started cereal 5 days ago and we've used this trick with him. He is doing great and we'll likely stop using the pacie in a few days as he's already trained himself to keep his tongue in and swallow the food down. I will likely have to pull this out of the trick bag again when introducing fruits and veggies as the texture is different. But that's okay! I'm all about less mess...

You ask...what if my child doesn't take a pacie? No worries! Neither did my second daughter. In fact, she's a thumb sucker (even still at 3 1/2 years old) and had the instinct to put her thumb in her mouth while eating...even messier than usual! The pacifier trick still worked. Babies are used to sucking on something when eating. The pacifier is acting as a bottle or breast would.

There you have it...try it out and see if your meal times are cleaner than before!