Big. Day. Lily had her first taste of solid food Saturday, and it was a hit! I wrote earlier about our process figuring out if Lily was ready for solids. We decided to wait until she was sitting up mostly unsupported at six months. Well, the week before we were going to give her solids, the local moms email list exploded with a conversation about "baby led weaning," which is where you give baby large pieces of food an allow her to feed herself. I went into food ready to make purees. I had tried to feed Lily some slushy breastmilk and breastmilk fat with a spoon in the weeks prior, as suggested by Kellymom.com to stave off a baby clamemering to get real food in her mouth before she is ready, but Lily did not care for that. She loved to eat the spoon, but did not like eating food off of a spoon. Lily took one look at the first banana, and put that shiz-nit in her mouth.
Going into this, we have several beliefs about the food that Lily should eat:
- Organic, non-gmo food. She will eventually be exposed to crap, but we'd like her digestive system to mature with the best food possible.
- We don't eat cereal. It's too processed. We don't eat cereal.
- We may do oatmeal, but I don't want to start feeding her food with a spoon before she can really try to feed herself with it.
- No jarred baby food.
- No frozen food.
- Occasional juice. Not much.
Day two was avocados and chicken. She was so/so about the avocado. She didn't seem to like the taste, but she loved trying to eat it. The chicken was probably a bad call. She really liked the taste, but she could pull off pieces that we felt she might swallow. We decided it was best to wait until she really got the hang of chewing.
It was obvious by this time that we still had more to read before expanding into more advanced foods. I had no idea that folks were allergic to strawberries. We went to a bookstore and picked up the book that my friend had, Super Baby Food, because there was a chart and it laid out foods by month. It talks about allergies and other stuff that we need to know before going forward, but it basically says to only give purees now and mashed food until a year, which is totally opposite of what we're doing now. It also says bland is best, but the BLW moms mentioned that spicy early was all right. All of this parenting stuff is so confusing. For every piece of advice, there is an equally contradicting piece of advice, and we're all left to sort it out for ourselves. I think that what is best for Lily is figuring out what foods we can eat with her together and when we're out, because she is very excitedly trying to grab it out of our hands. If I had let her, she would have eaten bacon, eggs, and a cheeseburger in the past 24 hours.
And, I have read a few places to introduce a new food every few days, but we totally blew that out of the water. This because you can better pinpoint an allergic reaction to something. Maybe it's stupid parenting, but I really don't think it's best for our family to wait a few days. The thought of the effort to get bananas or avocados that are just the right ripeness in the proper succession is enough to drive me bonkers. She loves to taste different things, and she's so alert and over ready for solids that I think she'll get bored if we do the same thing too many days in a row. Reactions to food can happen immediately, within a few hours, within a few days, or within a week or two. When I was trying to figure out what was making Lily gassy, I had just about driven us nuts. If she has a reaction to something, then we'll do an elimination diet.
Day three, this morning, was steamed carrots. She really liked those, too. She also has a banana and more avocado for the afternoon. After watching some BLW videos where different foods are offered every day, I don't feel like such an idiot. We may be giving her strips that are too small. Instead of quartering the carrots, I should have them, maybe.
She really enjoys feeding herself. Food is a great experience for us so far. She is figuring out how to chew the food. Most of it comes back out of her mouth at this point. But, you put that food down on the tray, and it's in her mouth.
The rule of thumb (pun intended) that I was told was that solid foods up to age 1 year should be smaller than the pink part of your pinkie finger. Anything larger than that can be a choking hazard until about age 3 (although starting around age 18 months, they can do some chewing on their own). I'll need to check, but we did rice puree (with herbs and spices and pureed fruit from the CSA) exclusively until at least 9 months. From that point on, we did three months of targeted puree combinations--going from least allergenic items to most allergenic items. (So strawberries, eggs, soy, fish, wheat, etc. were toward the 1-year mark.) We waited on honey until after age 2 and tree nuts until after 18 months. As long as you know how to do the Heimlich maneuver for an infant and are very observant during feeding, you can let the child drive some of the exploration of new foods. When in doubt, put some of what you're serving on your tongue and try to mash it up just using your tongue and the roof of your mouth. If it is hard to do, then it will be impossible for your kid.
ReplyDeleteFor juice, we tend to do 1/3 juice to 2/3 water to keep sugar levels down. You can even go lower than that (1/4:3/4) because she won't know that she's missing flavor.