Moving to Solids, Or

Moving to Solids, or, How to Make Your Kitchen a Much Messier Place

This is a set of random memories of feeding Benjamin solid foods over the past year or so. You can take it as advice, but always be sure to consult your pediatrician.

Melissa and I started Benjamin on solid food when he was about 3.5 months old; he always had a very healthy appetite, and was sucking down milk and formula like he was never sure he’d get another meal. (i.e., the “books” say at that age babies eat 30-40oz per day, breast-milk drinkers slightly more since it’s a bit thinner than formula, but Benjamin regularly consumed 50oz per day.) At this age Benjamin had already doubled his birth weight.

I’ve heard that breast milk (or formula) is all a baby needs during the first year of life. Is that true? Yes, that’s true. Don’t worry if your kid doesn’t take to solids “on schedule.” However, introducing solids helps your baby prepare for transitioning to adult food and eating habits, and also introduces additional vitamins and minerals to her diet. Also, your baby will likely sleep longer and more consistently at night. Finally, it’s fun to feed your baby with a spoon, and to watch the reactions to new and varied tastes and textures.

But what about allergies? Allergies can be a concern, because for some foods there is a correlation between how early they are introduced and the probability of being allergic to that food. Chief among these are peanuts and other tree nuts, followed by shellfish, acidic citrus fruits, and chocolate. Consult your pediatrician or the web for a list. On the other hand, there are dozens of other foods that are nonallergenic, beneficial, and fun to eat. Do proceed catiously when introducing new foods, trying them one at a time for a few days to make sure there’s no adverse reactions. Some your baby might not be allergic to, but it still might upset her stomach, or she just might not like the taste or texture. Medicines such as antibiotics can interfere with digestion. Again, only your pediatrician is really qualified to diagnose whether your baby is or is not allergic to a particular food.

How do you know when your baby is ready for solids? Usually when she’s been sleeping well for a while, but starts drinking more during the day, waking up more at night. This is usually a sign of hunger and happens sometime between three and six months of age, depending on the baby’s development and temperament. Yes, pediatricians will say that there’s no relation between how much you feed your baby at the evening meal and how well they sleep at night. Every experienced parent will tell you differently. A nice full tummy leads to a comfortable and happy and sleeping baby, and happier parents. The day after we started rice cereal at night Benjamin started sleeping a regular 10 hours straight.

Where do you start in feeding solids? As mentioned above, a baby’s first solid food is almost always rice cereal, thinned by lots of milk or formula. It may take her some days to get used to taking food from a spoon (Benjamin took about five minutes before he started leaning towards us with his mouth open, looking like a baby bird), but keep trying. Some pediatricians recommend adding an ounce or so of water to your baby’s diet once she starts having solids, in order to help the digestion. As she gets used to being spoon-fed, add more rice cereal to the mixture to make it thicker.

How often should I feed my baby solids? Once per day, at the beginning. We fed Benjamin at dinnertime to start getting him used to eating with the family, and to help him sleep with his bedtime bottle. After a week of the once-per-day, we added a morning feeding, and a few weeks after that fed him lunch as well. We tried to have him eat when and where we eat, so he becomes used to the environment and the routine. I’ve read that some parents like to have the first feeding in the morning or noontime, since their baby is most active and awake then, but the time of day doesn’t really matter. Benjamin always liked watching us bustle around the kitchen, preparing our food and his food.

What comes next after rice cereal? After a few weeks of only rice cereal, we added mashed banana to the morning meal, and then applesauce about a week after that. Both went down really well. Introduce new foods slowly, and repeatedly, as sometimes it takes a few tries for your child to get used to the taste or texture. Benjamin was always really quick to take to new foods, but I’ve heard that’s more of an exception.

What do babies eat later on? By six months, Benjamin was eating strongly and healthily a wide variety of foods: rice cereal, bananas, applesauce, peas, sweet potatoes, carrots, and even broccoli (something that most babies don’t like because of its strong taste). A month more and he was eating green beans, blueberries, peaches, pears, plums, and more. Benjamin was probably a little earlier on solids than most kids.

Can you make your own baby food? Yep! Easy and cheaper than jarred food, in some cases. And you have some added satisfaction at knowing exactly what your kid is eating, and less worried about allergies and “fillers” that could be in Gerber jars. For example:

Joel’s Pureed Carrots Recipe: Take a bunch of carrots. Peel and chop into big pieces. Steam for maybe ten minutes. Throw into a blender and puree. Add water to the blender until you achieve the desired consistency. Pour into ice-cube trays and freeze. Crack the tray and store in labeled freezer bags. To use, put a cube or two into a microwave-safe bowl and heat until melted.

Adjust the amount of pureeing and added water to make as thick or chunky food you want. Yams (sweet potatoes) work well, microwaving them until they’re mushy. You should peel them first, though. Peas work well; green beans are a bit tougher and tended not to puree as smoothly as others. Broccoli worked well but has a strong flavor that some babies don’t like. Cauliflower also works well. And when your baby is hungry enough to eat multiple cubes at a meal, you can mix flavors to your heart’s delight. I found sweet potatoes tended to make green beans and broccoli more palatable. Buying a couple extra ice-cube trays and freezing the homemade puree worked great, and I recommend that to anyone willing to try it.

Fruits are more problematic. Bananas work but just buy whole ones and mash them with a fork, cheaper than the jarred stuff, and you can make banana bread with the leftovers.  But peaches and pears were more of a pain, to make sure they were the appropriate ripeness and to remove the pits. I tried those a few times, but we eventually decided to buy the fruit-food in jars rather then making them at home. Melissa liked the “Earth’s Best” organic (expensive!) variety, whereas I was happy enough with Gerber. Debate this one with your spouse.

How does eating solids affect milk or formula consumption? Not much, really. Up until nine months or so, most of a baby’s calories are drunk rather than eaten. Solids are more for “dessert” or companionship and imitating their parents. Don’t worry about “healthy” food at the moment, as breast milk or formula is far more sugary and fatty than anything you could feed them off a spoon. Most of their calories still come from milk or formula rather than solids. After nine months, liquid consumption will decrease and solid consumption will increase. Your baby will be taking in fewer calories, but she won’t be growing at such a breakneck pace anymore, either. What stuff do babies start eating other than pureed or jarred foods? Benjamin had cheerios at seven or eight months, non-allergenic and great for practicing fine-motor skills. He started crackers at around eight months, too, despite not having any teeth yet. Those gum ridges can be hard. About nine or ten months he started a great craving for anything bread-like, from our plates, and he continues that love to this day. Since Melissa comes from Italian stock, we eat a fair amount of pasta, and Benjamin loves spaghetti and lasagna with tomato sauce, starting at nine or ten months. Yogurt and cottage cheese are also good spoon-foods for babies; Benjamin’s regular breakfast was applesauce, yogurt, and banana for five months straight. Deli cheese slices and later cheese sticks. Some like baked beans or oatmeal. Bread, biscuits, or crackers can be good teething toys; small-chopped hot dogs can be good, but watch for choking hazards. Heck, for Benjamin’s first birthday, he devoured a fresh-made blueberry muffin, which was better than any cake we could get anyway!

What’s the goal of all this, anyway? By about 12 or 13 months, your baby should be “eating what you eat.” Generally able to eat the same stuff you’re preparing for your own dinner, which ought to inspire you to eat more healthily! Around 13 months Benjamin spent most of his meals eating with his hands, rather than taking anything spoon-fed, and we stopped feeding him any baby food around then. We introduced sippy-cups at 10 or 11 months and kept them up more and more, switching completely to milk, water, and occasionally juice in them by 13 months, and stopped the bottle cold-turkey a little after 13 months.

Benjamin’s 15 months now, and he pretty much eats what we do, with a few additions and subtractions, since things like salads are tough without molars. Our next tasks are to (a) teach Benjamin to feed himself with a spoon (he likes to hold it vertically and watch the food fall off it) and (b) teach him to be a little neater, as his preferred method of letting us know he’s done is to start throwing food on the floor!