Introducing solids

When Brayden was six weeks old I attended a baby nutrition seminar hosted by the West Durham Family Health Team. Registered Dietitian (and friend), Kori Kostka, presented on topics including breastfeeding, formula feeding, introducing solids, food allergies, food safety and maternal nutrition.
Key take aways from the introduction of solids portion of the seminar include:

• Healthy term infants with adequate iron stores require additional dietary sources by six months of age to support the needs during rapid growth 
• Baby is ready for solids anywhere between the ages of four to seven months of age
• Signs of readiness: 
• able to sit up, alone or with support
• able to close lips over the spoon
• opens mouth when baby sees something coming
• turns head away when no longer interested
• Introduce one single-ingredient new food at a time. By waiting 3-4 days before introducing each new food you will be able to identify any adverse reactions or allergies
• Start with iron fortified infant cereals or single pureed meat
• Start with 2-3 tsp./meal

Armed with this information and more, and under the advisement of our healthcare professional, we began to introduce Brayden to solids at 20 weeks. His first taste of anything other than breast milk was rice cereal. The first brand we choose to introduce was Heinz. (This brand decision was based on a friend's recommendation of what her two kids liked best.) Well, as with everything else, we quickly discovered that not all babies favor the same flavours. Brayden absolutely hated this rice cereal.

We moved on and tried Milupa which he grew fond of quickly, likely due to its vanilla flavour. With further research and in chatting with other mommy friends, I learned that brown rice is actually easier for a baby's developing stomach to digest than white rice. So, we have switched to My Organic Baby which offers a brown rice cereal, barley and oatmeal. Brayden loves this stuff!

A few things we learned in the process of introducing solids are that:

• In the beginning, it's normal for baby to push food out of its mouth. Give it time, this is a completely new texture, mode of feeding and flavour for them;
• Babies need to learn to pull the food to the back of their mouth;
• Gagging is normal. In fact, it protects them from choking. 

After two weeks of offering rice cereal, we moved on to barley and oatmeal. And, once we were comfortable with these introductory cereals, we started to offer vegetables and fruits. We're only a couple weeks in but things are going great! So far we're eating sweet potato, prunes, bananas, sweet peas and zucchini. Stay tuned for a future post updating on our adventures with mommy's making and Brayden's eating of solids!

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