Help me choose the next solid to trial

[pedi08]

DS is BF almost 8m and non IgE to milk/soy. Doing fantastic though. At about 5th percentile in weight but was 2m early. I've been trialing foods a bit longer than maybe I should, I give DS 6-7 days of one food. So far he's done great with avocado and sweet potato. We trialed pears 2 days but he had green poo, my hunch was he ate too much, he LOVED it and was leaning in, opening his mouth and grabbing for it so I think I gave him too much so I'll wait to reintroduce that one. I was thinking of doing either carrots or peaches or banana next, any suggestions? I have not seen peaches at WF so that is why I was thinking banana. I mixed the sweet pot and avocado, he liked that too.
Side note, tell me is 2 table spoons a day too much? He never shows he wants to stop, he opens his mouth, says "ah, ah" reaches etc etc. I measure out 2 tablespoons and either give it 1x am and 1x pm or at one sitting. He'd eat waaaay more. I know its just for taste/texture and not to replace feedings/nutrition but if I'm following his lead he's telling me more! more!

Also, its all pureed, when do I change the textures? Do I need to go thru a ton of different foods first?

[tanyalynn]

Have you considered a meat? I encouraged meat early for the iron and zinc. We like meatballs, they could be as simple as just ground meat (okay, not sure if you'd need a binder, and eggs, while lovely nutritionally, may be iffy--though your list of bad foods is short, so they could be fine, you'd need to trial them separately and I'm not sure how great an idea it would be that young with an already-allergic child)... wow, what a horrible run-on sentence. Anyway, point being, have you considered a red meat?

[pedi08]

no i haven't considered a red meat, i was thinking still fruits/veggies.

[4Blessings]

DD has no known allergies at this point but her older sib does. We are intro'ing very slowly.
Have you check out this and this?

I agree that trying meat would be a logical next step. I used ground lamb when DD was seven months old. Just cooked it in a small amount of water and gave her small pieces. She has always insisted on feeding herself

[pedi08]

even though he only has had puree sweet pot and avocado? really? ground meat? he's gum that? maybe i should give him pieces of other fruit/veg first to work up to that texture? like stema carrot and give him a small chunk?

[4Blessings]

If you are worried about him handling the texture you could put the meat through a food mill/food processor/blender to make it a puree by adding a little bit of water to it.
If you want to stick to veggies or fruit, cooked carrot or squash are good choices.

[waluso]

I agree with the recommendation to go with meat. If you are worried about texture you could use broth. My DD is now eating avocado and carrots and I plan to introduce chicken next, but I will start with chicken broth.

[pedi08]

Ok, avocado, sweet pot, carrots and banana all trialed and ok. Pear produced a big green poop, its probably find but I'll try pear again later.

Lamb and Rabbit aren't really something we eat, could I introduce chicken or turkey? If so which? I buy either a organic chicken or turkey each week, would I just take some of the meat ground it up and serve? Thats it.

What age can he statr just getting the food as is without grounding, pureeing, mashing etc. After one?

[tanyalynn]

Well, I did the pureed type foods only with my first child, with my 2nd I waited til he was interested in solids and able to self-feed (mostly self-feed, when he wanted more and he was having a hard time with coordination, I'd put it in his mouth), which wasn't til he was close to 8 months old (though I can understand possibly needing to do it differently for a preemie, with the higher risk of not enough iron stores), but I just shredded meat a bit for him, or gave him pieces of food that were reasonably soft. Ground meat, say a piece of a meatball or something, should be very reasonable. My son mostly sat in my lap and helped himself at that age. I had purchased a food mill when he was a little infant just so that we could bypass the jarred baby food thing, and then I never used the thing, not once.

[pedi08]

Does anyone know what age in the jarred foods like gerber they start giving them things that are not pureed? Actually I'll go to those websites and ask. Its that my friends are so unhelpful they did not make their own baby food and any question I ask gets a zing response. Nice right? I just want to know when I should expect him to have a piece of banana or piece of soft chicken without mashing it, he has no teeth.

[kjbrown92]

I was told if you can mash something between your fingers or between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, it's okay. Their gums are very hard at that point just for mashing purposes. You can make meatballs without eggs (I do it all the time!) but those are probably too big. I second the broth idea. He could drink it in a sippy cup or bottle if you want. And then if that food is okay, you could do carrots or squash cubes cooked in the broth.