Ebf

[zapzipzee]

I'm not sure exactly where to post this, we're no where near the "beyond" as we haven't even started yet, but I am curious.

When did "Exclusive" BF stop, or when did you introduce food. Did you make baby food or did you BF long enough to skip that period?

For now, our goal is through the first year, but I'm not sure how much of that should be exclusive.

Thanks!

[~Demeter~]

I think I started introducing foods when my kids showed a marked interest in what I was eating. My daughter really had no interest in food other than exploration until she was closer to 2. She didn't eat a lot until I became pregnant and my supply dropped, then she started consuming her calories through solids. She's healthy, rarely gets ill and has a good appetite.

I think for her she started nibbling on foods around 9 mos, but I would still have declared her EBF because I don't think she got much from the solids she ate. I could be wrong though...

[moondiapers]

I wait until they are sitting up unassisted, have the pincer grasp for self feeding, and are getting/have at least one tooth. For DD1 this was 7 months, for DS it was 11 months. DD2 is still too little to know yet.

We totally skip purreed foods though. I dice up soft fruits and steamed veggies and let them self feed.

[mambera]

DD snarfed a quarter of my MIL's lunch when MIL briefly left her unattended next to the plate. That's when we started solids - she was 5.5 mo. (Btw she is now 11 mo and still doesn't have any teeth.)

[Baby_Cakes]

We totally skipped the pureed food stage here. We did Baby Led Weaning, where I exclusively breastfed Nora until she was about 7-8 months old, and then we let her play with soft table foods and feed herself. She didn't really start eating anything for months, but she got to experience the taste and texture of roasted vegetables, soft fruits, etc.

[Shanny2032]

We did exactly what baby cakes did and took it very slow for the first few months particularly because she had some food sensitivities. In the beginning it was a lot of banana, applesauce, avocado, sweet potatoe and cooked carrots. We did baby cereal once or twice and realized it was pretty pointless. My daughter is a wonderful eater at 18 months she eats what I eat and we have yet to enter any pickiness and she still loves her mama milky too.

[lifeguard]

We started solids at about 7 months. Ds was ready before that (sitting up, pincer grasp, interest, etc.) but we were living in limbo at the time & I just didn't want anything else to complicate life. We never did purees at all - spoon feeding just is not my idea of fun, plus ds had a hoot feeding himself.

I think it's one of those things you just go with the flow & figure out what works for you as you go. I would not have thought I'd be so reluctant feeling towards food until I got to that point & then was kind of sad to no longer be ds' sole source of nourishment.