Is my 5-month-old ready to try solids already?

[ACsMom]

She has no teeth, but she's VERY interested in food, watches people eat and licks her lips and imitates chewing to the point where you feel guilty eating in front of her. My husband let her suck on a skinned apple the other day and she LOVED it. He had trouble getting it away from her.

My older one never did any of this. She was completely uninterested in food until she was 10 months old, so I never had to worry about whether I was starting solids too early. And she didn't get a single tooth until 13 months, so I don't expect to be able to use that as a gauge of readiness for solids with my little one.

We have one of those mesh things with the plastic handle that you can put a piece of fruit or something for the babe to nosh on - should I try a little avocado or banana in that thing? I really don't know how to tell if her digestive system is ready for food. Just because she wants it doesn't mean her body is ready, kwim? Or that's my concern, anyway. What do you guys think? She's exclusively bf, btw, if that wasn't obvious from my post.

[Jaesun's Dad]

Our guy (4 days older than yours) is doing the same thing. We aren't in a rush to introduce solid but we're going to start soon. He stares at us longingly while we eat. Not in a "oh please finish and hug me" way but "hmmm ... what's you got mom? What's that dad? Can I have some too!" way. He imitates the chewing motion when he sees us doing it too. Our son's teeth are definitely coming in, too. Many sources I've read say four months you can start, others say wait until six months. AAP recommends six months exclusive BF. But I think if our kids are showing an interest now at five, it's definitely between 4 and 6 and it might be time just to introduce them to something else. Of course they'll still mostly BF for a while still. We feel the guilt too ...

[pumpkinhead]

At 5 months a baby will stare longingly at a telephone cord and make whining noises until you give it to him and 9 times out of 10, it will go directly into his mouth. This doesn't mean he is ready to eat the telephone cord .

It's a stage when babies are really interested in what we are doing and will imitate pretty much any action we are doing. I'd give it another month. You can try giving her a spoon to play with at meal times, or if you really want to give her something, try a breastmilk slushie with a spoon or some ice chips in a mesh feeder. You could do bm in a sippy as well.

[pumpkinhead]

I don't think that when they get teeth has much to do with when they're ready to eat. My youngest cut his first tooth at 16 months and the oldest didn't have his first til 10 months.

[ACsMom]

Breastmilk slushie....what a great idea!!

[Nicole730]

We just bought an ice cream maker, and if I could get myself to pump enough milk, I'd totally slush some up in there for DD.

[ellairiesmom]

we made bm ice cubes for the mesh feeder & started trying that this week while we eat...