newbie question, introducing foods to 6 mo old purely breastfed babe???

[lotta_earth]

My son is 100% BF but starting to grab for our food. I should mention that he does not like the bottle though may occasionally take my milk from a sippy cup with a soft top. I know it is good to add a bit of the new food to the breast milk but since he doesn't take the bottle well, that makes it difficult. Any suggestions?

He breast feeds every 2 hours day and night. So it seems he is digesting the milk really fast and since he seems interested in food (until you give it to him) I wanted to try to start. Of course I plan on continuing to BF him the first couple of years, if possible.

He started going for the food while we were on vacation, so while traveling I gave him banana which at first loved, sucking off my fingers and swallowing, avocado and grape. Once home tried banana again and apple, those seem to be ok to suck on but not really to eat. Seems he likes it best as a piece of food, not mashed and no spoon. We try to let him play with it with his fingers which he does, but he does not put them in his mouth afterward, so the food is everywhere but in his mouth.

There are so many different opinions on what foods to start with etc. I come from the point of view that whole foods are the way to eat/live and my husband has allergies so I know we are not to give him cow milk or wheat for the first year (and maybe more that I don't know about). He likes to suck on the hard crust of bread, which is probably not good and it seems odd to start a baby on grains. But this is the one thing he will take on his own and likes.

I know not to change for at least 4 days before introducing a new food. We tried carrots for a week, then carrots and potatoes for about a week, neither he is thrilled about. He spits it out, and only very little actually goes down.

Sorry to go on and on, but I am looking for suggestions.
Thanks!
Carlotta

[Juvysen]

I'm not sure what you're looking for. Suggestions on what foods to feed the baby? or methods of feeding the baby?

I give my 6 month old whatever kind of (squishy) food in one of those net feeders and let him have at. He likes it because he can feed himself - he just sits there and gnaws on it. So far I've only done banana and avocado with him, but with my older kids around this age I was putting things like (frozen, then thawed) peas and corn and carrots in the net feeder thing.

As for "what", have you read "real food for babies and moms" by Nina Planck? It's pretty good and has a good amount of info for that...

[IsaFrench]

I would say anything from your plate that's squishy enough, minus what your DH is allergic to (although some doctors would have you introduce some of the potential allergens on a trial basis in a certain window of time , after 6 months of age but before a certain age, this is second hand knowledge picked from friends who eat wheat free because the dad is cealiac, ... but am not 100% convinced that their doctor's advice is the best/most researched ....)

[cristeen]

Grains are best left to 18 mos, since they can't digest them before that.

Raw apples are a choking hazard, stick w something soft like banana or avocado. My guy loves bits of peeled plum.

As for none of the food making it into his mouth, thats totally normal. This is how they develop the skill - practice. I limited the mess by only giving him 3 or 4 bites of food on his tray. That way, whether he ate them, smeared them on his face or threw them to the floor, it wasnt a huge mess to clean up. I also stripped him down to his dipe before feeding for months to minimize laundry. I think it took maybe a month for him to figure out self-feeding, and another few to get really good. At a year, i dont have to worry about the floor anymore, and rarely about the clothes. And if he starts smearing now, he's telling me he's done.

We didnt do purees at all. He'll eat yogurt if i stir it up w some Chopped fruit, and i have to weild the spoon. But everything else he gets is chunky.

[Llyra]

Egg yolk is a good early food, if you can get good pastured eggs, or even commercially raised organic eggs. I used to hard boil them, and remove the yolk, and wet it with a bit of breastmilk to get a nice texture, and then offer them little bits on my finger. Mashed sweet potato is also really nice at this age-- I mashed it with breastmilk in the early months of trying solids. You can also finely mill meat in a food mill and mash it with some stock or some milk-- slow-cooked or pot-roasted meats are nice for this.

It's normal for them to not actually eat very much of it. They seem interested, because they're naturally curious about what this activity is that we all seem to spend so much time on and seem to enjoy so much-- namely, eating. But their bodies aren't really ready to take in much, and the lack of skill they have in actually getting much into their mouths, and swallowing it, keeps them from eating more than they're really ready to digest. I think we kinda override this process with too much spoon feeding-- so I went with tiny bits off my finger or off my plate, until mine got older. Then we started spoon-feeding stuff like oatmeal and yogurt, that don't lend themselves well to eating with hands.

[cristeen]

Double post

[lotta_earth]

thanks, I like the idea of the net feeder. I will have to look for those as well as the book.

[JMJ]

I really wouldn't worry if he's not eating much. Your breast milk is all he really needs for the first year. Most traditional cultures did not introduce solids as early as we do in ours, and most babies did not eat very much food at all before a year. Some cultures didn't feed babies much food until 2 years. My 18 month old began taking tiny bites of things around 7 1/2 months, progressed slowly, and still gets most of her calories through breastfeeding. If your diet is good and you have a good milk supply, breast milk is the best real food you could be giving him.

If he is spitting it out, that may be a sign that he is not really ready for solids. There is really no need to push the issue since he doesn't need it. It's just fun to experiment, but it will still be fun to experiment whenever you do introduce solids. If you put food into his mouth, and he pushes it out immediately, that it called the tongue-thrust reflex. It is what babies do to prevent choking by pushing food out of their mouth before they are ready to handle swallowing it. If you wait until he can pick it up and put it in his mouth by himself, it will be safer for him, and you'll have more reassurance that his gut is ready for the food. If you give him large chunks of food (too big to choke on), he can control his own bite sizes and save you a lot of work. Look up Baby-Led Weaning for more information.

As far as what foods to introduce, you'll have an easier time introducing sweeter foods, but in the long run, that could be detremental to your child's health. I think it is very important in the early stages of introducing solids to young children when it really doesn't matter if they eat solids or not to give them the option between whole nourishing foods and breast milk only. I would avoid grains completely for a while and be very careful with fruit. Vegetables and animal products should be the bulk of your child's solid food diet for a while, perhaps with a little bit of fruit. Certainly, avoid all processed foods and sugar.

Some great ideas for first foods, TF style, for self-feeding:
-meat: cut into long strips that he is unable to bite off. He can gnaw on it and suck out the juices. Cook steaks to medium rare or less for best absorption of nutrients.
-liver: same as other meat, choose grassfed
-vegetables cut into long pieces: carrot sticks, spears of broccoli, sweet potato fries, etc. Steam them until they are soft, or if you want to go even more TF, saute or roast them in your favorite fat.
-fermented vegetables: children can absorb the nutrients more easily from fermented vegetables than raw vegetables.
-fruit: choose fruits high in nutrients, and avoid the temptation to fill in with fruit if he doesn't eat "enough" other foods.
-egg yolks: choose pastured eggs and either hard-boil or fry until the yolks are solid enough to separate from the whites.
-a little bit later: cheese, fish

Ideas for early foods that you'd probably need to feed him:
-broth
-yogurt
-cod liver oil

[tankgirl73]

You should read up on "Baby-Led Weaning" -- which does NOT mean "weaning" as in "stopping bfing", it's the UK usage of the word which refers to the process of shifting from BM to solid food, weaning starts with the first solid food and stops when BF stops, whether that's a few months or a few years later.

Anyway, Gill Rapley is the pioneer in making this into a "method" with common-sense guidelines for parents unfamiliar with the idea, and the research to back it up -- though on the whole it's just common sense, following-the-baby's-own-instincts feeding.

In a nutshell, if baby is reaching for foods, let her. Trust that her own development is driving the instinct to try other foods. A lot of it at this age is about exploration, taste, discovery, texture, rather than about "nutrition" so it really does not matter what they eat or whether any at all gets ingested.

Even apples are acceptable quite early on. The "choking hazard" is a legitimate concern, but overblown. The fact is that younger babies have a gag reflex which is quite far forward in their mouths. This protects the airway while they are learning how to chew and move food around in their mouths. If any food starts to head to the back of the mouth when they're not expecting it, they gag and the food comes out. This can look quite scary (and sometimes disgusting lol), but it is VERY different from choking, in fact it is PREVENTING choking. And it doesn't mean they're "not ready", it just means their natural defense is working.

One of the potential disadvantages of spoon-feeding and mushing everything up is that it can bypass the gag reflex, and they don't have the chance to learn to chew and use their tongues to move food around while that mechanism is still in place. As they get older, the gag reflex recedes further back into the 'normal' location... by which point they've learned how to deal with food safely. If they've been given the chance to practice.

Also with BLW, you really don't have to worry much about what foods they're getting. You just offer from your own dinners -- your own healthy dinners of course. With baby in the lead, following their own instincts, they'll take as much or as little as is appropriate for them at that point in time. And breastmilk is their primary source of nutrition still, so it really doesn't matter if the food is super-high in nutrients, etc. Of course those are GOOD FOODS to choose! But it's not something to WORRY about, IFKWIM.

My daughter's first food was steamed broccoli and asparagus spears. She quickly moved to pears and apples, then spicy curries and roast chicken and pizza. By 7-8mo she was actually swallowing and ingesting, after mostly just tasting and experimenting before then. She always, always fed herself. The most we ever did was help her with the spoon when she was having yogurt, oatmeal, or soup. By 9-10mo she was adept at using the spoon by herself. She always just ate from our dinners, gradually eating more and more -- we never measured it or scheduled anything in particular. By 15-18mo or so she was eating full, regular meals, but still nursing frequently, and in fact she nursed until she was 3.5yo.

http://www.baby-led.com/ -- lots of info there to get you started.