Do babies really 'need' rice cereal when they start solids? - Page 2

[waiting2bemommy]

neither of my kids did the rice/baby cereal thing. I think I tried with ds a few times but I he hated it. My mom claims he would take it from her though, I don't know.

I don't do jar food....I have a food grinder that grinds the food and then I just add some gravy/sauce/water from the pot or just tap water to make it the right consistency. You can put anything in there; it's a hand grinder but I have done pork chops in it! Also really finely grated cheese, mashed banana, avocado, mango and potatoes are some favorite fall back foods. Today 6 month old dd had regular oatmeal & some gerber puffs for breakfast and for lunch she had leftover parmesan chicken (I grated it using a cheese grater into tiny shavings that she could self-feed), banana slices and grated monterey jack cheese.

It is totally pontless to give that baby cereal. The only advantage that I know of is the iron in it, and lots of foods have iron in them...beets for example, spinach and lots of others. I'd rather my baby get her iron from an actual FOOD rather than the processed, "enriched" cereal crap.

We do get baby food and cereal from WIC, and I take it to the consignment store here and trade it in forstore credit to get things I need (like my food grinder to make her "baby food"!)

[waiting2bemommy]

Hey, I feel better now...I thought I was the only person who does that! lol dd prefers to feed herself and everyone thinks i'm insane for letting ehr do it with oatmeal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ck1 

I agree.. NO WAY!  We did Wholegrain Oatmeal over Rice Cereal.  I mixed bananas and steamed apples with it,  And because we just were crazy at the time, I made it extra chunky and just plopped it on his tray and let him go to town using his hands (he refused to let us feed him until he was 9 months old).  You should see the pictures --- what a mess!!!!!  But he's smiling in all of them, and of course he's wearing one of those full coverage plastic bibs (still didn't help). 

DS is 16 months old and has never had rice cereal

[journeymom]

Like others said, our doc recommended rice cereal for the iron. I wondered, is it necessary to push iron if your child isn't anaemic? On the other hand, just because I think it's yucky doesn't mean the baby will.  And I just wouldn't be surprised if a six month old doesn't take to spinach very quickly. 

I got a kick out of giving my babies all kinds of foods, including rice cereal.

[GoBecGo]

thanks to all the link posters - i've had a hard enough time convincing MIL it's "safe" to wait until 6 months before feeding dd2 solids, i've been wondering, given the "i can't WAIT to feed her" comments, how to break the news about BLW to her.  These links came at the perfect time!  I'm printing the very concise leaflet for her!  simple :)

[neverdoingitagain]

I did BLW with my second child. Her first solid food was ground up buffalo meat. After that she got a taste of everything. Never had a problem. 

Meat is a much more viable source of iron than grains, by the way. Something to consider.

[sageowl]

In my experience, no.  I bought some, but naturally the babe was NOT interested (major yuck-face), so we quickly moved on to pears and bananas.  For the longest time I had the box sitting around, then realized it would be a great thing for thickening other foods (like my homemade yogurt).  So now it gets used for that.  Since I need a gluten-free thickener, that works well for me.

But as a first food?  No way.

[CBEmomma]

My Pediatrician told us to skip rice cereal with #1, and we plan to do the same with #2.