What Foods to Introduce to Baby When...

[Fi'sMom]

I am a huge believer in the school of thought by Sally Fallon/Weston A. Price/Nourishing Traditions! They stress introducing egg yolks and liver first and foremost to a baby at 4 months, avoiding all grains for at least a year, and after 6 months, introducing maybe some bananas and avocados, supplementing with Cod Liver Oil, and the such. But then all these other holisitic health baby books tell you to start out with grains, preferably rice. I have a 4 month old baby girl and plan to follow the egg yolk and liver introductions pathway. But I'm just curious as to how these other health professionals can think grains before a year is okay, when a baby doesn't even have the amylase enzyme to digest it. Any thoughts or wisdom from other moms new to this?

[bobandjess99]

uumm..most standardly trained medical professionals are completely wrong about teh vast majority of everything?
Really.....that's the only answer.

[Fi'sMom]

So you're saying, nix all grains for at least a year and go w/ just the traditional animal proteins?

[lindsayjean]

Honestly the one thing I don't like about NT and WAPF is the whole starting food at 4 months- I think babies should be, if at all possible, EBF until 6 months. Why not continue to stress that the breastfeeding mother eat these things? I'd love to see WAPF get more pro-breastfeeding!

[AJP]

Quite a few here (including me) think the WAPF is wrong for pushing the idea that all babies should start eating egg yolks at 4 months. IMO, that's much too early for most babies to get anything except breastmilk (or formula in some cases), and many people find their babies react negatively when they've tried to introduce egg yolk that early (allergic-type reactions, vomiting, etc.). Some babies do okay with it, some need food earlier than others, and I agree grains should be avoided until well past the first birthday, but I don't like their blanket recommendation to start shoveling the egg yolk into every 4-month-old, then start on the liver and cod liver oil right after that. I think that unless there is a compelling reason to start at 4 months with an individual baby (for instance, weight issues, or baby very precocious and grabbing food and stuffing it in their mouth, or a mom unable to breastfeed and wanting to diversify the diet beyond formula), 6 months is a much more reasonable time to start introducing small amounts of food, and be very cautious about the egg. It's a common allergen (including the yolk, not just the white), and some babies just don't do well with it. Watch for rashes, digestive upset, etc.

I think the WAPF is less wrong than the conventional sources that say start with grains like rice, but they need to include cautions about the egg (many moms have posted here in the past, and on other WAP-related nutrition sites and lists about their babies' negative egg yolk experiences) and adjust their recommended age for solids introduction up to at least 6 months.

I actually don't really believe in spoon-feeding babies much of anything. I think solids should start when they're physically ready to pick up small chunks of soft food by themselves, and have lost the gag reflex enough that they can chew a soft chunk and swallow it - soft veggies and fruits, very small pieces of well-stewed meat (soft enough to smash easily and that won't choke them), cooked egg, etc. I think the bulk of a baby's nutrition prior to one year should be coming from the breastmilk of a well-nourished mom. Any nutritional benefit from giving the baby egg yolk or liver or cod liver oil, as the WAPF recommends, could just as well come from mom's milk if she's getting those nutrients.

[tankgirl73]

I actually don't really believe in spoon-feeding babies much of anything.

Ditto. I followed "baby-led weaning" which is trusting your baby to regulate her own intake of solids. That means everything from how much, to what kinds. If she wants to eat toast, then I trust that it means her body is ready for grains (whatever the 'experts' say -- they are not her!) If she refuses tomatoes, then I trust that it's not the right food for her at that time. And if she can't pick it up and eat it by herself, without it being mushed up into oblivion and spoonfed, then she shouldn't have it. Etc etc.

Eating is such a fundamentally essential element of human survival, that as a species we'd never have gotten very far if we couldn't just trust our own instincts as to what we should eat. Now our cultural eating habits have gotten so out of whack that, as adults, we often need lots of guidance to try to 'fix' it -- such as NT. But the babies haven't yet been 'ruined' by this lol... and it's quite fascinating to observe how they will make healthy, logical choices, all on their own!

[Ghislaine]

Oooh, great thread!

While I follow NT for the most part, I hadn't gotten around to reading the recommendations for infant feeding because I'm only now pregnant with my first. I hadn't realized the recommendation started at 4 months!

I did know that egg yolk was first but since I'm severely allergic to eggs I knew that one was going to be put off!

[Attached Mama]

Just remember, the most "traditional food" for any baby under one year is breast milk. They don't "need" anything other than breast milk for pretty much the entire first year of life. It's the most calorie dense, nutrient dense, fat dense food they can get.

In the past they wouldn't likely have eaten any specially made baby foods - just whatever pre-chewed foods mama gave them and whatever from dinner was already soft enough to be gummed by them.

I think soft fruits make a lot more sense than liver and eggs and will do that with our next one just as I did with dd who is now 3. Then I'll skip the grains I did the first time and try some egg or liver. But the eggs and liver will likely be after a year old. DD didn't actually like any sort of dairy or eggs til she was 18 mos old. She did eat grains and lots of rice and beans type things between a year and 18 mos. We weren't TF'ers then. Mostly she breastfed a ton til 18 mos when she slowed down a bit. She has always been super healthy which I credit largely to all the breastmilk.

[homewithtwinsmama]

blasphemy

I follow NT but I have to say that I think SF is completely wrong about her advice about breastfeeding, supplementing and first foods. Weston A Price did not see traditional peoples giving goat milk formula with fifteen fancy expensive added supplements OR liver OR egg at 4 months old. Her "advice" is all about her failure to breastfeed and need to validate what she chose to do. Sad.

In traditional cultures babies were breastfed a long time and then typically would be given chewed up food the mama was eating starting with whatever traditional gruel type grain eaten in that culture. I have awesome eggs that I have no trouble eating raw in foods, but I am not risking salmonella with a 14 lb four month old. I have one sitting in my lap right now and she is in no way shape or form ready for solids. She is my sixth child and only one child was even remotely ready for solids before 9 months. My holistic ped who keeps up on the research recommended I wait on grains because of a family history of diabetes and current lit suggesting early grain feeding contributing to development of diabetes. So we started with avocado and peas and sweet potato. Followed by some fruits and cooked proteins. Grains all given after one year starting with rice and quinoa and then trying other grains slowly.