We began introducing Lucas to solids shortly before he turned 6 months and it has been going great. His pediatrician recommends offering a new food every 5-7 days (I had thought it was every 3-5 days so we apparently met in the middle at 5 days). If you think about it...that really isn't many foods - like 5 new foods a month! Whenever he starts a new food he gets this really concerned look on his face while he processes the flavor and then he usually gags. But then he keeps eating and by the end of the meal he no longer gags. I do have some questions about this every 5 day thing...I have heard prunes and pears help digestion...so what happens when he gets 5 days of prunes or pears? Is he going to be a pooping machine? And does this one new food every 5 days include things like cereal and juice? I think I may give the pediatrician a call...I had decided a long time ago that I wanted to make all of Luke's baby food for a few reasons...
- I like to cook and it is a way for me to learn more about different veggies and fruits I am not familiar with (how to pick them, prepare them, what they taste like, etc.). Hopefully this will help me incorporate them into the entire family diet as I learn what Lucas likes
- It is cost effective
- It allows me to know what goes into his food - supposedly more flavorful and nutritionally sound
- It can increase the variety of foods Lucas is introduced to (seriously, there aren't many options in the baby food aisle).
Even though I had all of these reasons, I still started him with Gerber. Ha! Anyway, my first stab at making baby food was butternut squash. I followed the directions in my Annabel Karmel baby food book and voila! Lucas likes it!
I found this great website to help me figure out how to choose and cut up a squashhttp://www.cookthink.com/reference/1016/How_to _choose_a_butternut_squash
Steam or boil for12 minutes - puree to desired consistency using the excess liquid from cooking
Yum! I would eat that myself:)
ReplyDeletePears should be fine, they aren't that bad for improving digestion. My suggestion is with the prunes wait until you have introduced a couple of other foods and don't feed him only prunes. You don't need to do all prunes for 5 days. Mix it with some oatmeal, which slows digestion, or peas or another fruit. You may find that that 5 days gets a bit shorter as he gets older and you get impatient and bored with his food selection. My rule was three days but it's already been shortened a bit. But you just want to be sure you can identify food which may cause an allergy or bother the GI so when it comes time to introduce high allergen foods like wheat, fish, eggs, dairy,etc. I will be waiting an appropriate amount of time. If you do introduce more than one thing just understand if he is bothered by it, rash, loose stools, whatever, you may have to reintroduce each item seperately to find out what was bothering him. That's the only downfall with introducing more than one thing at a time. There is so much opinons around baby food, I was all gung-ho to introduce spices too but the ped. said to keep things bland, which doesn't make sense to me but I'm sticking to bland until I get bored. Honestly once your child starts eating real people food it all goes out the window. It's fun. I really recommend this stick blender I got. Clean up is much easier and you can make smaller quantities like a single avacado or a single mango. Yum! Wes LOVES both of those. You may have just inspired me to list out all the foods Wes has had so far and how I made them.
ReplyDeleteWhen introducing a new food, you can feed him all the foods you have already deemed safe but only introduce a new food every 3-5days...whatever you are doing (I too did 3 days like Nicole). That increases meal variety! Allergens can be like Nicole said, loose pooies, rash, diaper rash etc so just check him out all over :).
ReplyDeleteSuch a cutie :)
Trisha
Watch out for those prunes...they definitely make for messy diapers:)
ReplyDelete