Starting Solids: One Mom's Journey, Twice Over

/
life-is-fantastic-1224804-unsplash.jpg

When it came time to start solids with my daughter, I felt very uncertain and overwhelmed. My pediatrician, whom I loved and who always provided me with all of the direction I needed, basically just said, “You can start solids now” and handed me a one-pager with very little info on it. I was like, “Uhhh wait! Which foods do I start with? What order? How much? How often? Hellllp!”

There’s a lot of conflicting information out there and it’s hard to know what to believe. Was it really true that rice cereal could poison my baby? Or that if I started with fruits over vegetables, she would get a sweet tooth? Or that you had to choose baby-led weaning or purées, because if you go back and forth it could cause a higher risk of choking? Or that you have to wait to give them finger food until they have teeth? (Spoiler alert: no, no, no and no.) I just wanted an expert to tell me exactly what to do to get my baby started with solids. Was that too much to ask?

What I’ve come to realize, having been through it now with two kids, is that there’s a reason my pediatrician didn’t provide me with much detailed information. It’s because there really is not any one “right” way to start and progress solids, that it can be different for every baby, and that it doesn’t matter much in the end how you go about it.

People often say, “Try to have fun with it!” And I was like, this is NOT FUN as I was carefully planning what my daughter would eat on which day, making all of her purées from scratch, carving out dedicated time for solids every day, and hosing down both her and the high chair after every meal. But it doesn’t have to be as stressful as I made it out to be with my first, and it actually was kind of fun with my son since I was much more relaxed and already had the hang of it. And also because I purchased all his purées and knew that stage only lasted a short time.

Before I share what I did, let me just preface all of this by saying that I am not a doctor or a nutritionist or a feeding specialist of any kind. This is just one mom’s experience with solids, two times over. If you want to get some tips from actual experts, I recommend the books The Pediatrician's Guide to Feeding Babies and Toddlers: Practical Answers To Your Questions on Nutrition, Starting Solids, Allergies, Picky Eating, and More, Raising a Healthy, Happy Eater: A Parent's Handbook: A Stage-by-Stage Guide to Setting Your Child on the Path to Adventurous Eating, and Cribsheet. For baby food ideas and recipes, I found The Big Book of Organic Baby Food: Baby Purées, Finger Foods, and Toddler Meals For Every Stage, the website BabyFoode.com, and the Instagram account Kids Eat in Color to be very helpful. I also just googled a lot of ideas, like “baby cauliflower patties” or “baby fish cakes” and tried different stuff out. (Side note: my husband & I learned that we loved baby food too.)

So, here’s what I did…

WHEN

You might think this would be a pretty straightforward answer, but of course it’s not (hahaha, you didn’t think this would be that easy, did you?). Most pediatricians say you can start solids between 4 and 6 months, and that it depends on the readiness of the baby (signs like good head control, able to sit pretty well assisted, interest in food, etc.), whereas other sources say to wait until 6 months because it can cause digestive or health problems to start before then. While many people do start as early as 4 months, that seemed crazy early to me and neither of my kids seemed ready, so I waited a bit longer. Our pediatrician suggested starting our daughter around 5 months, but she was still pretty bobble-headed and didn’t seem to be taking to it that well, so we paused and waited another couple weeks. With my son, I waited until he was almost 6 months – partly out of laziness, and partly because I wanted to wait until he was really ready to make it easier on both of us. I started a few days before his 6-month well visit so that I could tell the doctor, YES we have started solids.

WHAT

With my daughter, I started with baby oatmeal per the pediatrician’s suggestion. Baby cereals provide iron, which most exclusively breastfed babies need starting around 6 months. But you can also skip the cereals entirely and go straight to fruits and vegetables, which is what I did with my son – I just made sure to work in some iron-rich foods early on, and his levels tested even better than my daughter’s at his 9-month visit (probably because his favorite foods are meat, meat and meat).

I stuck to one single food every three days for my daughter, but with my son I started mixing foods with low allergy risk pretty early on, which is a more modern suggestion by many pediatricians, and mixing things up every couple days. Here are a few good foods to start with:

  • Avocado

  • Banana

  • Sweet potato

From there, I tried a variety of other fruits and vegetables. My daughter kept making crazy faces at every fruit I’d give her (COME ON, peaches are delicious!), and the first food she actually liked turned out to be peas. She loved all veggies that first year and once chewed on a broccolini stalk for a good half hour. My son also made some faces early on but pretty quickly started liking everything I’d offer him. The first thing he truly loved was a sweet potato and beef purée, and he practically tried to eat the container too.

One good tip is to keep offering foods over and over again, even if they don’t seem to like them or flat-out reject them, because it can take a dozen tries before they actually start liking a particular food. (Try not to get stressed about that, because they can feel your anxiety and it can affect their eating.)

HOW

I used a cheapo Magic Bullet to turn these fruits and veggies into a thin purée (you don’t need a fancy baby food maker), mixed with breastmilk or water, for my daughter; for my son, I mostly just mashed them up (#secondtimemom). I made all of my daughter’s baby food, primarily steaming and then puréeing, since I’d read that was the best way to retain the most nutrients in fruits & veggies. I would make a batch and keep some in the fridge for the next few days in these OXO containers and freeze the rest in these silicone freezer trays. My son started solids right before we decided to move across the country during a global pandemic, so I cut myself some slack and bought all of his purées. Gerber’s makes some single food fruit & veggie varieties that are very thin and good for new eaters, and Earth’s Best has a lot of good options too.

HOW OFTEN

With my daughter, I started very slowly and cautiously, carefully measuring everything out and working solids into her day at optimal times. They’re usually in their best mood and most receptive to new foods in the morning, so I would try it about 45 minutes after her first milk of the day. Generally the advice is to offer milk first and then solids before a year since breastmilk/formula should still be their main source of nutrition; but if the baby really isn’t taking to the solids, sometimes a pediatrician may recommend trying the solids first so they’re more hungry.

With my son, I just sat him down at the high chair whenever we were eating a meal if he was awake, and I either gave him some food or just offered him a teething cracker or a teething toy to hand out with us. I found this a lot easier than carving out dedicated time to feed only him, because it can really feel like the baby’s schedule is taking over your entire day when you’re working in breastfeeding or bottle feeding, solids feeding, naps, etc. The second time around, it just felt like including the baby in our normal meal times since we’d always sit down as a family anyway, at least for breakfast and dinner.

NEXT STEPS

Some people stay on puréed food for months and don’t start introducing finger foods until 8 or 9 months. I started introducing some baby-led weaning (BLW) elements after about a month of solids (my mom, who was visiting at the time, was like “Let’s just try giving her a whole strawberry!”), which it turned out they loved and so we moved on from purées pretty quickly. Win-win, since I found purées to be a pain and so messy. I remember the day I went to pick up my daughter from daycare at 8 months and her teacher said, “She’s over purées; we’re just going to start giving her school lunch.”

One good thing to know: they don’t need teeth to eat real food! Which is fortunate, since my daughter didn’t get her first teeth until 10 months and my son was 8 months when his first two bottom teeth started coming in. They were both already eating exclusively finger foods before they got any teeth. Their gums are strong and sharp, as you may have noticed if they’ve ever bitten down on your finger (or your nipple – *cringe*).

When you introduce finger foods, there are a few ways you can do it:

  • You can give them big pieces of things (that aren’t choking hazards) and let them gnaw at it or take small bites, OR you can cut things up into tiny pieces. The large chunk technique worked great with my daughter, and I think it really increased her interest in food. But my son would take a giant bite or stuff the whole thing in his mouth, so I had to cut it up into tiny pieces, which is also fine and helps them to develop their pincer grasp early. You can try different things (while of course keeping a close eye on your child and being prepared to finger sweep their mouth if they put too much in), and follow their lead depending on what seems to work best.

  • You can give them dedicated baby food OR you can just give them whatever you’re eating (with the exception of honey before a year). I did the former with my daughter and the latter with my son. I had the time to make her food back then and it was a bit of a labor of love. With my son, I was short on time, energy and cooking equipment since we were staying in Airbnbs between the time he was 6 months and 9 months, so I just cut up whatever we were eating for him. I was already making kid-friendly food since we ate all our meals with our daughter, so it worked great and was so easy. He was literally eating steak quesadillas by 7 months. The only thing you want to watch out for is that you don’t give them too much salt. My pediatrician had said that as long as a food doesn’t seem overly salty (e.g., don’t give them ramen), it should be fine. If something had a salty sauce like Chinese food, I would just rinse it before giving it to my son; and when I would make food just for him, like scrambled eggs or frozen veggies, I wouldn’t salt it, so I figured it probably evened out.

Something every mom should know and be mentally prepared for is that they go through a phase when they start throwing their food or dropping it over the side of the tray. And even if you try to block them, they somehow turn into little pro basketball players and shoot it right through your fingers. Try not to get discouraged or react, since they will just do it more to see your reaction (even negative reactions are interesting at that age!). Just put a few pieces of food on their plate at a time so they can’t dump the entire meal or do what I call “The Sweep” and clear their tray in one fell swoop. ALSO, if they are dumping/throwing all the healthy stuff, like that broccoli you carefully roasted, just keep offering it. I always make sure to include healthy stuff that I want them to eat, even if they go weeks/months without eating it, because one day they will finish all that broccoli and request more and your jaw will drop.

ALLERGENIC FOODS

It’s important to give special attention to the highly allergenic foods – peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, yogurt/dairy, wheat, fish, shellfish, soy, sesame. Some pediatricians recommend starting these foods immediately, as early as 4 months. I liked my pediatrician’s advice: wait until they have a few foods solidly under their belt and then start introducing them, because if they have a reaction, you don’t want to wonder whether it’s just them getting used to solids or an allergic reaction. As it turned out, my daughter started throwing up baby oatmeal (oddly, after she had already had it several times with no issues), so I was glad to get that figured out and squared away before starting in on the higher risk foods. My pediatrician did advise trying to get them all in by about 9 months, or at least before a year – which felt like a lot of pressure at the time, but in retrospect, it was pretty easy to move through them quickly once we got started. For these, I did introduce one at a time and waited at least 3 days in between for both kids, just to make sure there was no reaction. And I had Children’s Benadryl on hand just in case, with Pediatric Associate’s dosage chart by weight bookmarked. Also important to note is that once you’ve introduced them, that’s not it – you have to keep giving them on a regular basis. So if you try peanut butter and your child doesn’t have a reaction, great! And now keep giving it a few times per week for…I’m not sure, forever? (Not hard in our household, since we all love peanut butter.)

There are different ways you can introduce each of these foods. Here’s what I did:

  • Peanuts – mixed with water for my daughter to thin it out; put some on my finger for my son and let him lick it off; and subsequently mixed it into yogurt or gave Bambas.

  • Tree nuts – got whatever nut butters I could find (almond butter, cashew butter) and mixed them into yogurt. I wanted to make sure to introduce pecans and walnuts early too, since we have a nephew with a bad allergy, so I ground some pecans up into yogurt and put walnuts into pesto or baby muffins.

  • Eggs – for my daughter, I hard-boiled an egg and tried the yolk first, mixed with breastmilk, then the whites smashed into small pieces; for my son, I tried both together, mashed up, and then moved onto scrambled eggs.

  • Yogurt – started with plain yogurt but quickly moved to flavored, because a doctor friend of mine with a baby the same age said don’t torture her, just give her the good stuff. Siggi’s is great because it’s low sugar, but it’s a little pricey. I also sometimes buy large containers of vanilla whole milk yogurt and mix it with plain Greek yogurt to cut the sugar. But my favorites are those Trader Joe’s whole milk baby yogurts that come in peach/mango, strawberry/banana, blueberry/vanilla. They are so good that I even eat them. And easy because they’re 4 oz so I just send an entire one to daycare or put one into a reusable pouch for snacks. One thing to note about yogurt: as I found out with my son, it can sometimes cause a contact rash on sensitive baby skin, which is different than an allergy. Areas of his face and neck where yogurt had touched turned red and he got mild hives, so his pediatrician recommended I try mixing just a tiny bit into a purée and giving it to him that way; no reaction, so we were good to go after that.

  • Wheat – to be honest, I didn’t even realize wheat was considered a highly allergenic food until I started writing this blog, so I didn’t give it any special attention. I gave both kids whole wheat toast fingers fairly early and they loved them.

  • Fish – I gave a little cooked salmon as a finger food pretty early on, and I also let my son try sushi and lox around 9 months, which he loved. When I was making all of my daughter’s baby food, I found a sweet potato fish cake recipe that was pretty tasty.

  • Shellfish – this one is a little tricker, since shellfish can be kind of gummy, so you just want to be careful about giving them anything that could be a choking risk. When my daughter was 10 months, we were eating a salad with fresh Dungeness crab so I saved some and added it to scrambled eggs for her the next morning. Since my son was already eating a lot of advanced finger foods at an early age, I just cut up a shrimp into thin pieces and it was a hit.

  • Soy – veggie burger or soy nut butter

  • Sesame – hummus

FOOD SAFETY

I recommend taking an Infant/Child CPR class before starting solids, or at least before introducing finger foods, so you know what to do just in case. Birth Day Presence offers a great one and you can save 25% with the code on the Deal page. We actually did have a choking incident with my daughter, and fortunately we knew what to do and were on it immediately. She was fine 30 seconds later and I cried for an 48 additional hours. It actually wasn’t even because of BLW/finger foods, but because I made the mistake of giving her a large chunk of frozen pineapple when she was teething – I thought she’d just gnaw on it for a bit to soothe her gums, but a piece broke off and slid down her throat. Lesson learned: NEVER GIVE FROZEN FRUIT. Boon makes a silicone feeder that they can suck on, which is great for frozen berries or other soft fruit that would be hard for them to eat straight, like mandarin orange slices or blackberries.

Here are some other common choking hazards for babies and young children:

  • Grapes – cut into quarters (even halves can block their throats if they go down the wrong way)

  • Blueberries – I halved them until my daughter was like 2, and quartered the really giant ones they grow these days

  • Hard fruit – avoid things like raw apples unless they’re cut into very small/thin pieces

  • Hard vegetables – they won’t be ready to raw carrots for a while

  • Hot dogs or sausages – cut in half for kids and quarter or cut into even smaller pieces for babies

  • Cheese – I halved string cheese for a while for my daughter, but generally I just stick to slices since they’re so thin

  • Popcorn – kids aren’t ready to eat this until age 4-7

  • Gum and hard candies

  • Anything too chewy

  • (And a special note on peanut butter and avocados: they can get stuck in a little throat and be hard to clear if you give a gob of peanut butter or too big of a chunk of avocado)

QUICK TIPS

There is So. Much. Information. on solids, so I thought i’d include a few quick bullets that you can scan:

  • Pediatricians usually recommending starting solids between 4 and 6 months, but it depends on the readiness of your baby

  • Most people start with purées and then move onto finger foods, whereas others go straight to baby-led weaning

  • Breastmilk/formula should still be the primary source of nutrition under 1 year, but solids are important too since they’ll get iron and other nutrients from them

  • Babies don’t need teeth to eat finger foods

  • Never give a baby choking hazards or frozen food/fruit

  • Introduce the highly allergenic foods carefully

  • Offer the same foods over and over, even if they reject it, because it can take a dozen tries before they start liking something

  • Keep offering the healthy foods you want them to eat, because they go through a lot of phases and will hopefully start eating them again one day

  • Throwing food is a normal, albeit incredibly annoying, phase – when they’re going through this, just put a few pieces of food on their plate at one time

  • Try not to get stressed over mealtime, and try not to react if they throw food

  • Get a dog to help you clean up after mealtime

FAVORITE SOLIDS PRODUCTS

Almost as complicated and confusing as figuring out how to start solids is figuring out which of the billions of products you need to do so. I tried a bunch of different things before settling on my favorites:

WOW, who knew I had this much to say about solids. I’m not even sure that I’ve remembered everything, so this blog may be a work-in-progress as I continue to go through these solids phases with my son and update it.

Stay tuned for my next blogs on solids, including “How to Eat Out Without Losing Your Mind or Causing Other Diners to Lose Their Minds” and “Creating Healthy Eaters Who Won’t Cry When They See What’s For Dinner – At Least Not More Than Twice Per Week.”