Introducing Solid Foods

This is an exciting time for you and your baby! Around 4 months of age, she’ll start eyeing your food with curiosity. At the same time, her muscles for mastication are maturing, and she is acquiring the ability to coordinate her swallowing.

With the recent rise in food allergies, a delay until 6 months might be a good idea, especially for the breastfeeding mom—why give anything else, when breast is best? While delaying solids is a very good option, there have been excellent studies done by top allergists as recently as 2008 showing that the introduction of solids between 4 and 6 months does not increase the risk of food allergy.

What to Introduce First

After you decide when your child is old enough, the questions become “what” and “how.” Your baby’s first food should be the easiest to digest: baby cereal mixed with her milk (breast milk or formula). Mix 2 tablespoons of cereal (usually rice is first, but oat or barley are also great) with 2 ounces of milk and go for it! She’ll likely need a few tries before she can coordinate her tongue, so don’t get frustrated if she looks like she can’t do it or doesn’t like it.

After two weeks of cereal, offer a vegetable. Boil and then puree or mash up the vegetable yourself, or just buy the pre-made kind from the supermarket. There are benefits to getting organic baby food, but that’s up to you and your wallet. Add some milk to the puree if it seems too thick, but never add any sugar.

Start with squash or sweet potato. Next, try some carrots—but don’t stress if her skin turns a little orange after eating it. Eventually, move on to peas and beans. Fruits are generally sweeter and babies tend to like them more, so get them used to the vegetables (about 4 weeks) before starting with the fruits. The first fruits should be apple, banana, and pear.

Give each new food for three days before adding another new food, so you can observe for any allergic reactions, which can take the form of hives (swollen red blotches) or diarrhea. As you add new foods, keep giving the already established foods at other times in the day.

Establishing A Schedule

As American adults, we tend to have three big meals a day, with a few snacks in between. Your baby will develop a similar schedule and eat either before or during your attempts to quickly wolf down your own meal. The first few months of solids are only an introduction—a fun, mellow event—so treat it as such. The amount of calories in a full milk feed far outweighs that of a little jar of carrots, but you’ll likely notice a decrease in the amount of milk your baby needs as she increases her solid intake. Don’t worry if the cereal fully replaces a normal feeding of breast milk or formula.

Give some cereal in the morning, a vegetable around lunch time, and a fruit for dinner. Between 7 and 9 months, you can start with the “real” food: yogurt (plain or the “baby” variety), grains of rice, beans, cubed avocado, pieces of pasta and bread, and soup. The stage 2 and 3 jarred foods have pureed meats in them, but wait until 9 months to give your baby any sort of real meat.

Avoiding Food Allergies

If food allergies run in your family, you may want to delay giving your baby seafood, eggs, or berries. Most parents wait until 1 or even 2 years to give peanut butter, but it seems that a delayed introduction of foods does not necessarily decrease your child’s odds of developing an allergy; it’s just that a younger child may have a scarier reaction. Likely, a child is either going to be allergic or not, and I think it’s okay to try eggs at 9 months and peanut butter at 1 year.

If you want to be on the safe side, give your baby allergenic foods in the morning so you can bring her to the doctor if need be, and have children’s Benadryl handy. If your child shows a strong reaction, such as hives all over and/or any breathing problems, this could be a sign of anaphylaxis, and you must go to the emergency room immediately.

Make food fun for your child and never force her to eat anything. Kids develop so many bad habits when it comes to food, and it starts at a young age. Unless your baby is underweight, remember that babies are people too, and each one will have different tastes. Remain positive and cheery, and the introduction of solids—and eating in general—will be a fun (albeit messy) endeavor!

See Other Health Topics