Please do not respond to this request if you are going to tell me not to give him solid foods until he is a year old. I realize that formula is nutritionally complete and balanced and must remain his primary source of nutrition and calories until he is a year old. That being said, is there a particular order in which solid foods should be introduced? I have given the baby (5 months old, sits well supported, beginning to sit on his own) rice cereal and we've had no difficulties. One source tells me I can move on to fruits/veggies now, another source says, no way - you have to go on to barley cereal and then oatmeal cereal next prior to fruits/veggies. Yet another source says veggies next so he doesn't prefer only sweet foods, another source says you must do sweet foods first as babies are born with a sweet tooth and will be more receptive to sweet solids. Aaaaahhhhhh! The pediatrician says I should do whatever I feel is appropriate. Good grief! Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
K.
It's all personal preference and there is no right or wrong answer. I started my kids on a sweet veggie first, like sweet potatoes, then did apples. I just alternated introducing a veggie one week and a fruit the next.
Don't stress over solids :) It's really just trial and error. I'm sure you know which foods to avoid. I gave my daughter rice and oatmeal cereals at 4-5 months without any issues. She is now 7 months and has eaten carrots, peas, pears, apple sauce, bananas, mashed potatos, squash, green beans and many more. Luckily, my daughter is not a big fan of fruit right now, I usually put a banana in a mesh food holder and give it to her and she loves it. Sometimes i'll put grapes in there. Give whatever you want, just as long as it's according to the acceptable foods to give to infants. I think I started with peas...just because my son loved them when I first started giving him solids :)
Good luck!
Hi K.,
My son will be a year old next month and is pretty much on all table food and only gets two bottles a day now. Now that your son is 5 months old and is eating rice ceral you can start giving him other kinds of cereal. I only kept my son on rice cereal for a week and then switched over to oatmeal. At 6 months, I started fruits and veggies. I alternated them every three to four days (to make sure there were no allergies). Once he was OK with the fruits and veggies, we moved onto the meats and then onto Stage 2 foods. Hope that helps! Good luck!
With my daughter I started with applesauce then moved to the cereals.
With my son I started with cereals first-rice, oatmeal, barley (though I heard to skip that one), then i moved to fruit, then to veggies then to mixing cereal and fruit together.
wait a week before introducing a new food in case of a allergic reaction
Hi K., With my now 21mo son, I started him on rice cereal at 4 months, then at 6months started baby food solids. I would give him a vegetable (a couple times to make sure there was no reaction from it) after that vegetable had no reaction I then introduced a fruit. Soon he was having 1 vegetable and 1 fruit for lunch and dinner with a bottle. Everything worked out just fine. Hope this helps. S.
Variety, variety, variety! I started my son on rice cereal at 5 mo for a week and then moved directly on to veggies and then fruits and I switch it up on him so he gets every fruit and veggie Gerber makes into mush and he takes them all no fuss no muss! Even the gross ones make him try, PRUNES my son loves them. I never did the whole barley and oatmeal thing because it seemed to make him constipated but he did fine with the other stuff. Make sure he still gets cereal though mostly for the nutritional content. I do rice cereal in the morning and then veggies and fruit at dinner time with us. I can also tell you as a nurse to avoid strawberries until he is a year old because of allergies all though not everyone agrees with that and apples and bananas can tend to be constipating. Good luck and eat up!
You can move on to veggies and fruits ,my ped. told me just to make sure only introduce 1 new food a week to make sure my son isnt allergic to it . So One week he will have a new vegie the next a new fruit . I started with rice cereal at 4 months and started fruits and vegies at 5 months with the drs approval ! My son is doing just fine!
My ped had us skip rice cereal and start with oatmeal instead. Really, the only rule you need to worry about with starting solids is to give several days in between introducing so that you can be sure he doesn't have any reactions to a particular food. It's just a lot easier to identify if you do it that way and then you can stop that food and move on to another. Once you offer a food and have given it a couple test days, you can continue to offer it for variety as you are testing out new ones. Just don't mix and match new foods without the trial period. Other than that, everyone has their opinion and that all they really are...opinions. Giving a veggie first or fruit isn't going to make or break a kid's eating habits for life. In fact, you can offer a veggie (or fruit) for a trial period and then offer the other without going through all of the same type of food until you've exhausted them. I think that's what I usually did. Basically, don't stress - it's not really that big of deal as long as you follow the one rule of testing each new food for allergies.
Hi K.,
Does your son eat around the same time you eat dinner? If so, give him a softer version of what you eat. There is no scientifically proven order to any way to feed him, so long as you wait a few days in between new foods. Buy a few different types, and see what he prefers. If he doesn't like something, try again in about a week. We used to take different baby foods and mix them with ones she already liked....fruits, veggies, whatever. If you are making sure that he gets 28-32 oz of fomula per day, then you can feed him whatever in any order. He may be too small yet for piecey, textured food.
But enough of my babbling....I think your doctor is right.
Good luck!
