Meals for 9 Month Old--how Much Rice Cereal?

my youngest of three is 10 months old, so I just got out of the boat you are in. A typical day for my daughter was:
6:00am - 8 oz. of formula
9:00am - cereal and fruit
10:00 am - 8 oz of formula
12:00 pm - veggies and cheerios
2:00 pm - 8 oz of formula
5:00pm - stage 2 or 3 dinner and dessert
8:00 pm - 8 oz of formula

I never worried about her getting enough cereal. I gave her cereal for breakfast and she ate cheerios or friuit puffs throughout the day. I must be doing something right. My daughter is 10 months old and just getting into 18-24 month clohes. She is very happy and healthy!!!!

I was told by my doctor that the 3 meals a day should be as following:
Breakfast 2-4 oz Cereal and and 2-4 oz fruit
Lunch 2-4 oz of meat/protein and 2-4 oz of veggies
Dinner 2-4 oz of cereal and 2-4- oz of fruit
This way they get what the iron they need and all the other nutrients they need as well. Iron is what is in the cereal and what he needs most and if you are nursing, its' possible he is not getting enough Iron. Talk to your doctor about any worries that you may have about iron though.

HI My son is 9 months too and we are still nursing as well. My pediatrician (an MD who is also a homeopath) said NOT to give rice cereal. IT's a highly processed food and constipates babies without giving them any nutrition.

You'd be better off just giving baby homemade foods like sweet potatoes, winter squash, peas etc. that that you puree in the blender. If your son is breastfed, he is getting all of the nutrients he needs from your milk. Eating at this age is more for practice.

So far our son has happily eaten cooked and pureed sweet pots, squash, peas, blueberries, zucchini, carrots, and pears. We use organic produce and spring water. I also give him plain sheeps milk yogurt which he loves!

If you want baby to have some whole grains, just cook brown rice or oatmeal and puree. One tbs is plenty!!Occasionally, we also give him a small handful of the healthfood version of rice krispies (organic, no salt, no sugar, brown rice) to finger feed himself.

Good luck!

There are two books I would recommmend:
Keeping your Kid Healthy with Chinese Medicine by Bob Flaws does a great job explaining the importance of slowly introducing foods for optimum health.This book can help you to prevent lots of childhood illness and allergies too.

Second book is Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair.
Both of these books will get you on the right FOOD track. Eat the right foods and the "nutrients" take care of themselves.

We shouldn't need to be biochemists to eat! All this crazyness about nutrients gets us off the main focus which should be food, not vitamins and minerals.

MDs have only a few hours of medical school training in nutrition and absolutely no training in food. What a shame! Our country would be healthier if the emphasis was switched from drugs and pills to food and lifestyle.

Enjoy every minute with your little boy! Don't worry so much about minerals and micronutrients. Mother Nature really does have it figured out for you!

What your doing sounds right.

You could try introducing table foods, and BOILED and steamed foods

broccoli and peas and pasta are easy and great foods for the baby, stews also very easy and good

M

You should talk to you Pediatrician.

Hi C., Mommy, it sounds like you are doing fine. You don't have to overdo the rice cereal. I'd say morning and night meals are enough. If your baby is satisfied and not getting constipated from it then do what you are doing. As long as you are breast feeding he is getting all the good stuff you eat too. I have 5 and the youngest is 25 so it has been a long time for me. If baby is happy and gaining weight you are OK. Enjoy him, Best wishes, Grandma Mary

I'm not a medical professional, but I think if your son is still nursing, you don't need to worry about nutrients. My older 2 were bottle fed, my baby (will be 1 next month) nursed, and I had to give her the Tri-Vi-Sol vitamin drops...ask your ped about that, and don't be afraid to switch docs if you aren't comfortable with him/her.

Because my husband has allergy problems with grain, we did not want to give our children rice cereal until well after their first year. I researched the matter and found out some very interesting things. First of all, the grain digesting enzyme, amylase, isn't present in sufficient quantity to handle a lot of grains until age 2 (maybe this is part of the reason we see so many food allergies?). Second, for thousands of years humans have had babies who didn't suffer from low iron and they did not have access to our premade baby cereals. Third, breastmilk only contains small amounts of iron, but the iron it contains is MUCH more bioavailable- easier for your baby to absorb and utilize- than rice cereal that's been processed and then had iron thrown back in as they say, so-called "fortified". I use a cast iron pan regularly (when properly seasoned they are as good as non-stick with none of the teflon toxicity worries), which has traditionally been a great source of dietary iron as trace amounts will mix with the food cooked in them. When I finally did introduce rice cereal (just once a day, at most, around one year) I made my own from organic brown rice and my little guy loved it. A tiny pinch of real sea salt (celtic sea salt is best) is excellent because salt improves grain digestion, and I also added either organic butter or a bit of egg yolk scrambled into it because having carbohydrates without a fat or fiber increases chances of a blood sugar spike (no wonder juvenile diabetes rates are soaring, in this fat-phobic society!).

Hello C.,
I would suggest pureeeing more fruit and veggie type stuff than grains too. Coeliac disease is a particularly horrid condition that can manifest at any age and is basically, gluten intolerance. It's thought that introducing gluten (wheat, barley oats and rye) too soon can be a big cause of it. The recommendation is not to introduce them in any form before the age of one.

Also, eggs are recommended to be with held before the age of one as alot of childhood vaccines are "grown" on hens eggs" so if a child develops an allergy to eggs then they might not be able to have vaccinations which is a big worry.

Be careful with anything processed or jars and packets of food. Always read the ingredients! I found pureeing enough for just one meal for a baby to be very hard so I started pureeing and then mashing (when I wanted food to have more texture) bigger amounts and freezing it in ice cube trays so I could just defrost what I needed for any given meal. It also meant I could give my children more variety instead of carrots all day long for instance!

My mother in law was a notoriously diabolical cook and deciding whether to defrost "one lump or two" for my baby always made me think of her gravy..!

I hope that helps, just remember, enjoy EVERY minute because it all goes too fast!

H.

Hi C.,

Dont' worry about his food too much. In the first year, it's the milk that provides their primary nutrition, foods are just a supplement to the breastmilk or formula.

Regular white rice cereal isn't needed at each meal, or at all. It really doesn't provide much of value in terms of nutrition the way that a whole grain cereal would.

Since food is just a supplement at this point, it doesn't much matter what he eats, but if you want to give him meals that resemble and adults, you can do that.

M.

I kept up the cereal, but only for breakfast. I was hesitant about my son eating meat since he didn't get his 1st tooth until about 1 mo ago. (he will be one on 4/23/08) I've since weaned out the cereal, and he is doing fine. At the 9 mos visit they usually check the hemaglobin levels to check his iron levels. This is just a small finger prick of blood. If that is normal, then don't worry about ending cereal.
Remember, you are his Mommy and you know what is best.
V.

My daughter will be ten months old next week (and is 29 inches long and twenty four pounds!!) she doesn't like purees so I try to make a sweet potato or use some multi grain pasta and organic sauce and cheerios and puffs etc.... during the day but I still give her three scoops (formula can size scoops) of cereal every night in her last bottle - people frown on this but the pediatrician says it is absolutely fine to do since she doesn't have a problem eating - so to answer your question we give her a few scoops in her last bottle of the night but do check with your pediatrician who knows more about how your particular child is growing - (and I'd also appreciate it if no-one responds with the "don'ts" of cereal in a bottle since it works for us, our baby and pediatrician -