When to Introduce Solids

I started my girls with cereal around 5 months. I started with 1 feeding a day and gradually worked up to 3 a day. Only then did I start veggies and fruit. A book that REALLY helped me with what to feed and when wa Babywise II. It covers introducing solids and all that good stuff. I highly recommend it! Its a very easy read, short and sweet. :)

Your baby will be on solids soon enough, and for the rest of his life. The opportunity to breast feed is a short window. Make the most of it and wait for cues from him, interest in food, can sit up in a high chair, etc. Most of the early months of solid is purely social and experimental, meaning he is feeling, tasting and watching what foods are, not actually getting nutrition from it. Think about how nutritionally sound breast milk is vs all the junk we put in processed foods!
A child can sustain himself solely on breast milk for quite some time and in some cultures they do not introduce solids until much later. America is quite the other way and push our children to the next stage so soon. Take it from your son and also go to Ask Dr. Sears Web site. He has never failed me!
Good luck and enjoy that baby!
J.

i dont think hes curious about the food at all, i think hes curious about the tools - the spoons and forks you guys have - and he wants his own! get him some baby safe spoons and let him play with them. he can chew them, bang them, drop them - he will have all kinds of fun!!

the longer you can avoid starting solids the better. your doctor is right to wait until closer to 6 months - but dont feel pressured into it even then - some kids can go their whole first year without any solids at all! this is healthy and just fine - babies dont need solids for nutritional needs until after a year old anyway. so just take it slow - follow your instincts!

www.askdrsears.com is a great site!

just wait:) my dr. said to wait until our kids were at least 6 months and that we could even wait until they were 1 year! so your baby will be fine. good luck.

Unless you have a good reason to wait I would start him on solids. He seems to be interested. Listen to your baby's cues. He wants to eat. Don't worry about him not getting enough breastmilk - they start out eating such a small amount of solids.
Good luck!

APA suggests waiting until 6 months - supposedly helps with avoiding future allergy issues. If you want to wait, it is OK :) Babies can survive their first year just fine on just breast milk. My guy mainly thrived on breast milk for his first year. He liked his solids (started at 6-7 months) but wasn't really into them until about 11-12 months. They were offered but not eaten.

Also go for mashed fruit or veg for your first food. The whole thign with rice cereal was something concocted many years ago by the creal industry. Also the iron in fortified rice cereal disappears 1-2 days after opening the package. Don't know how that works, but learned it in a how to feed your baby class.

I would wait until he's closer to six months. When you do start solids, you may want to consider skipping the cereal. It's pretty much tasteless and most babies I've seen don't like it. Our pediatrician recommended avacado instead. She said it's the perfect first food because it's very fatty and has a lot of nutrients in it and can be easily mixed in with breastmilk. Avacados are ripe when you can push slightly into the skin. If you want to use one for your son, here's how....cut ripe avacado all the way around the seed in the center. Grab the halves and twist (they'll come apart easily). Use a spoon to remove the seed and scoop out the flesh of the fruit. Mash the fruit you've scooped out and add breastmilk, mixing until it's at the right consistency.

Good luck with it!

Hi J.,

Your little boy is showing interest in solids, so if he was my kid, I would start feeding him solids. You don't have to start with cereal--there's no law on the books! You could start with pureed fruits, even just a mashed banana and see how it goes.

That being said, there is absolutely no harm in waiting. It is really your perogative. I started giving my son solids around 5 months. Most pediatricians these days say between 4-6 months, die hard breastfeeders will say wait for 1 year, and grandmas in their 70s would wonder why he wasn't eating solids a couple of months ago! You will get all kinds of "advice". If your gut tells you to wait until Thanksgiving, wait until Thanksgiving. Just take lots of photos of his first bite!

I have heard from a few different doctors to start cereal as soon as they show interest (in the four to six month range). Studies show that there is an optimum time that babies learn the chewing mechanism, if you wait too long, they somtimes gag more later because that opportunity has been missed. However, I'm a firm believer in "mom knows best, no one knows your baby better than you :) Good luck!

We started our son on cereal at around 4 1/2 months and he loved it! It took him until about 5 months to really get the hang of eating it...but he enjoyed the process. He soon started eating like a little piggy:) Soon we slowly started the baby food and he SO loved it. And just to reassure you, he got PLENTY of milk still. That was still his primary source of food. Granted my son was a big guy and the food really seemed to help him out. He was one of those chubby kids that the doctor loves to see. Now he's 3, he's nice and healthy and has slimmed down to a great weight. 3 years ago the general suggestion was to start cereal around 4-5 months. Some babies had no interest and other's could not get enough. Being an Occupational Therapist I appreciated that my son was introduced to new textures in his mouth early on, when he was open to trying them! We were able to establish some pretty healthy eating patterns before he started getting "weird" about food. Perhaps we were just lucky and got a good eater, who knows. With your child wanting the spoon, he is showing the interest you want for eating solids. I would run with it! Good luck and HAVE FUN!

Hello J.,
I am a mother of a 5 month old. He is breastfeed and a very good baby. I asked his Dr. when I should start cereal and he said that I could start trying at 3 months old. I tried it and I could tell he was just not ready. So I decided to wait. Then like you said he started to become interested in what we were eating so I thought I would try again. At this point he was a little over 4 months old. He did really well. I mixed a little of the rice cereal with some breastmilk and he loved it. I have noticed too that he seems a little more satisfied to have something in his stomach, even though before he did not seem to be really hungry. He sleeps from 8:00p.m. to about 7:30a.m.

My friend also breastfeed her baby but she did not start him on cereal until 6 months old, and that worked for her. I would say maybe just try it with him and see how he does. If you can see he is not ready then wait. But you may find that he will sleep a little longer at night for you. And for a working mom a little extra sleep will go a long way!!

My doctor told me to introduce cereal to my baby when he ate 8 - 9 ounces a feeding. He was doing that at three months. Now he is four months and he is eating two tablespoons cereal twice a day. My doctor is more about using weight rather than age as a guide. My son is a lot more content with have cereal in his belly! Good luck!!

My first was nursing (or drinking 6-8 oz expressed milk) every two hours around the clock at 4 months, which is why he started cereal at 5 months (I was nutso by then...); both of my children got to the point where they were so "interested" in food that we couldn't have them near us at mealtime without fussing and crying and pointing and trying to grab food off our plates (they fussed in a bouncy seat or with toys in a high chair; we picked them up; they ate our food). I'd say your baby sounds very content and well-nourished, and if you can put off the food til 6 months, great!