The realm of introducing solid foods to baby is not one I delight in. My approach to feeding solids has changed each time I’ve had a baby. The first time around I was very much a rule follower. Whatever the powers that be told me to do, that’s what I did. That awful chart that the baby cereal manufacturer gives out, telling you how much cereal your kid should be eating every day? Yeah, I followed that. I was so worried I would do something wrong, so I followed it to the letter. I made baby food, froze everything in cute little cubes. I was prepared!
Fast forward to today with baby number four. There is no rice cereal in my house. Deacon wasn’t even interested in eating until after seven months. He has had a few reactions to the foods I have given him, which has made me very hesitant to offer much of anything. Mum-Mums, rice puffs, applesauce, apple chunks for gumming, bananas, avocados – these are the norm. And the lovely stuff on his table that you gazed upon when you came to read today, that would be lentils and carrots from a soup I made.
I guess the big shift for me is understanding that at this point, solid foods exist to introduce him to new flavours and textures, not to give him the bulk of his nutrition. Food is for learning more than anything right now. What he needs nutritionally right now, he gets from milk, and that sure takes a load of worry off my mind.
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