Xander Week 26 - Welcome To Solid Foods
March 12, 2007
About a month ago I started experimenting with rice cereal for Xander. At first, we were only giving him a few teaspoons about 3 times a week. Xander would tolerate us poking that spoon into his mouth for about 3-5 minutes before he’d had enough. This behavior didn’t really suggest that he was ready for solid foods yet.
About 3 weeks ago he became quite constipated. In an effort to relieve his discomfort, we tried peaches. I happened to be at my in-law’s house for this, and didn’t have any rice cereal to mix the food with, so I gave Xander half a container of straight peaches, and he loved it. When we got home, I tried mixing the peaches with rice cereal, and Xander once again disliked it. I’m pretty sure that the texture was giving him a hard time - no matter how watery I made the cereal, it was still grainy, and he likes stuff smooth.
So, we’ve tried peaches, prunes, peas and applesauce. Xander wasn’t thrilled with the peas, but I think that was because they were a bit thicker in consistency than the other foods, and he isn’t used to that yet. So, every night (usually before his bath) we’ve been giving Xander about half a container of the Gerber Stage 1 baby food. We do have a food processor, and could make our own baby food, but since I’m already struggling with laundry, dishes, house cleaning, cat care, baby care, and a full time job, I’m not really ready to tackle that project as well. Also, I like the Gerber packaging - the food that we’ve been buying comes in little plastic containers with a resealable cover, so we can put half the food into a bowl, and put the other half in the refrigerator for the following night - very convenient.
Our experiment with solid food is going well so far, but I have no idea what to expect next. Right now Xander is eating about half a container. When will he start eating more? We’ve been giving him “dinner” at night, but when do we need to start giving him meals during the day as well? So many things to think about, and solid foods are definitely more time consuming than a bottle. So now we are onto the next adventure - solid food…
We started Natasha on solids at 4.5 months, and we also initially did 1-2 teaspoons, then progressed to 1-2 tablespoons, and now at 1 week shy of 6 months, she eats an entire jar of fruit/veggie per day. We’re already doing all of stage 1 and most of stage 2 jars, because she seems to love everything, whether mixed with cereal or not.
I am sure Xander will consume an entire jar when he’s ready for it. =) Just go slowly, allowing 3-4 days between introducing new flavours to detect food allergies, if any.
Good luck.
Hi J, thanks for the supportive comments
Xander seems to be doing pretty well with the food so far. He’s still eating about 1/2 a container, but he’s having 2 meals a day now, and we’ve worked our way through most of the stage one foods, so I think pretty soon we’ll start on some of the stage 2 food. It is definitely an adventure!!