solids - what did you start with?

[changedname]

DD will turn 6 months on Weds. I've done no research on solids and its kind of crept up on me. Informal polls on friends are making me confused.

Friend 1: start with a rice cereal then a grain a week for a month. Then you can start veggies.

Friend 2: start with protein, egg or fish.

Friend 3: blw. Start with pieces of avocado or banana.

I don't know what to do.
So... What did you do and any tips?

[lolo]

We did sweet potatoes. I knew they contained good iron content which is helpful for breastfed babies especially.

[mellimel19]

Our pedi told us to skip the rice cereal and go straight to veggies and fruits. He suggested starting with orange ones. So we did sweet potatoes pureed with some breast milk.

[Yankees21]

We just started last week, and did peas and then sweet potato for the first time today.

eta: we have puréed them ourselves with a little formula.

[crazycakes]

Rice cereal was a no go for us. We tried it for a couple of days and DD slept like crap, and it made her constipated. I think maybe the iron messed with her tummy. So we went straight to real foods. We started with sweet potatoes, avocado (she didn't like at first, but likes now), peas, and banana. We started out waiting 3 days before the next food, but I'm impatient so that didn't last long. We started out mushing up or pureeing things pretty well, then around 9 months we started doing more BLW approach.

[osulori]

We started with sweet potato puree.

[changedname]

Yay! I was originally planning,on doing sweet potato so you guys have convinced me. Thank god for gbcn.

[Jalapeñomel]

Avocado


D wasn't interested in solids until about 9 months or so

[browneyedgirl9]

We started with rice and oatmeal cereal and quickly moved on to purees. The cereals seemed to both his belly (crying at night and after eating). We started with greens (peas/ green bean) as they are not sweet so wanted to get him use to those flavors before the "sweets" knowing that once he had sweet foods (fruits/ sweet potato) he would probably favor them.  I make my own purees, which has been mm and easy.

Now at almost 8 months we are trying more bits of table foods.

[lauren170]

We started with organic baby oatmeal and after that my doctor said to start with a green veggie and then move to sweet later on. We pureed peas and green beans using the baby Brezza.

[booboo173]

Another sweet potato here

[littlemisschatty]

I HATE that there is so much conflicting info about this - so much confusion for new moms. Don't stress too much, everyone seems to have done something different and it worked out okay!

Anyway, we did (as per pedi...) rice cereal (for iron), oatmeal cereal, green veggies, orange veggies, then fruits.

[greencrayon]

We did not do BLW but we started with avocado and banana too. Then pears, carrots, apples, peas, mango. Now we've started combining foods.

[greencrayon]

Sept 1, 2014 20:05:43 GMT -5 greencrayon said:

We did not do BLW but we started with avocado and banana too. Then pears, carrots, apples, peas, mango. Now we've started combining foods.

Sweet potato was one of our first ones too. It may have been before banana.

[mae141]

We did BLW. Started with avocado, and then moved on to other random veggies and then fruits. After about a month I was feeding her at every meal and now really just give her whatever we are eating.

[vmars]

We started with bananas and sweet potatoe purees. We did baby oatmeal too but he wasn't a huge fan. Now he eats all the purees. We are slowly moving away from purees, but I do like them because they are super easy and he loves them.

[zarapipe]

Sweet potatoes, I think

[lilac05]

We did avocados and bananas. Never bought rice cereal, but did baby oatmeal.

Check out wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com It has nice charts of recommended foods at certain ages, and also charts that you can print out if you want to keep track of what you have/haven't tried and whether or not baby liked it. I didn't follow it strictly, but did like that it reminded me of other foods I could serve the baby that I may not have thought of otherwise.

[zeewifeandmama]

We did avocado & bananas both times. I also just put regular unsweetened quick oats in my spice blender to make oatmeal cereal a few times. Neither of them really took to solids until about 9 months.

[redheadbaker]

Sept 1, 2014 19:27:08 GMT -5 lolo said:

We did sweet potatoes. I knew they contained good iron content which is helpful for breastfed babies especially.

Same here.

[shelbyann]

Another sweet potato. I just boiled it until it was very soft then mashed it with the back of a fork and added some BM to thin it out.

[Birdie]

We started with oatmeal. He hated it. Then we tried veggies. Carrots, avocado, sweet potato. Hated them too. Then I tried bananas, apples, peas. Hate hate hate.

So far my kid hates food.

But I've mostly heard just start with veggies first because they're not as tasty, then move on to fruits. Some say wait 3-4 days in between introducing each new food and others say that's old advice and you don't need to worry about that so much if you don't have a family history of food allergies. You can decide where you fall in breeziness there.

[Birdie]

Sept 1, 2014 19:40:19 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Avocado


D wasn't interested in solids until about 9 months or so

I know your little guy came a bit early so that may have affected when he was interested, but this makes me feel better. So far DS hates anything we put in his mouth that isn't a bottle.

[lilybug]

DS1, 4.5 mos: small chunks of avocado. Got neon green projectile puked on within an hour. Waited a couple weeks, tried chunks of overcooked sweet potato, went fine.

DS2, 6.5ish mos: probably puffs. Poor second child, I can't remember. I know small chunks of banana was one of the first ones.

[AlpineSlide]

Around 5.5 months, I did mashed avocado and then banana. He puked them up.
Then I did oatmeal mixed with bm for awhile.
Then I did veggie purees, then alternated in some fruit puree. sweet potato, carrot, peas, apple, pear, etc. He hated being spoon fed.
Then I started trying BLW and it was ok. Not great though.
He's now 9 months and just likes to pick up food himself. Peas, corn, cut up veggies, cheese, puffs, yogurt melts, shredded chicken, black beans/white beans, blueberries, etc. I still try to spoon feed here and there but he doesn't take much that way.

[winemaker06]

Sept 1, 2014 21:27:39 GMT -5 Birdie said:

Sept 1, 2014 19:40:19 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Avocado


D wasn't interested in solids until about 9 months or so

I know your little guy came a bit early so that may have affected when he was interested, but this makes me feel better. So far DS hates anything we put in his mouth that isn't a bottle.

This was my kid too. After about a month, he's finally getting better.
But he does like fruits so we're giving him those more for now. Breastmilk is very sweet, I'm not worried about preferences as much as giving him the practice eating.

We started with avocado, which was a big fail. Doing oatmeal occasionally but mostly fruits and veggies, puréed and chunks.

[degal99]

Add another to banana and avocado.

[arch01]

sweet potatoes or avocado, i can't remember which one was first though.

[Ashley&Scott]

We did BLW. Baked sweet potato fries first, then banana & avocado.

[Deleted]

finger foods: steamed carrots, sweet potatoes, banana, avocado, dragon fruit (her favorite for a while), anything soft really.  We also tried puree but she wasn't interested at all.  She only wanted to play at that point and didn't start eating much until after 8 months.