Talk to me about solids

[vmars]

DS will be 6 months on 6/21 and starting day care on 6/30. We have only given him puréed bananas so far - a few spoon fulls at dinner for fun. When did you start giving solids regularly? Was there any method you used to giving solids? I.e. veggies then fruit, baby led weaning, etc. what would you send with your LO to day care, if anything, at 6 months. Thanks!

[crazycakes]

We skipped rice cereal and went straight for purees/mushy foods. We started at 6 months, but sporadically. Maybe once or twice a day after nursing. I didn't follow the "wait three days" rule before introducing new foods. I know some of the first things we tried were:

Sweet potato
Broccoli
Avocado
Peas
Carrots

Mostly made them myself in the food processor, but threw in some store bought purees too. We added fruits pretty quickly - maybe a week or two in? I know we did homemade applesauce as the first fruit.

I did one new food at a time for probably a month, then started mixing things together. By 9 months or so she was pretty much eating what we ate, just thrown in the food processor if it was a difficult consistency. We started switching to more "baby led weaning", allowing her to feed herself most of the time, around then and I would just help her with certain foods (like applesauce or yogurt, things that are hard to eat without a spoon). Within the past month she has been able to handle most foods without processing (she only has 2 teeth, so she's still working on chewing). She feeds herself most things now.

[soozy87]

We started at 5.5 months but really got much more regular at 6.5 months. He didn't show much interest until 7 months. He is still doing all purees and has probably had 15 different foods - all fruits and veggies so far.

Our doctor told us to start with orange veggies, then green veggies, then fruit. (I guess because orange veggies are semi-sweet, green veggies then when they can actually swallow and can get the hang of it and then fruit because it is usually the sweetest. We have also read that you don't necessarily have to do fruits last.) He seems to take the veggies the best for whatever reason. We introduce a new food about every 3 days, but sometimes it is more like 4 or 5 depending on what we have in the house.

[Deleted]

I did daycare led weaning, they kind of made all these decisions for me. We did purees and they just gradually added in more texture until it was completely solid.


ETA: Our center provides food so I don't bring anything, but if I had to pack I would do a normal puree pack (veggie in the beginning would be my personal choice) and throw in some slice fruit for the baby to play with until they figure it out.