Baby Food Basics - Let's talk Food

I'm not even going to pretend that I came up with the purees on my own. I most definitely used books for the recipes. Sorry I'm just not that creative. That being said - here are some books that I've checked out from the library that I have really enjoyed. I'm not pretending to have come up with these recipes on my own, I definitely have not, so I'm going to direct you right to the professionals:

The foods are grouped together by the month that you can introduce them into your baby's diet. A word of caution: sometimes the foods that my pediatrician wanted me to avoid that month were showing up in the recipes for that month. So know what your baby can and can't eat - just because the books say that it's safe that month doesn't always mean that it is. Listen to your pediatrician.

When you start solids, it is usually recommended that you first give your baby rice cereal. Whatever brand you choose, make sure to read the label! We bought Gerber Rice Cereal for our first attempt with The Shrimp. He came away with a week's worth of bloody diapers and a trip to the Insta-Care.
Here is the ingredient list of Gerber's Rice Cereal straight from their website:

A nice long list of ingredients. Most of them are added vitamins and minerals but your baby is on a milk diet at the beginning so who cares? Iron is the only important one! As a comparison, here is the ingredient and nutrition list of Earth's Best Organic Rice Cereal (from their website):

 Just so you know - we do have Gerber cereal in our pantry right now. I don't inherently hate it - we mix it in the Shrimp's yogurt but he is also 15 months old. I just don't think it's the best product out there for a 6 month old just starting solids. I'm also sure that Earth's Best isn't the absolute best product either, it's just what we bought and it worked for us. And for your reference, these are the cereals I'm talking about:

And for the fruits and veggies you'll be cooking up, you'll need to decide if you want to go Organic or not. I like to shop organic - I think the produce generally tastes better (organic strawberries are divine), it's safer for the environment, for farmers, for animals, for us, etc. BUT at the same time we live on one income, and we have a house payment, and diapers to buy. Anyway - money is a big issue with organic so I tend to follow the Dirty Dozen Rule.  It usually refers to the thickness of the peel/skin. If it's thin, like on a strawberry or a piece of lettuce, then the chemicals absorb deeper and you should buy organic. If it's thick, like a banana, then you're probably ok with buying a regular ol' banana. Here are the current dirty dozen:

(photos courtesy of The Daily Green)

On the other hand, you have the Clean 15 - produce that you don't have to worry about as much:

(photos courtesy of The Mental Kitchen)

And that's all I'm going to say about that. Do what you feel is right for you. 

A lot of books will advise you to start with vegetable purees and then move onto fruit - the reasoning behind that is if you offer fruit first your baby will grow accustomed to the sweet flavor and then reject the vegetables when offered. I don't know if that's really true. We started "The Shrimp" on veggies but then when it came time to eat fruit he didn't want it. In fact, we still have a hard time getting him to eat fruit even now. He just prefers veggies. Or, I really should say preferred. He's hit a picky stage and it. really. sucks. a lot. But back to the veggie v. fruit - I think it depends on your child and as their parent you will know what to do and when to introduce what. 

Oh - and talk to your doctor about the rate at which you should introduce new foods. In the beginning I was told to wait a week before introducing something new (this is to ensure that if a reaction occurs you will easily know the culprit), and then around month 8 or 9 we could introduce new foods every 4 days. But talk to your doctor about what they recommend. 

Another choice you can make around 6 months is when to introduce a sippy cup. We did it the very first time we gave him solids and it worked great. He was comfortable with it but didn't fill up on water. We didn't feel like he had to drink a ton of it because we were still nursing. But I think it helped in the long run because we went straight from nursing to a sippy and skipped the bottle completely. Once again, talk to your pediatrician. These are the cups that we chose to start out with. I've heard good things about sippy cups with straws. Do your research, I don't want to tell you what to do.

Playtex First Sipster Cups

Can you tell that I'm not really taking an opinion on anything? Maybe it's just me but I don't really like it when people try to tell me what to do. Ever. So I'm just going to put a bunch of stuff out there for you to consider and let you decide what you want to do. I hope you're ok with that but I just know what worked for "The Shrimp" and you'll know what works for your little one too.

I hope this was helpful to you - I think I'm going to do one more post on finger foods and snacks and we'll call it good.