Adventures In Baby Food
At our last doctor’s appointment for Ben, our pediatrician told us to go ahead and start Ben on baby food. He’s at the very low end of normal on the height and weight scale – still normal, but apparently he’s small for his age. Incredibly though, the kid just would not stop eating. He would eat 8oz of formula every two hours, if not more often. So Dr. Max decided that it would be a good idea to start him on rice cereal and gradually work our way up to other foods.
Me, I was excited. My husband? He couldn’t understand what I was excited about. But I went to the store and bought rice cereal that day and tried feeding it to him. At first, he absolutely hated it. Hated his chair, hated the spoon, hated the cereal, hated everything about it. But little by little, he’s grown to love his rice cereal. In fact, he loves it so much that he’s started playing with it. He finds it hilarious to sneeze, for example, when he’s got a mouth full of cereal and spray it all over my face. (Maybe it’s my reaction that’s so amusing.) He also has no problem chewing and swallowing now, and he opens his mouth for me whenever he sees the spoon. But since it can’t ever be easy, of course, he also thinks the spoon is a toy. So now I have to dodge his hand, which is always trying to grab at the spoon to play with it. It’s gotten a lot messier now, needless to say.
Yesterday we started him on oatmeal, which he doesn’t seem to enjoy as much as the rice. And after the prerequisite waiting period between trying each new food, I’m going to be starting him on carrots. I made the decision to make our own baby food instead of buying it, and I went ahead and cooked (when necessary) and pureed carrots, sweet potatoes, pears, peaches, and bananas. I filled some ice cube trays with the purees and they’re now frozen and ready to go for the upcoming weeks as Ben graduates to each new taste.
I can only imagine what his reaction will be when he gets to try something as radically different as carrots… AND what his diapers will be like. Oh boy.
[...] been almost two months since our pediatrician recommended that we start Ben on baby food. He started on rice cereal, which he eats with absolutely no problem at all. He opens his mouth for [...]