How to Introduce Cereal into the Bottle...

Hi K.!
I have 2 boys, 5yrs and 2 yrs. I started them both on cereal at 3 months. To start, I did 1 tablespoon to be sure they could handle it. As the weeks went on I increased it. Cereal expands so you don't want to do too much at one time. Good luck!
~A.

P.S. For the record, my boys are both VERY active and skinny! I believe obesity comes from lack of exercise and never eating fruits and vegetables! Help your baby be active!

HI K.
I actually tried the cereal in the bottle and it did not work very well. I actually got some cereal in the bowl with some formula and made like an oatmeal consistency and started giving my son cereal at breakfast lunch and dinner .... He dropped about 3 bottles a day with that. It sounds like your child is just hungry. There is nothing wrong with giving him cereal and formula. The plain rice cereal is the best to start with. It will also fill up his stomach at bedtime and you might get a few more hours out of him!! :) If that works after a few weeks, try some stage 1 applesauce and rice. My son started the cereal and formula at 3months and by 4months he was eating applesauce and rice awesome!
Good Luck!!

I totally agree with everyone else, I was always told it was a very bad thing to do to add cereal to a baby's bottle. If you want to get him to eat a little more, try adding it to his diet in a bowl and spoon feeding him a little bit at a time. There's a reason it never really worked for your daughter, if it didn't work, why try it again? At four months old, he should still be eating quite a bit. It's still a growing time.

Hi
I didnt think adding cereal to their formula was recommended due to choking and immature digestive systems. I would check with your pediatrician.

Most health professionals I have heard don't recommend putting cereal in the bottle, especially if he falls asleep while drinking. If your son is 4 months old you can begin spoon feeding him a little baby cereal mixed with formula or breast milk. There are directions on the box how to do it (It needs to be very thin to start out). It may take him a while to get used to it but try just a tablespoon every few days until he seems to get the hang of being fed from a spoon. If you still decide to add the cereal to his bottle be careful how long you do it for (I wouldn't recommend doing it for more than a month or so because at 5 months he should be able to be spoon fed without a problem). I hope this helps. :)

K., I have actually been told by many health professionals NOT to add cereal to formula, that it is actually somewhat harmful. Babies sleep longer when they are developmentally ready to, and they eat according to volume. So what that means is the baby is going to eat the same volume of formula, but it will have extra calories and the baby will still wake up to eat at nearly the same intervals so what actually is happening is the baby is just getting a lot of un-needed calories and what you're getting is frustrated! It used to be recommended that the cereal was just added directly to the formula, yes, and of course we moms are willing to try anything to get a good night's sleep! But since they now know that it's a developmental hurdle to get to sleep longer, now the theory (as I have been told, I am not a pediatric health professional) is that giving babies these extra calories may in fact lead to childhood obesity, which of course leads to obesity throughout life. So, the long and short of it is that just like with your older child, it probably won't work and you may start to feel hopeless after trying yet another method that failed! I feel for you, I am so sorry to hear that you are unable to get agood night's sleep, and I hope that this information helps you to make the decision that is right for your family. Good Luck!

Adding cereal to a bottle to help a baby sleep is a myth. It's assumed that the extra calories will help a baby stay full and sleep longer but cereal only adds 5 calories per teaspoon. The thickening that cereal adds doesn't delay digestion either.

Basically, there's no reason to add cereal and sometimes infants can be allergic too. Perhaps try spoon feeding some cereal if his tongue thrust reflex is gone. But don't worry, your boy will establish sleep patterns soon enough!

No! You do NOT want to do this. The only time cereal should ever be added to a bottle is under the supervision of a physician when the child has SEVERE reflux.

Adding cereal at this young age increases the risk of obesity and food allergies. Furthermore, cereal in a bottle is just plain dangerous. The risk of aspiration is enormous.

Your baby will sleep through the night when he is biologically ready to. It's not healthy to try to force the issue.

Hi K., I had this same problem when my 7 yr old was a baby. He was 9lbs when he was born and 13lbs by 4 weeks. Dr. recommended giving him cereal but NOT in his bottle. Around and hour before his last bottle before you put him/her to bed you give 3-4 tablespoons of cereal mixed with formula from a bowl with a spoon. Consistency should be a little soupy until the child gets the hang of working into the back of its throat and swallowing it. Putting formula in the bottle is not a good idea as the child will expect to have this heavy consistency at every feeding and will soon be eating even more bottles thinking they should be feeling fuller. Hope this helps.

I am mom to a 7yr old boy and a 41/2 yr old girl. I'm also a licensed home daycare provider to 4 wonderful children.

K.,

I had trouble putting it in the bottle....would always clog....just put some cereal in a bowl and with the formula you have warmed up in the bottle pour into the cereal making it very watery....(the rest of bottle give to baby) the cereal will be a little messy at first because baby will be learning how manuver his tongue and all, but within no time will get the hang of it and after a week if baby is doing ok...make it a little thicker...also, don't forget that you stick with the same cereal for a week before switching to a different flavor...oatmeal, rice, and I forgot the other...but, you get what I'm saying...then after introducing all the cereal then you can start to introduce fruit...and same thing...only one for the week, like apple sauce, then week 2, pears....etc...

Well, good luck....sleep will hopefully be coming your way in the near future.....

Hi K.,
Adding cereal to the bottle has been proven to have no effect on baby's sleep patterns. And it may contribute to health concerns later in life. I know this can be a hard time on any parent, but some babies are just better sleepers then others. It's just nature. So hang in there and remember how fast these first months will go by.

Babies are born with a wonderful mechanism for knowing how much food they need. During the early months, they take their cues from the volume of what they drink. Adding cereal derails this mechanism. It forces them to take in deceptively large amounts of calories. It teaches them to overeat.

By starting with a spoon, resting between bites, and stopping when your child lets you know he’s full, you will be laying an excellent foundation for good eating habits throughout his life.

A major study looking for the causes of obesity found that short-circuiting young children’s self-regulation of how much they eat is a major cause of later obesity. Cereal in the bottle does just that.

Babies that are fed this way may appear to be unaffected – but those few weeks of added convenience may result in a lifetime of struggles with weight. This common practice may have contributed to our being the most obese generation in history.

And it doesn’t even work. Scientists at the Cleveland Clinic studied the effect of cereal on sleep and found that adding the cereal did nothing at all to speed up the age of sleeping through the night. That first uninterrupted 6-hour stretch of sleep came no earlier in those who took cereal early.

Hi K., Congrats on your new baby. Everything I've read discourages from putting cereal in bottles. I would recommend just feeding with a spoon. You can make it super thin just mix it formula. I know it's more work but I think it helps them develope the muscles in thier mouth. It will help her learn to eat and talk. My babies are 2 1/2 y/o and 14 months and I spoon feed them both. Just a thought. Good Luck!

DON'T!!! The nurses I've spoken to and the books I've read all say that adding cereal to a bottle is a choking hazard, and it doesn't help babies sleep any longer anyway. A 4 month old should be able to go more than 2 hours if you train them to go more than 2 hours. Just because he wakes up doesn't mean you have to feed him. Make it every 2.5 hours one night, 3 hours the next, and so on until it is reasonable for you.

My daughter got one feeding a night until she was 6 months. I left her with my mother one night and Mom said she woke up but Mom didn't feed her and she went back to sleep and slept until morning. Once I heard that, I didn't get up with her in the night to feed ever again! He can make it, you just have to let him know that the milk stand isn't open at just any hour. He'll get used to it. Good luck.

I only put maybe a tablespoon of rice cereal in a 4oz. bottle of breastmilk for my daughter. Unfortunately it didn't help her sleep longer throughout the night, she didn't sleep through the night until she was a year old (she was also getting up every 2 hours, grr!). Just make sure you don't put too much cereal in the formula otherwise it might clog up the nipple. Good luck!