Wondering About Baby Food...

Fist congrats!!! I would never add it to the bottle. Start with very runny cereal with a spoon. He will end up wearing most of it. Calories are from formula or breast milk at this age. I started with veggies (all one color) and stayed with one every week then added. Like start with something do that for a week, then introduce a new one. That way if he has an allergic reaction you could better tie it to one food. I would do all the cereals before veggies and fruits, like rice, wheat and oatmeal. That way you can introduce foods that mixed with that without worry. Good luck!

Check out Baby Led Weaning.

I started mine on rice cereal and a few pureed commercial baby foods. She enjoyed them to begin with, but then seemed more interested in eating what we were eating.

I also had one of those mesh feeders where you put in a soft food they can gum and get food strained through the mesh so they get more "real" food that isn't a choking hazard. My daughter LOVED frozen peaches in that when she was teething.

When I was unable to clean the mesh after a particularly nasty food (don't remember what it was) I got onto Amazon to read reviews for the next mesh strainer. That led me to a review by a pediatrician and father who ended up recommending Baby Led Weaning.

The general idea is that you give babies and toddlers finger-shaped food that they can grasp and gnaw on to get small peices off. The book goes into all the detail about safety and choking - and focuses on babies' development in regards to eating. My daughter NEVER choked. She gagged a couple of times if something got to the back of her tounge and then stopped, but she never actually choked on anything.

She's an incredible eater (though, really, she always was). I'm pretty sure she was around 8-9 months when we started the baby led weaning ideas and I wouldn't ever do it differently. Soooo much easier to give her peices of real food than having to carry around pureed (or puree my own).

Don't add cereal to the bottle. The whole point of cereal is to teach them to eat. Cereal in the bottle can cause chunks which is a choking hazard. I also think that spoon feeding is part of the fun.

I think they say cereal first and then a new food per week in case the have an allergy to a food. You can more easily pinpoint what they ate. Veggies before fruits. Also, don't assume they don't like something just b/c they didn't like it the first time. I think a baby has to try a food something like 20 times before they like it. This is all new to your little one.

Congrats that your little guy is doing so well!! I'm sure the Mamas on here will have more wonderful tips for you!

Use a spoon, make if very soupy. It is not to feed him...it is to teach him to chew and swallow. It is NOT FOR NUTRITION.

The mistake a lot of moms make is feeding the kiddo's food and cutting back on the formula or breast milk. They have 100% of the baby's nutritional needs in them, they are complete. The food is only to teach chewing and swallowing. When the baby is a bit older then he will obviously need more food but at this age, take it slow.

Add the fruit or veggie to the cereal. Do one at a time, a small amount. I found good ones to start with were bananas, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, carrots. Don't overdo, don't try 10 things at once. And balance things that cause poop with things that inhibit poop! Ex, rice cereal and bananas are binding, so I would usually do rice cereal and bananas for breakfast and then barley cereal and squash later. See how the baby's doing with poop issues, and make sure not to bind them up or create too much! LOL!

Good luck! Thank god you have a nice healthy baby despite him being born so early, that is great!

My little guy was also a preemie - we started him on cereal only - never in the bottle as the other moms have said. I think you will see it will take him 3 to 4 weeks to get used to the cereal/being fed with a spoon.

We then moved on to veggies (I made my own and if you have the time it really does taste so much better for the baby, but I know that not everyone has the time for this). We started with carrots, butternut squash (basically the orange veggies) and then moved on to other things. In the beginning I always mixed them with a bit of rice cereal since that was the taste he was used to.

If you decide you want to try to make your own, check out this website: http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/

Best of luck to you - this is a messy stage that will make for some great photo ops!

feed cereal on a spoon.. start with rice.. but rice is very constipating.. if he has problems with rice.. go to oatmeal.(ti has a bit of fiber)

I think you start with 1 teaspoon of rice cereal and 2 teaspoons of formula or breastmilk. for the first meals it is just a bit thicker than the formula. gradually add more cereal to make it more solid. you can start with any fruits or veggies. my girl loved the green beans.. hated the sweet potatoes.. he should stay on one solid meal per day for about 2 montjs... then add a second meal. 2 meals a day till he is about 9 months (corrected age) sometime after that move to 3 meals per day.. but he needs to get the formula or breast milk first.. for the first year nutrition comes from milk .. baby food is just practice for eating later. do not stress if he doesnt lke food right away. my daughter hated everything new .. my son loved every flavor on every spoon we offered him. even if he ate no baby food for the entire year that is fine..

mashed bananas is a good food to start with and you can mix it into the baby cereal to sweeten.

Babies handle solids fed with a spoon differently than liquids they suck, so you want to start cereal with a spoon. We did not do 'baby food'. We did real food - pureed to a smooth texture. Although the standard advice is to start with veggies first, then fruit (so they don't get a taste for sweet), research shows it really doesn't matter. Also the current recommendations include some proteins (lamb, fish, meats, eggs) as early foods - not late ones. I just steamed most foods and then pureed. Good ones were peas, corn, squash, sweet potatoes, broccoli. I cooked apples and pears, then pureed because they don't turn brown that way. Avocados and bananas can be mashed without any cooking. I froze anything that I had steamed in ice cube trays so it was easy to pull out a meal.

Have you actually tasted jarred baby food (no the organic does not taste any better)?

NO HONEY until they are at least a year.

I agree with everyone else. Cereal on a spoon for learning not in the bottle. Try a single food for a while before you move onto a new one. I did have to add a little fruit to the cereal because my son wouldn't eat it without it. Beginning the "food" stage is a very messy and slow one. My children usually wore more of it than they ate until they got the hang of it. We would have to keep a wash cloth near by because their faces would break out from all of the food on it. Good luck. As I said, it is a slow, messy process.

My 5 month old is a wonderful eater - however the pediatrician warned us against putting the rice cereal in the bottle (something about breathing in the cereal since they breath as they drink??? i'm sure that isn't 100% verbatim). We tried it before the ped told us not to, and it just clogged the nipple anyways. What we do is prepare a bottle for bedtime, pour a small amt of cereal into a bowl and add formula. To start out, make the consistency very thin - and watch, because it thickens very quickly. Getting him to open his mouth fully will make it easier to get the spoon in. Then, slowly add some fruit to the cereal at bedtime, and at breakfast. Then add some veggies and and some fruit for lunches once he gets the hang of it.

We started with apples and peaches, and now use various Stage 2 foods, he likes anything. The veggies he likes best are sweet potatoes and carrots, and slowly he is adapting to green veggies. :-)

(My 5 month old has been on cereal since 5 weeks, and has been eating breakfast, lunch and bedtime food since he was 3 months (i'll take some flack for posting that, but all children are different and he's had no problems. Our twins started at 3 months as well). We actually gave him a few bites of homemade mashed potatoes last week and he loved them, which makes me want to start making his food instead of buying it. We'll see!).

Good luck, experiencing this with your little guy will be fun for all of you!

I did rice cereal first with a spoon for about a week, then baby oatmeal. Then my ped said to start with orange veggies a month after that(sweet potatoes, carrots, squash) and then on to green veggies(can cause more gas than orange ones) and then fruit and then meats all stage 1. My baby is now 13 months old and eats just about everything I give him. Lunchmeat, cheeses, cucumber, avocado, broccoli, pasta, chicken.
Good luck to you!

Never ever add cereal to a bottle. It doesn't teach them how to learn to eat, all it does is give them extra calories they don't really need.

The point when starting solids is to teach them how to use their tongue to move the food around and get it to the back of their mouth so they can swallow it. Start with runny cereal and progress to thicker cereal. Then start on pureed fruits and veggies. Some folks say to start with veggies because fruit is too sweet and they'll never like the veggies.This is not true in my experience. We started with pears, sweet potatoes, and avocados. Introduce one food each week to see if your kiddo is allergic.

Have fun!

Start with runny cereal. Do you plan on making or buying your fruit and veggie baby food? If interested in making, it's really very easy and you can pretty much make it once or twice a week and freeze it. I had a small "mini chopper" blendar thing that I used to make all of mine. I would mostly steam the veggies/fruit then puree and that's it. Good Luck!!!