At our last doctor’s visit, our pediatrician recommended I consider starting Kamy on solid foods. Granted, solid foods at this point is basically milk with a hint of rice cereal flakes in it. I’m not sure it’s solid by any definition! But it’s a start.
I was hesitant to start her on rice cereal for a couple of reasons.
First, it’s much more complicated than just nursing. It requires that I pump and then spend time warming the milk and mixing it with cereal, and proceeding to feed it to her one little bitty spoonful at a time. And of course I can expect at least half of it to end up on her mouth, chin and bib instead of in her. Nursing is much easier!
Second, I’m really not in a hurry to start. Most of the books I’ve read said that you should start solid foods between 4 and 6 months old. Starting the day that she hit 4 months seemed overly premature to change.
However, my pediatrician initially recommended adding solid food because Kamy has stopped sleeping through the night. She’s waking up several times a night, usually around 3 and 6am, give or take about 30 minutes. On a good night she’ll just wake up once and on a bad night (like last night) it will be 3 times. I have to admit, I miss the solid night of sleep! I know I cannot complain at all, especially since she started sleeping through the night so early and easily. And it’s not really the time that it takes in the middle of the night — I can get her changed into a dry diaper and fed and back asleep in her crib in 15 minutes. It’s the interrupted sleep cycle that starts to add up.
We’ve got a high chair that Grandmindy gave us to use. It’s the one that Keller, Garin, and Payton used growing up. It’s currently getting refurbished so it has a smooth, clean coat of varnish on it and it will be safe for her to use. In the mean time, we just used the Bumbo seat. It keeps her upright and is super easy to clean after we’re done.
So, all that to say that a few days ago we gave solid foods a try for the first time. It really went well and Kamy seemed to take to it very easily. She wanted to help me put the spoon in her mouth too! She’s such a great helper.
Round one went really well! She probably ate 1-2 Tablespoons of milk with a bit of rice cereal flakes in it. Round two a few days later was not a success … she wasn’t interested at all. <shrug> So, we’ll keep taking it bit by bit and see where it leads us!
All done!
