First Foods

 Overwhelmed is the first word to come to mind with starting solids. There is so much information out there about how you should do it, what’s best for baby, etc. It is downright overwhelming. We are very lucky to have a fabulous pediatrician who specializes in food and starting solids. She has even written a book about it. You can check her out here. With her guidance and a lovely (free) handout from her website we steamed up some butternut squash, made a purée and we were off to the land of solid foods! 

Fast forward a month later and Carson is eating what we eat modified for his age. (No added salt/sugar, cut into palm size pieces for easy grabbing and cooked to a gumable consistency) Baby Led Weaning style. For specifics of how to chop/cook food based on age please refer to a profession. Here are my favorite starting solids accounts to follow: Solid Starts , Kids eat in Color, Infant Nutritionist

After all of the research I did and the advice of our pediatrician we decided to start off with purées. Our pediatrician told us that starting with BLW is fine however it is kind of like learning to walk without holding on to anything. I loved this analogy it made sense to me. She said to start with purées but there’s a catch. Do not continue with purées very long. The key is to get off of them as quickly as possible. Knowing that, we did purées for maybe 2-3 weeks, one meal a day. I made most of them just by steaming and throwing them in the blender or mashing things up with water or breastmilk. 

After those 2-3 weeks were up he was much more used to handling food in his mouth and we moved onto textures. Our Dr (and all the research I did) say to introduce a variety of textures and flavors. So that’s what we do! He now enjoys our meals modified for him. He now eats dinner with us every night and enjoys a variety of foods, tastes, and textures.