We tried our first "real" food today! Technically our first food was rice cereal and we did that a few days after our 4 month check up, but most babies start on rice cereal. We are counting avocado as our first food!
Update...Rice cereal went over pretty well. I had hoped to wait until Ali turned 6 months to start solid foods. The American Association of Pediatricians now recommends waiting till 6 months as it's starting to be shown that the earlier solid foods are started the higher the baby's chance of obesity later in life. Obviously, JM and I are tall (and bigger) people so she is going to be pre-disposed for this anyways and I had hoped to decrease any outside chances for her. Our pediatrician, however, is very pro-4 month starting. Another reason it's recommended to wait until 6 months is for allergies but JM and I have no food allergies so I wasn't concerned about that.
I went back and forth and finally just let Ali decide. There are a few criteria to see if the baby is ready to eat solids and she was well past ready! She was INCREDIBLY interested in our food, to the point that when you would put something in your mouth she would watch and chew as well. She was trying to take food off our plates...she was ready. She took to rice cereal pretty well, it obviously took a few days to get the hang of it. She still gets bored with it easily, but eating isn't for caloric intake at this time, just to introduce her to eating.
Then I had to decide which food to start first. Again, they're debunking the idea that starting with bananas makes the baby not want veggies in the future so that wasn't a big concern for me. Plus, has anyone else tried breastmilk? Honestly, you can confess. It's so freaking sweet that if anything's going to cause her to have a sweet tooth it'll be that! But then I read how good for you avocadoes are and it seemed a little unique so we went with that. The first day she did NOT like it, but a friend of mine told me that it takes about 30 days to develop a taste for the baby so we're sticking to it. The next day she still didn't care for it much so I mixed it with her cereal and she ate it happily. I kept mixing more and more every bite and she never seemed to notice until I ended up with a whole ice cube square in the cereal and there was much more avocado than cereal and she ate the whole bowl. Here are some pictures of the happy girl! I'm at work and can't get them to align correctly so please excuse the un-aesthetically pleasing alignment!
Stayed tuned...after a few more days of avocado I'm going to start her on sweet potatoes!
