Hellobee

When we started solids with Charlie, we followed all the “rules.” We waited until he was 6 months old, we started with rice cereal and purees, we gave vegetables before fruits so he wouldn’t develop a sweet tooth (turns out there’s no merit to this), we didn’t use any salt, and we fed each food for 3 days straight to discover any allergies he might have. The exact order with which we introduced solids was: rice cereal, butternut squash, peas, carrots, avocado, oatmeal cereal, pear, yams, green beans, and acorn squash.

Since Charlie has always been such a picky eater, I wanted to approach solids differently with Olive. I wasn’t too worried about allergies since Charlie only had a mild milk allergy, and I had the benefit of being a less anxious second-time mom, so I wanted to give baby-led weaning a try. The idea of feeding Olive what we eat just sounded so awesome! The only things that were off-limits were honey until the age of 1, and nuts — just in case — even though Charlie isn’t allergic to them. Since Olive was born 5 weeks early, we waited until she was a little older than 6 months old to start solids.

Charlie feeding Olive sweet potatoes in her Bjorn Bouncer.

Olive was pretty behind on physical milestones and had trouble sitting in a high chair at 6 months. Her manual dexterity was also so poor (her moro reflex had only just recently started subsiding), that there was no way she could feed herself. She just seemed like such a baby compared to Charlie at the same age, so I decided to give her some purees to introduce the taste of solids instead of starting with baby-led weaning like I’d originally planned.

I remember how much of an event it was starting solids with Charlie. I bought Super Baby Food along with several puree cookbooks. I bought a Beaba Baby Food Maker and a bunch of feeding gear. I thought long and hard about what food besides rice cereal to feed first. I checked out the Wholesome Baby Foods website and followed all the recommendations of which foods to introduce at 6 months, 8 months, 10 months, etc.

With Olive, I gave her some pureed sweet potato because it was what we had at home. We continued with purees for another 2 weeks or so. I made a bunch of different fruits and veggies at once and froze them into 2 oz portions. Since she was only eating once a day, feeding her purees didn’t require much work or thought, but I knew I didn’t want to stick to purees for much longer.

While Olive didn’t have the fine motor skills to feed herself small pieces of food, she was able to hold onto larger pieces of food like a slice of bread or a frozen mini bagel. Bagels are not recommended for babies because they can be a choking hazard, but Olive was never able to bite off a big chunk as long as they were frozen.

We also introduced a mesh fresh food feeder* at 6 months, which allowed Olive to safely gnaw sweet juicy fruits like cold Asian pear. You can fill the feeders with frozen fruit or ice cubes to help with teething pain. Vegetables and meat are fine too, but vegetables can be hard to chew and meat can be kind of gross, so I think fruits tend to work best. We really didn’t use this except a handful of times though, because we quickly moved onto small pieces of regular food.

Baby-led Weaning

After about 2 weeks of purees, I started feeding Olive bits of food off my plate. Once Olive had a taste of finger foods, she absolutely rejected purees. She liked purees ok, but she loved finger foods. In fact she would turn her head away when you tried to put a spoon in her mouth because she knew it was purees, but she would open her mouth like a little bird if you had a piece of food in your hand. I didn’t worry about the order I introduced foods and really fed her what we were eating, as long as it wasn’t too spicy or chewy. That was the beginning of baby-led weaning for us, and Olive has eaten regular food ever since.

Emily did a great overview of baby-led weaning here. The general premise is that you skip purees and give your baby small chunks of soft finger foods that they feed themselves, which helps them control how much food they want to eat.  Olive’s fine motor skills were so poor even at 9 months, that she still couldn’t feed herself. So we did a modified baby-led weaning approach by holding food in the palm of our hand and letting her grab it with her mouth. We never coaxed her to eat more when she didn’t want to. Some days I wondered how a little baby could eat so much! Some days she just wasn’t in the mood to eat that much, and that was ok too since breastmilk was still her primary form of nutrition.

Introducing a Sippy Cup

Many people introduce a sippy cup the same time they start solids. We introduced a sippy cup around 7 months — the Tilty — and Olive loved drinking water out of it but could only do it with our help. We recently introduced a straw cup, and Olive took to it the first time she used it, so now we exclusively use straw cups and she doesn’t need our help to drink out of it. In fact Olive has been on a bottle strike since she got sick after our trip to the Philippines, so she’s been drinking milk out of a straw cup instead of a bottle.

A Typical Meal

This was a recent lunch that I packed for Charlie and Olive. Olive ate almost all the steamed butternut squash, avocado, baked sweet potato, boiled peas, and roast chicken all by herself. The broccoli, sausage, strawberries and oranges were for Charlie, but he was having too much fun at a birthday party and didn’t eat a bite. That’s what it’s been like for some time — Olive eats way more than Charlie, and she eats much healthier food too.

Starting Solids

There have been lots of posts on the boards lately about starting solids, and I think a lot of people are forgoing rice cereal as the first food. In fact, many nutritionists actually believe that it’s a bad first food because grains are very difficult for babies’ underdeveloped systems to digest. We completely skipped rice cereal with Olive, and I now believe that you can skip purees too.

I know baby-led weaning isn’t for everyone, but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Many foods are so soft when cooked, that you really don’t need to puree them. Ripe avocados and bananas require no cooking – just cut them up into little pieces. Steaming or baking butternut/acorn squash, sweet potatoes, and carrots gets them melt-in-your-mouth soft. Egg yolks** and boiled chicken are great super soft proteins, and perfectly fine as first foods. You can still follow the 3-day allergy rule too, so it’s really not that different from doing purees, except it’s easier since your baby can eat off your plate when you’re out and about, you don’t have to buy a baby food maker, and it’s more fun for your baby too!

Even though we kind of do baby-led weaning, Olive still loves being fed so we often feed her, especially when we’re out and about. But when she doesn’t want anymore, she definitely lets us know (she’s very opinionated) and we never push it.

I made a beef stew with sweet potatoes and carrots above. Olive picked out all the beef only!

First foods

Although chicken was very easy for Olive to eat from the get go, it was a little harder for her to chew ground beef and ground turkey until she was a little older and had more practice chewing food. You really know your baby best, so follow their cues as to when they’re ready for chunkier/chewier food. Chicken is still Olive’s protein of choice, but she also eats eggs, ground turkey, beef (ground, boiled or cooked until very soft), and even tilapia. I try to give her some form of protein in every meal.

Olive eats most vegetables if I sautee them in butter, including mushrooms, zucchini, squash, spinach, sweet potato, asparagus, and broccoli. Would you believe she loves mushrooms best? And I make them with balsamic vinegar!

She also loves garlic and herbs, and I’m not afraid to use pepper and a little bit of salt either. I didn’t use any salt at all for Charlie’s first year of life and beyond. But salt is impossible to avoid when Olive is eating off our plate. A friend of mine who’s a nutritionist also told me that sodium chloride deficiency is one of the most common reasons she sees kids, so I don’t stress out about using some salt. I do try to use less salt in general though now, since we eat together.

Left: turnip and beef, Right: asparagus

Olive’s diet lately mostly consists of protein and vegetables, and a little bit of fruit. She actually doesn’t like much fruit other than bananas and Asian pears. She also loves little chunks of cheese, and likes (but doesn’t love) yogurt. And though she adores bread and pasta, we’ve pretty much cut most breads, pastas, and carbs out of her diet so that she’ll fill up on lean proteins and veggies instead. That’s actually kind of tough because pasta, bagels, pancakes, etc. are so fast and easy! We’ve also really cut back on rice — she eats it maybe once a week and Charlie eats it more often than that — but that’s a tough one to eliminate since I eat so much of it!

Olive ate one meal a day from months 6-7, 2 meals from months 8-9, and she’s been eating 3 meals a day since she was about 10 months old. This is a typical day:

Wake up, nurse
Breakfast: egg fried in butter, banana or a yogurt
Nap, nurse
Lunch: chicken, mushrooms (Olive loves mushrooms!)
Nap, nurse
Dinner: tilapia w/ garlic butter & parmesan cheese, broccoli
Bedtime, nurse
1 middle of the night waking, nurse

We don’t really give her any snacks, except an occasional mum mum or puffs as a bribe. Sometimes it’s so hard to get her to leave the playground, a snack is the only way!

So that’s how we’ve approached solids with Olive. My thoughts on childhood nutrition have changed so much in the past couple of months because of what I’ve learned through Hellobee, and through my research trying to get Charlie to be a better eater. I’m still figuring out what’s best for our family, but I hope to share much more about nutrition, recipes, pickiness in the upcoming months.

For more great posts on baby-led weaning, check out Mrs. Superhero’s post here, and Mrs. Stroller’s post here!

Would you ever consider skipping purees when starting solids?

* We had the Munchkin Fresh Food Feeders left from when Charlie used them, but if I were purchasing some today I would buy these silicon ones from Kidme which have a better design and are easier to clean.
** Some people are allergic to eggs (usually the whites) so you can start off with just the yolks, but we’ve given Olive whole eggs since she was 6 months old.