Eating...

When Mae was a little past five months old, we introduced her to 'solid' food.   We went the traditional route of rice cereal mixed with breast milk, but then I started reading a bit more and discovered that the pros of waiting until six+ months was really better than the benefits she was getting from 'solid' food and so aside from the occasional pureed carrot or sweet potato we waited on providing her solid food until after my return from California.  

On Mae's six month birthday we were flying to California and having two well behaved travelers with me, I was able to enjoy the in-flight wifi and surf CafeMom (a standard past time of mine.)  One of the groups I am a part of is for babies born in January 2011, so all our babies are approaching the same milestones together (more or less) and some of the moms were in discussion about 'Baby Led Weaning'  at first glance I assumed this was a discussion regarding when to cease breastfeeding, but in fact it was not.  It was more regarding the introduction of solid foods.  Real solid foods, not purees.   One of the moms had provided a great deal of information from the book on the subject:  Baby Led Weaning  and so while in flight I ordered the book.  :)  It arrived at my mom's house the next day!  Impressive!!   I spent the week reviewing and deciding I really liked what it had to say.  Babies don't need purees!  And another food for thought, babies don't need solid food until a year, nutritionally anyway.   

Upon returning home we began to introducing solid foods to Mae.   Starting with pasta and cucumber.  She loved the cucumber and ate a tiny bit of the pasta.  Most of this early food introduction is mostly exploration for her and less about consumption.  On another day we gave her half of a banana and a slice of bread.   On another day avocado (none of which I think made it in her mouth) along with puree carrots that I loaded onto a spoon and handed the spoon to her - which 8 out of 10 times she put into her mouth first.    Our doctor while supportive of solid food movement, still finds the benefit of purees and providing them with the introduction to the spoon and so we figured this was the best of both worlds. 

Things M doesn't like?  Peas.   She's tried them 3xs and her reaction gets more dramatic each time.  The last time she induced vomiting.  DRAMA.    We'll continue to try every few weeks simply because it's been shown you have to try a food up to 10xs before it really a no go.  I'm not sure 10xs is worth wasting a jar of peas but we'll see.

Overall Mae is doing great with her food exploration.  She still consumes the purees more than anything and often it is with a two spoon rotation otherwise she won't loosen her grip on the one spoon unless another is presented for her to take.   She still has no teeth poking through, so she's constantly chewing on things to work them through the gums.     She gets very messy with this method of food exploration, but I don't mind.   She is doing very well with a spoon and putting food into her mouth.    We'll continue to provide her options for her to explore!