Babies and Food - Part II: Transitioning to Solids

My experience with transitioning my baby to solid food.

So, how do you figure out this whole "solid food" thing? Let me start off by saying that no matter what it is, your baby will let you know when they are ready for something. Weather it's swaddling, crawling, walking, or eating, they will tell you, in their own individual way, when they are ready to start something. Even though I am a first-time mother I have learned (often the hard way) that making them try something they are not ready for is a surefire way to get them to NOT want to do it even more. (And yet I keep trying *smile*)

So, back to my questions posed in the previous post: How do you know when to transition to stage 2 foods? And then how do you know when to transition to stage 3 foods? And how do you know when you should reduce the amount of breast milk or formula you are feeding your baby?

You can get a good idea of how much your baby needs nutritionally (e.g. the major food groups like meat, dairy, and grains) by searching the Internet. But how does that translate into calories and food? Honestly? I still have no idea. When it comes to food, it is still a mystery to me how we are getting by but I'll tell you what we did. (And bear in mind that even if your baby is charting in the 20th percentile, as long as they stay in that percentile as the months go by, they (and you) are doing just fine.)

Asking your pediatrician is always a good idea but they will all have a different suggestion as to what to do. You can honestly ask 5 doctors and get 5 answers on what you should be feeding your baby and when. My grandmother was telling me that when my dad and aunt were babies (in the 1940's) she went to the pediatrician monthly and the pediatrician would tell her what she should be feeding her babies and how much she should be feeding them. Boy would that be handy, but times have changed. There are pretty good guides out there for how much formula or breast milk your children should be consuming in a day until they turn 1 year old. And from what I have read during that time it's a good idea for your baby to get liquid nutrition before solid nutrition since there are more calories in the liquid. And that works for a while. When Willow was about 8 months old or so we switched to bottle AFTER solid food and she does fine.

Ont thing that I didn't really think about was a snack for Willow. She gets a bottle in the morning and a bottle before bed at night and two solid meals during the day. One day when I dropped her off at daycare her teacher asked if I had thought about giving her a snack. And I never had thought of it. (This is one of those things "seasoned" moms know about I guess...count me in that crowd now!) She suggested baby yogurt and I thought that was a good idea. And Willow really wanted one too since all the other kids were getting snacks. We also give her Gerber Puffs for snacks at other times of the day when it's needed now that she is really good at feeding herself.

When Willow was about 8 months old, we moved to stage 3 foods. How did we know she was ready? We didn't. We knew it was more texture so we gave her some to see if she could eat it and she did fine. When we moved to Stage 3 foods (which introduce meat into the diet if you haven't already), we kind of started off small. She would get 1/2 a jar for lunch and 1/2 a jar for dinner accompanied by a stage 2 fruit (for "dessert") and 4 ounces of formula. This was working out well until she would cry when her food was gone (when she was around 10 months old). This was how we knew that she was ready for more food. Now she gets 1 full stage 3 jar and 1 stage 2 fruit and 4 ounces of formula. Sometimes she doesn't finish the formula but she drinks most of it.

The thing that had been my kind of "dilemma" is the timing of her meals. She gets a large bottle in the morning (which has gotten smaller since she wasn't finishing it) and the same size bottle right before bed. Then she gets a morning snack and two solid meals. We would give her an afternoon snack but she is napping around what would be snack time. She gets her last "real" meal in the mid-to-late afternoon. VERY SOON, we will be replacing that meal with a snack and she will be eating her real meal when we eat our dinner. This will, however, eliminate the before bed bottle. How do I know? Well, she ate late one day last week and then refused her bedtime bottle. I was afraid she would be very hungry when she got up but everything was pretty normal.

So, what's the bottom line? You have to literally play it by ear. TRUST ME, your baby will let you know what they want and when they want it.

Tune in tomorrow for Part III: Transition to Adult Food



Babies and Food - Part I: The Beginning
Babies and Food - Part III: Transitioning to "Adult" Food