Babies and Food - Part III: Transitioning to "Adult" Food

My experience with transitioning my baby to Adult food.

So the final question: When do you start introducing "Adult" food?

The quick answer? When your baby tells you they are ready. Here's how we knew Willow was ready...

We feed Willow Gerber Puffs or Cheerios (and some dessert that we are having) when we are eating our dinner since we've given her baby food a bit earlier.

(Again, this will be changing soon as we want her to eat her last meal when we do. This may seem a bit convoluted but we actually set her meal times based on the time in between meals, not based on when people traditionally eat their meals. This started many months ago and was to keep her on a very set schedule. Now, as she is getting older and we are "going with the flow", we want her last meal of the day to get on sync with our last meal of the day.)

Rule #1 of baby eating: When the food is being thrown on the floor, this means Willow is done eating what we are giving her.

We noticed that she was not wanting the snacks we were giving her. She would look intently at our food and start smacking her lips. So, we set aside some of our food and would give her some a piece at a time.

Rule #2 of baby eating: Food is given (for now) one piece at a time.

Rule #2 was to prevent wasting food. Now, if Willow drops a piece in her chair, she goes hunting for it and eats it. I know that we will get to a point where she will have food everywhere and we are prepared to deal with the mess. Heck, sometimes we do end up with quite a bit of food on the floor and it's not a big deal at all. But, until she is eating entire meals of real food, we will continue with the way that works best for us, and this is it.

Depending on the food, Willow either wants us to feed it to her, or she wants to try it herself. We discover the preferred method when we try to feed her and she makes a face and shakes her head. That means she wants to be the one to do it. And when we let her try she does great, especially recently when her tongue stopped getting in the way.

So, that's it! We feed Willow real food when she lets us know she is interested. Soon, she will be eating dinner with us and likely eating even more real food until there is no longer a need for baby food. I don't know how long the overall transition will take but we are patient and it can take however long she needs it to.

I hope this 3-post series has been of some help to you. Like I said, I have had a hard time finding any information on stages of baby feeding. Good luck if you are going through what we have been!



Babies and Food - Part I: The Beginning
Babies and Food - Part II: Transitioning to Solids