Wednesday, 11 December 2013

Starting Solids

My baby is six months already and with her first tooth through I thought now was a good time to start introducing solids.
I'd thought about this for months, I wanted to wait until her first tooth was through as to me this shows a physical sign of readiness for solids. I also thought 6 months (and not before) was a good time as her digestive system is more developed. I plan to wait until her molars are through before introducing grains as I read that babies don't produce amylase to digest grains before their molars come through. Breastmilk has some amylase which is why when baby cereal is mixed with breastmilk it goes really watery.
My little girl had been sucking on a cinnamon stick for teething and while we all ate dinner and she was quite into it as well as watching us eat so I figured she was ready for solids.
The first day we tried avocado and she made a face like most babies do when they first try solids but then she retched and threw up. I figured she didn't like it and I thought I'd just try it again the next day. So on the second day we gave it a go again and the same thing happened so I thought she must just really not like the taste. On the third day I gave her some banana, I gave her a piece to hold and put the tiniest bit on my finger in her mouth. But again it just made her retch and throw up.
Starting solids has proven to be much different to what I expected, at this stage we've decided just to give her things like carrot sticks and slices of apple to suck on so she begins to get used to different flavors. Once she has more teeth she will begin to gnaw away at it and taste it more. I'm not worried at the moment as she is clearly a healthy weight and she isn't on the breast all day so she's not in desperate need of more food.
For me this has been a great lesson in surrender, India took to food straight away and was always so excited to eat but Mio has been so different. I've never heard of a baby that forces herself to throw up when she eats food so it's quite odd.  It's still early days so I'll just see how things go over the next month or so.

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