Daniel's first solids!

Well my baby is really growing up now. He is almost 7 months old and is sitting up and grabbing everything in site and trying to stuff it in his mouth so we decided he is ready to start eating some solid food. Breast milk will continue to be his primary source of nourishment at least until he is 1 year old but we are introducing some interesting first foods for him to palate. He got his first taste of solid food last night. It was so exciting to see how he would react to his first bites. We started with avocado and it went well. He kind of made a little sour looking face when he got the first bite but he didn't spit it out and went for a second bite right away and went to town. He grabbed the spoon and started "feeding" himself right away. He basically stuck the spoon in his mouth and chewed on it and got some avocado along the way. He ended up covered with green goo but he seemed happy and it cleaned up fairly easily. I can tell now that we have started solids I am going to have to bathe him a lot more frequently though.

When I told people that avocado would be his first food some people understood and applauded that choice but a lot of other people were skeptical. The reason we decided to start with avocados is #1 our pediatrician recommends we make our own baby food and not use commercial. #2 some people expect rice cereal to be the first solid but rice cereal actually has no nutritional value it just makes the baby feel full and thus the baby will breastfeed less which is packed with nutrition. Our pediatrician advised us not to give cereal at all. #3 I want the baby to start out life with good nutritional choices. We tend to gravitate to the bad choices later in life and I will admit I started Elijah with really excellent nutritional choices but now that he is 4 years old he eats a lot of candy and McDonald's and not a lot of good stuff. Its easy to have a baby eat the good stuff they don't know they are missing out on the taste of the stuff that isn't so good for you. So I figure I want to do what's best for my baby now while its not so hard and maybe we can continue good food choices as he grows but if we veer off path at least he has had this good foundation while he is still developing and growing so much. #4 Avocados have good fat which is good for brain development, and they are easily mashed and fed to a baby that has no teeth.

This is a website I found that has great advice on making wholesome baby foods

http://wholesomebabyfood.com/babyfirstfoods.htm

Avocado is the first food it talks about. Here is what it says....

Avocado - a great first food for baby, avocados burst with essential fats
and nutrients that a growing baby needs! Smooth and creamy, avocados are
easily
digested and well tolerated
Vitamins: A, C, Niacin, Folate
Minerals:
Potassium, Phosphorus, Iron, Magnesium, Calcium1.

So basically that sums up why we started with the avocado. The next food we will
probably introduce will be bananas, then carrots. My friend Janice pointed out
that those three foods start with ABC and jokingly suggested we go through the
alphabet. I thought that was an interesting idea but the only thing I can come
up with for "d" is doughnut. That would probably defeat the wholesome food idea.
Oh well. Doug is eager to introduce mashed potatoes and we will probably get to
that soon although he may not be so eager when he finds out that the potato I
have in mind is actually a yam/sweet potato.

So I hope you are all doing well. I don't know if anyone has been reading my ramblings lately but it has been fun getting them written down. Take care!