Baby’s First Food: When to Start & Stop

When you introduce solids to your baby it’s not about the nutrition that he or she will be getting, but rather the explorative process of eating and having a spoon in his or her mouth.  So don’t worry if the baby eats very little.  The last thing you want to do is force your baby to eat and end up with an unhappy baby.

The best results in feeding will happen if you follow your baby’s queues!

You want your baby to be interested in the food, to look at the food and open his or her mouth.  Here are some examples from my first feeding experience.  These photos show you that Hannah was interested and wanted to take part in the new situation:

 

But soon after these initial first bites, she had enough.  And she told me so!

Even though Hannah doesn’t speak words, her actions were very clear.  She did not want anymore!  So we stopped.  If I had continued she probably would have started to get very fussy and maybe cry.  Not what you want to accomplish.  Remember this is completely new to them.  As I mentioned earlier it’s fine that she only got the tiniest bit of food into her belly.  She is getting adequate nutrition at this point through breast milk (formula is more than adequate too).  It’s good to experiment for about a month with baby rice cereal until they’ve mastered it.

Next up: When to move on from baby rice cereal