Thinking about solids

[athene]

As our Little Prince is turning 6 months in a week, Darius and I have been starting to look into and acquire items for starting solids. We’ve had a highchair for a little while already (Thanks Grandpa and Grandma A!). Now we have some sippy cups with handles, a whole bunch of baby size spoons, and a set of baby sized no-slip bowls.

I’m not going to lie to you, Marge, I’m really nervous about this whole feeding my baby something other than breastmilk thing. I’ve been doing a lot of research into it. I don’t want to push LP to start solids before he is ready. While he’s starting to exhibit some of the signs – good at sitting on his own, losing the tongue thrusting reflex – there are still others – developing the pincer grasp, being really interested in our food, mimicking chewing – that he’s not doing yet. I am a little worried that I’m so nervous about this that I’ll purposefully misread the signs, but everything I’ve read said that when a baby is truly ready, it is hard to miss.

As for how to feed him, I’ve been really conflicted. I really like the idea of Baby Led Weaning. Letting LP explore food on his own instead of feeding him. But I doubt that daycare will be willing to go along with this (I haven’t actually asked though). I realized over the weekend that this is okay. That I can make mashes, purees, etc for daycare to feed him and do BLW at home. In fact, if LP enjoys food, it may make daycare feel better, since with the reverse cycling, he just doesn’t take a lot of milk while he is there.

I did offer LP smells of banana, strawberry, blueberry, and raspberry over the weekend. He wasn’t overly impressed with any of them. But, he did seem more interested in the raspberry than in the others. He is his father’s child. I also let him lick an apple slice, but then he made a funny face and wanted to nurse. I’m guessing he was trying to get the taste out of his mouth.

Originally published at my baby blog. Please leave any comments there.