Judah got his first taste of food this week. He is nearly six months old and has been exhibiting all the clues that he is ready for cereal: he can sit up without support, he has been really watching us when we eat and is curious about what we are doing (he often lunges for our plates), and he is more than double his birth weight. All the materials that I receive from Gerber (you can sign up for information and coupons at their website) say that you can begin giving rice cereal and other single grain cereals to infants when they exhibit the above signs and are around four to six months of age. I talked to the pediatrician and she urged me to wait until six months.
For Judah’s first cereal feeding I mixed a tablespoon of rice cereal with 3 tablespoons of expressed breastmilk. This made the cereal very soupy which is what you want in the beginning. Later you begin to mix it with less formula or breastmilk to make it gradually thicker. If your baby pushes the cereal out then he or she may not be ready. That’s okay; just try again a little later. Eating cereal is more for practice – learning to eat with a spoon and trying new textures. It really isn’t about nourishment yet. The main nutrition should still be coming from breastmilk or formula. You should give the cereal to your baby with a spoon, not in a bottle. Feeding your baby cereal in his or her bottle can lead to eating too much. As always, you should check with your pediatrician before giving your baby any new foods. Your doctor can help you determine the right time and order you give your baby new foods.
Be sure to get your camera or video camera ready! We recorded Judah’s first bites of cereal with our flip video camera. It was absolutely hilarious! He was definitely ready for his first bites! He chomped the spoon and didn’t want to turn loose. Each time I tried to feed him a bite he grabbed the spoon and shoved it in his mouth his self. We’ve definitely got an independent one on our hands! We ended up using two spoons because we couldn’t convince him to let us have the spoon back unless we offered another one with cereal in it! He got frustrated if we didn’t keep it coming fast enough! My favorite part was the look on his face. He made it look so good! His little eyebrows were wiggling the whole time! I am so glad we caught it on video; we’ll enjoy giggling at it for years to come.