Food Experimentation
Babies are truly amazing little things.
It is honestly crazy how fast they grow and how much everything — and I mean everything — changes in such a short period of time.
Melody is now at the stage of where I had to introduce solid food into her diet. I have honestly been looking forward to this transition ever since she was born. Since you all know, I wasn’t able to breastfeed much, so I had to bottle feed.
But now, we have introduced a bunch of solids and are progressing nicely.
Many now believe that a baby should start solids as of six months, but my pediatrician has her own opinions on that and since she is old school and was my pediatrician when I was Melody’s age, I blindly trust her … I mean look at me: I am as alive and healthy as can be.
Anyway… So at five months we started introducing solid foods.
I used the Chicco Easy Meal to help me steam and blend her food. Many like to use already made purees from the different baby food companies, but I am at home and have nothing better to do, so I make them myself.
Sometimes it can be stressful, because I forget that I don’t have anything already done and I need to make them as soon as I possibly can to feed her, but I feel like its made with love when I do it myself, so it makes me happy.
So we started off with the basic veggies: carrots, zucchini, potatoes, sweet potatoes — the best veggies to get her food palette going.
A little bit of each one for a couple days. We do this to be able to keep an eye out for food allergies, giving the baby a few days to get accustomed to the veggie and make sure their body is accepting it.
Everyone around me was warning me about zucchini and how she wont like it, but leave it to my little one to prove everyone wrong.
Melody apparently was sick of the milk diet and wanted to eat something else.
After those four veggies, I had her taste broccoli which was surprisingly also a great success.
Peas, cauliflower came next, and this girl was on a roll.
I then started mixing the veggies together like I was instructed and that was the beginning of the downfall.
Melody was okay with tasteless veggies but only for so long. This baby apparently knows what she wants and what she wanted was more taste.
She began to refuse eating any type of solid food because it just wasn’t enough for her.
I decided to go back to basics and give her just plain as day potatoes but add in her milk making it like mashed potatoes but still without seasoning.
She loved it and started eating solid foods again.
Side note: during this time she started learning how to spit and make noises with her mouth and tongue making it a sweet deal for me when she had food in her mouth and experimented with those noises — welcome to operation food everywhere disaster!
But, I have to admit that she looked so cute doing it.
We have started to introduce a few new things now since Melody is six months now.
The first big change is that she is now being introduced to meat and chicken stock.
I am currently cooking her stock and then boiling the veggies in it making it kind of like a vegetable soup and then blending them together.
I have to say that having Melody eat things that I would eat just blended makes it easier to taste it in front of her to encourage her to taste it.
This was a great experience to see her so excited to eat since there were so many different tastes happening and she wanted more and more.
She is also having breakfast… either biscuits with orange juice or some organic multi cereal grain with some fruits thanks to HiPP.
This is introducing some wheat to her diet so that eventually she will start eating bread.
I have truly loved this transition, it has been exciting and experimental to say the least. Seeing her facial reaction towards the food she is tasting is the most entertaining thing I have ever seen.
Some last bits of advice is to just be patient. Not all babies are going to like everything they eat. Sometimes Melody doesn’t feel like eating something and just shuts her mouth making it impossible to feed her.
It is a fun experience but if you somehow get a little stressed during the process, it is definitely normal and happens to all of us. You got this MAMAS!
Mama Sugar Out!
