Your Baby’s First Solids

There is no hurry; go slowly. Learning to eat solid foods is a big task for your baby. Up to now he has connected being hungry with sucking for milk. Now he has to learn that hunger can be satisfied by foods other than milk and that these foods can be taken in ways other than sucking. To begin with he will not understand what you are trying to do when you put a spoon to his mouth. He will not know that what you are offering is something that will quell his hunger so he will have no reason to cooperate. If he is hungry, he will want his bottle or the breast. If you upset or frustrate him, by trying to force food into his mouth when he is rejecting it, you may put him off the whole business.

Cash in on his curiosity and interest

If you wait until four or five months before introducing any solid foods your baby will probably already be interested in the way you eat and in the foods that he can see other people enjoying. If he is sitting on your lap while you eat lunch and he is watching every mouthful you take, give him a taste (of something suitable!) off your finger. Sharing in the pleasures of family eating is the very best way to introduce him to the whole idea of food-that-is-not-milk.

Use his ability to play with his hands

At this age a baby will not get much nourishment out of finger-foods but he will very much enjoy them. Being allowed to clutch and suck at a crust makes up for passive spoon-feeding, and the fact that the baby puts the food to his own mouth makes it more likely that he will find the strange taste and texture interesting rather than infuriating. Watch him every moment though. If a crumbly piece breaks off in his mouth you will need to fish it out before he chokes.

Time the meal

Don’t try to teach him about solid foods at meals for which your baby is always frantic. The early morning feeding, for example, is not usually a good one to begin with. He is barely awake but he is ravenous. Let him suck in peace.

Whatever time of day you select for introducing solids, don’t try to give spoon foods to your baby while he is desperate to suck. If you do, he will yell with hunger and frustration around every spoonful. On the other hand, don’t wait to offer them until he is full of milk. He will be too sleepy and lethargic to bother. A sandwich system can often work best: a few minutes sucking to allay the worst of his hunger and assure him that the breast or bottle is still safely there for him; then the offer of some solid food; and then as much more milk as he wants.

Feeding the meal

Taking food without sucking is very difficult for babies until they get the hang of it. If you put the food on his tongue, he does not know how to get it far enough back in his mouth to swallow. It will simply dribble out again. If you dump it at the back of his mouth, he may gag and will probably then reject spoonfeeding, sometimes for weeks. The technique that usually works best is to use a tiny spoon – an old-fashioned demitasse spoon is ideal – and to hold it just between the baby’s lips so that he can suck the contents off. If he sucks at it, he will get some of it far enough back in his mouth to swallow. If he likes the taste, he may become positively enthusiastic.

Knowing when to stop

If you use this method of spoonfeeding, he will be able to “tell” you when he does not want any more: he will turn his head away from the spoon or close his lips instead of sucking. But if you put food right into his mouth, you will not be able to tell when he has finished. Dribbling the food out, gagging, crying may all be signals to stop, but they may also be the result of bad feeding technique or a baby who is not very good at eating yet.

Spoonfeeding

Your baby has no reason to suppose she is going to enjoy her first solid foods. You have to help her. She has to discover that the tastes are pleasant and she has to learn to get the food far enough back in her mouth for swallowing. Only after that will she discover that the food copes with hunger!

Don’t force her. Let her suck the food off for herself; stop the meal if the taste makes her cry, or when her closed lips say “enough.”

• Hold a tiny spoon to the baby’s lips and let her suck off the contents. She will get enough to taste. If she likes it she will go on. . . .
• If you put too much food on the spoon and put it too far back in the baby’s mouth, you are forcing her to swallow; she may gag and she has no chance to “say” whether she likes it.
• If you put the food on the front of the baby’s tongue, it will simply dribble out again. She cannot get it far enough back to taste or swallow. You will both be frustrated.

Digesting Early Solids

Most babies over four months can digest a wide range of foods easily. Conventions about “suitable” foods have little factual basis. A British mother might not consider avocado suitable because in Britain it is a luxury food. Yet in California or Israel avocados are commonplace and are often fed to babies.

It is important not to add salt to the baby’s food because extra salt can stress immature kidneys. It is sensible to avoid spices and exotic seasonings as these may burn the baby’s mouth or even inflame his stomach, and it is essential to avoid coffee, tea and alcohol which are all drugs. Otherwise, he can try any food which the rest of the family usually eats. But try it out slowly. Introduce any food which is new to him on its own and as a single teaspoonful the first couple of times. If it should disagree with him you will then know exactly which food to avoid for a few weeks.

Remember that he cannot chew yet. If you feed him lumps he will have to swallow them as lumps. He will not like doing so and he may choke. So strain, grind or liquidize his early meals. If you use a blender it will not get rid of seeds or tough skins. His digestion will not deal well with these things at first, so you will also have to strain foods which contain them.

Too much sugar or too much fat can upset the baby’s digestion. He has been accustomed to that perfectly balanced milk diet and he will need time to adjust to sugary chocolate pudding or butter with his vegetables. Even once he can digest animal fats and sugar, keep them low for the sake of his future health and eating habits.

Allergies

If yours is a family which suffers from allergic disorders like asthma or hay fever, consult with your doctor before you start mixed feeding. If the baby has already shown signs of being prone to allergy – if he has eczema, for example – he may advise you not even to try possible culprits like egg-white or strawberries at this early stage. Otherwise don’t worry. An allergic reaction to a tiny quantity of food is unlikely to be violent. Just withhold that food until he is older.

Juggling Feeding Times Once your Baby is Having Solids

By around five months most babies are ready to begin to adapt to family mealtimes, however many “snacks” they have from the breast or bottle in between. Your baby still won’t last from supper to breakfast time, though, so that stretch of time can be broken either by a late night breast- or bottle-feeding or by an early morning one, whichever you prefer. If your household wakes early and you like to go early to bed, you will probably prefer the early morning. If you like to sleep in but always go to bed late anyway, a late evening bottle- or breast-feeding may suit you better.

Three common feeding patterns for this age group, each suiting a differently organized household, are given below:

Feeding Pattern

Comments

Early waking baby in early rising household

The baby has a milk feeding between 5am and 6am and then sleeps again. The morning rush is over when the baby next needs attention: breakfast at 9-10am. She has lunch rather late, between 1:30 and 2pm and, with the help of a drink of juice, lasts until supper which is served with the rest of the family at around 7pm.

The whole pattern is dependent on the baby having that early morning feeding. If she begins to sleep later in the mornings, she must either be woken for it or have her feeding pattern altered, as below.

Later waking baby in family that stays up late

The baby wakes and has breakfast with the rest of the family at around 8am. He has lunch at about 12:30pm and then an early supper served specially – at about 5pm. He wakes or is woken for a milk feeding at the parents’ bedtime.

This pattern gives the father more opportunity to be with the baby as he will see him at breakfast and at his late night feeding. It gives the mother more peace in the evening as the baby can be put to bed before the adult evening meal, but it also gives her more of a rush in the morning if she has to cope with the baby’s breakfast at the same time as everyone else’s.

The pattern is dependent on that late night feeding. If he is allowed to sleep through without it, the baby will not last until breakfast time.

The middle road

The baby wakes at around 7am. She is happy to accept breakfast at once, in which case her lunch will come early and she will have a late-evening milk feeding.

But she is equally happy to be given milk alone when she wakes and then to have a late breakfast, lunch and supper.

This pattern need not be fixed one way or the other. You can probably keep it flexible from day to day as long as you are willing to give the baby something extra to keep her going. She might need an instantly available snack while she waits for breakfast on “early” days, and something between lunch and supper on “late” days.

Turning First Solids Into Meals

By five to six months babies who have enjoyed their first tastes of solid foods will be learning that food from a spoon can satisfy hunger. Although sucking milk will go on being vitally important for many months, they will have learned to look forward to solids as well. Such babies are ready to begin, very gradually, to eat more spoon and finger-foods and to rely less on the breast or bottle.

The “sandwich” system makes it easy to recognize this stage. You prepare the baby’s solid food and then settle down to feed him from the breast or bottle. Recognizing his dish, he will begin to hurry that first sucking in order to get to the dish sooner. If he likes what is in it, he may eat it all and then want only a token amount of milk to finish up with.

Once he begins to behave like this you can offer rather more solid foods (perhaps three teaspoons instead of one) and be prepared to abandon the “sandwich” system when he shows, by gesture, that he wants to start a meal with his solids or that, having sucked and then eaten, he does not want any more milk. He is beginning to wean himself by very gradually shifting his allegiance from milk to “real” food. But he is doing it because he wants to, not because anything is being forced on him. It is important to let him set the pace. There may be days or even weeks when he reverts to wanting only milk and there may be certain feedings in each day when he continues to need two sucking sessions. If you let him lead, you can be sure that he will take the milk/food combination that he wants and that what he takes will also be what he needs.

Eventually he will probably arrive at a pattern. First thing in the morning he will almost certainly need to suck before he can eat. If this first meal is his fourth milk-only feeding, being given now rather than in the late evening, he will obviously have only milk. But if the meal is breakfast, let him suck as much as he wants and then have his solid food afterwards.

At lunch time he will probably be eager for his solids and he may be generally less interested in sucking at this time of day. Offer him the breast or bottle after his meal, but once he shows you he is uninterested, offer a drink from a cup instead.

At suppertime he may need a suck first, to calm him down after his bath and playtime. Then he will be ready to eat his solid food before having a long peaceful suck (perhaps in his own room) to ready him for bed.

If he still has a milk feeding to come in the late evening, this will obviously be a time just for simple, sleepy sucking.

During this in-between stage your baby is learning to manage with fewer but larger meals than he has been accustomed to. He will learn fast and happily if you keep the whole business of eating pleasurable for him. Often he will need a snack to keep him going. Instead of an extra milk feeding he will sometimes enjoy something hard and edible to hold and chew. The more practice he gets in managing finger-foods the sooner he will get some actual nutrition as well as enjoyment out of them. He will want to play with his solid foods, too, and the more you encourage him to dabble with his fingers and mess with a spoon the sooner he will learn to feed himself. All in all, happy meals at this age mean lots of mess, so it is a good idea to get organized and equipped for it.