The time has come for my little man to start eating more than breast milk. Can you believe it?? I can’t believe that I have started to feed him real food! Ok, well not real food, but cereal for now. I even tried it and it really isn’t that bad! Anyway….it was somewhat of a tough decision for me to start. Why? Well just like everything when it comes to mothering, you have so many different opinions. I know that my “instinct” should be the most important one..but when I start to second guess myself I get lost. Oh decisions, decisions!
The pediatric “masters of the universe” recommend no food until 6 months, but most of the people I have asked started solid foods around 4 months. When we went to our 4th month check up, the doc told us that it was up to us when to start food. She said that he was growing and doing so well on breast milk, that I didn’t have to rock the boat…but it was up to me. Oh great! So I decided to wait a bit. I certainly did not want to rock the boat, but I was excited to start food. Selfishly, I was excited to have another activity to do during the day. But I knew that wasn’t a good enough reason. So I waited. They say your kid will tell you when they are ready by doing a few things, and soon enough I think my guy was telling me he was ready.
So this week I split the difference and started food around the 5 month mark. You can’t tell by the above picture, but he did pretty good! The first few spoonfuls of rice cereal he opened his mouth wide! Just like he knew what to do. Then, he decided to second guess that food stuff and started to make the face you see above. He looked at The Captain like..Help me!
We made it through 3 days of rice cereal in the morning, and have moved onto oatmeal in the morning and rice cereal at night. I am hoping now that he is eating two times a day that I will see a difference in his sleep habits. Not that he’s bad (not even close), but I’m curious to see if it makes any difference.
Just like any new routine I think it will take some time to getting used to, but I have to admit I like the new activity to do during the day. Next will come real food which I am planning to make myself…so stay tuned for that story once we get there!
What is/was your cereal feeding schedule like?
I was really hoping that you’d gotten some good comments on this. ? I want to see what other people are doing/ have done. I took EK to the dr yesterday (ear infection… bummer) and she mentioned starting cereal soon. She’ll be four months old next week, but I’m not sure I’m ready. The dr actually said “in a couple of weeks” – after we make sure her ear is all better, etc. But I’m just not sure I’m ready. I definitely wasn’t starting food,food until 6 months but I’d like to “practice” with cereal… I’m just not sure I want to practice at 4 months. Thinking I might go with you on the 5 mos thing.