Sophia has terrible tummy issues, has since she was born. Luckily zantac has helped a lot. Our ped recommended waiting until 6 months to even attempt to introduce solids. We noticed Sophia starting to watch us eat and mimicked us chewing around 5 months so I knew she would be ready. We also decided to skip rice cereal or baby oatmeal. Sophia was at 90-95% for her weight to introducing for the calories was not necessary. The first food we introduced Sophia to was avocado, the first time it went over great, the next 2 times resulted in consistent vomiting about 2 hours after she ate it. Vomit EVERYWHERE for like an hour! Miserable! I'm not sure if it was a shock to the system or purely coincidence but we halted on the avocado for awhile.
My friend Courtland took me under her wing when it came to making baby food. I'm not against buying baby food, I just wanted to try making it first and see how that went. Here's a couple of notes:
First foods:
- Sweet Potatoe - Sophia LOVES it! I bake it in the oven and puree in the food processor
- Butternut Squash - Sophia loves this as well. I buy the already cubed at Costco, steam and puree
- Carrots - steam and puree. Sophia had a terrible reaction from carrots but also had a cold virus at the same time. We're going to wait a month and reintroduce and see if it really was the carrots. According to my ped NOone is allergic to carrots so she assumes it was the virus. NOTE: you cannot use the water from the carrots to thin out your puree, it contains some chemical I can't remember that is harmful to your kiddo
- Pears/nectarines/peaches - bake in the oven at 350 until done then puree. I put these in plastic baggies and freeze flat versus the ice cube tray.
- Green beans - I bought the frozen cut up green beans, steamed them in the microwave and pureed them, Sophia oddly really likes them.
- Spinach/Sweet potatoe - I took one of those blocks of frozen spinach, steamed it in the microwave and pureed with sweet potatoes (see above). NOTE: spinach looks them same coming out as it did going in - this FREAKED out Bart and I so consider yourself warned
- Applesauce - I buy organic applesauce it's way cheaper than making your own applesauce
- Pumpkin - we have not given this to sophia yet but you can buy pureed organic pumpkin in a can
- Yogurt - So far Sophia has only had Activia yogurt because she needed the probiotics but there is soooo much sugar in it so she gets about a 1/4 of a container at a time.
- Bananas - it took until probably the 10th time of Sophia trying bananas to not gag and throw up. We just cut off a piece, mash it up and feed it to her.
- Yellow Squash - bought fresh, peeled, cut, steamed and pureed. Froze into cubes. These are a bit watery but we didn't want the seeds to stay in chunks so we will deal with them being a little runny. I'm trying to introduce foods that are not orange in fear she will literally turn orange.
A couple notes:
- I prefer to use our food processor. We got a really nice one for our wedding (thanks a ton to whoever got that for us), I personally like it better than the blender. I think it would be nice to have a smaller one or a bullet but I can't justify the cost when we have something completely capable of pureeing.
- I love the silicone brownie pans to freeze the food in, so easy to store and so easy to pop out the frozen food.
- If you need to thin out your puree use water from steaming the veggies (some of the nutrients go into the water), the one exception is carrots
- Courtland taught me to bake the fruit instead of steaming it - OMG it tastes soooo much better. Especially if your making sweet potatoes anyway - just throw them in next to it.
- I like to make it in bulk and freeze it and then have enough for like a month versus making it a little at a time.
- Thawed food can be used for 3 days - so I take enough out on Sunday nights through Wednesday and then take enough out for the rest of the week.
- Sophia would barley eat a full cube at one sitting for about a week, we're slowly getting up to more in one sitting. Also - you can mix about anything together, she doesn't know the difference!
- Introduce one food every 3 days to make sure there are no allergies.
Here is my first stash of baby food after leaving Courtland's house.
We started out with quite the stash!
Quick pat on the back - I've managed to store up quite a freezer stash for those incase of emergency situations. I freeze them flat and then put them in gallon bags. This is her main source of calories. I freeze everything left over from the week on Fridays and then thaw out the oldest milk for Mondays at the sitters to rotate the stash.
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This was Sophia after eating Carrots. I have no idea if it was the carrots or the cold virus but my poor sweet baby was soooooo miserable. Oh did I mention she also started teething at this time? Any guesses which it was???
At first Sophia would NOT let us feed her, we're talking clamped shut, could not get her open with the jaws of life. My mom was visiting and I had her try and finally she goes to Sophia "fine you do it" and hands her the spoon. Sophia put it right in her mouth and ate it all. My little stubborn independent baby is showing signs of mama already...
Yellow squash - peel and steam then puree. I put these in the cube tray to freeze into cubes.
Peaches and Nectarines - peel, cut and bake in the oven then puree. I froze these flat in plastic bags.
So this is just the start, I have not ventured into fun mixtures as we're still working on introducing some new ones. She does love sweet potatoe / Butternut squash / apple sauce as a combo though so we will keep that one going.
One odd thing we've encountered so far is what do you do when you're in a restaurant? We take Sophia's food in an insulated bag and then ask the waitress to put it in the microwave for 10 seconds. Probably odd but it's worked for us. Looking forward to the day we can start to introduce finger foods and not having to worry about this.
If you have any tips or recipes I'm open to hearing! Thanks to everyone for your help so far!
