Starting cereal / baby food

Are there any benefits of starting at 4 months or waiting until 6 months? I EBF and am just not sure what to do. Anyone find any articles or any info about this??

Re: Starting cereal / baby food

I asked the pediatrician the exact same thing. I was EBF and she said we could start foods at 4 months. I asked if I was robbing any nutrition from DS by wanting to wait until 6 months and she said 'Good for me!' She said it's because most parents want a variety and it didn't matter nutritionally.

Some children, however, start cereal early on a doctor's recommendation for reflux, etc. I know there are articles out there that others have shared, so hopefully they read this.

Re: Starting cereal / baby food

This is the subject of debate and cotroversy . . . just like everything else involved in raising a child.

For me, I decided to look seriously at the American Academy of Pediatricians guidelines for delaying solids, and look seriously at those things that are considered "signs" of readiness in a child to eat solids.

Signs of readiness . . .
able to hold head up
able to sit up unassisted
loss of tongue thrust reflex (this is a big one)

Reasons to delay include . . .
allowing the child's digestive system to fully mature
all of a child's nutritional needs are met through BM or formula and nothing additional is needed in the first 6 months of life
cost (not mentioned in any list I've ever looked at, but certainly listed as a reason to BF instead of FF)

After everything I read I decided that I would hold off on solids until DD reached 6 months of age. I also really wanted to prove to myself that even though I was back at work I could still offer DD BM 100% of the time without supplementing or resorting to solids for her.

Mind you this was not easy, as my mom watches her 2x per week, and each and every time I would drop her off I would get asked when she was going to get "real" food. Whenever I had dinner at my mom's she would make comments to the baby like "oh, all these people get food and you poor thing, you're stuck with a liquid diet"

DD is now 7 1/2 months. I went about a week past the day she turned 6 months before offering her the first taste of rice cereal. She displayed all the signs of readiness before I started. As a result (and this is JMO) when she eats 98% of what is on the spoon goes in her mouth - not all over her face and her bib. In the beginning I mixed all her cereal with BM instead of water so that she continued to reap the benefits BM while learning to eat. (now I do 50-50).

And just because sometimes I can be truly spiteful, my mom has yet to feed DD any solids whatsoever, and in fact doesn't even know she has been eating them for over a month.

Re: Starting cereal / baby food

We held off until 6 months also, for many of the reasons the pp mentioned. DS couldn't sit up unassisted then and even at 7.5 months is still wobbly, though he sits up very well in his highchair.

Another reason to possibly delay is food allergies--there has been some research indicating that starting solids very young could cause food allergies. But then some recent research says it doesn't matter. Who knows ?

We decided to wait to play it safe with food allergies, and because we just didn't feel DS was really developmentally ready for solids at 4 months.

Re: Starting cereal / baby food

One question I have: Do you feel pressured into giving solids earlier than you were planning? (By relatives or society, etc.)

Re: Starting cereal / baby food

Another thing that my dr said was that when a baby is EBF the milk supply automatically adjusts to what a baby needs at a specific age. So at her monthy appts you should see a slowing down of weight gain which is an indicator of readiness for food. For example my DD almost always gained 2 pounds a month, then all of a sudden at her 5 month appt(when she was 5.5 months old) she only gained 8 ounces...dr said that was a way of knowing that my body had adjusted and she needed solids.