6 Month Old

By this age he should be able to eat solids off of a spoon. Quit putting it in the bottle.

Instead of the baby applesauce, buy regular applesauce with no sugar and mix his cereal up in it and feed it with a baby spoon. Also, give him a spoon to play with.

You can also put some Cherioos on his high chair and let him play with them. Bananas are a good food to feed at 6 months.

It is possible he doesn't like baby food, and if you feed him mashed up table food he may find he likes it better.

they do seem to go back and forth on how much they are eating, i know mine do! since he is an older baby, you might try mashing up fresh fruits and veggies that you eat, instead of buying the jars. they have a brighter color and a bolder flavor, so he might like them better. neither of my kids would ever eat any gerber, but they LOVED anything i made for them, with very few exceptions.

Around six months babies have a growth spurt and they can tend to eat more for a while as their caloric needs go up, and they go back to normal after a while.
Also some babies just don't like baby food. My daughter didn't, so I would put whatever we were eating in the food processor for her. Her favorite was curried chicken apple soup!

Hi A.. I have a 7 1/2 month old. I have a SIMILAR situation. My baby started great on the cereal, then we added fruits to the cereal...kept adding like we're supposed to. She had several ear infections, and for a while wouldn't eat any solid foods. I was concerned, but she was steady gaining weight. My pediatrician told me that her steady weight gain was good - that she was getting her calories from somewhere...whether it was the milk or the solids...so not to worry. He told me to just continue offering the solids...be consistent. She still only takes about 5 or 6 oz. in a bottle. You see, my three older children were complete hogs when they were babies. Drank tons of milk & ate at least two jars of baby food in each sitting. That's why I was concerned with this baby. But, her appetite just isn't as big as my other babies were. She does eat off of a spoon. That too is something you'll just have to be consistent with. Eventually he'll catch on. As far as the gas goes, mine has a lot of gas also. I had to switch my girl from the Gentle formula to the lactose free for the gas & cramps. It worked for her. The only advice I can really give you is to be consistent..with the spoon & the foods...as long as he's gaining some weight, he should be fine.

my daughter was the same way i just gave it a little longer and tried again she finally likes solid

A.,

I never gave my kids solid foods until they were 9 months old or older. I nursed them until then. The firt foods that I gave them were banana straight off the banana in very little bites. As we started them in more foods, I bought a baby grinder and I ground up all the food that we ate. I wouldn't eat that stuff they sell in the jar at the store either. Have you tasted it? It tastes awful!

have you tried real food? have you tried things like scambled eggs, refried beans, and all the regular baby foods but home made? what about cream of wheat (farina) and quick oatmeal? Do you warm them up? My kids hated cold milk and food. Definetly check with the Dr. I thought that putting cereal in a bottle was not necessary. I was always told, only milk goes in a bottle and food goes in a bowl.

Possibility the cereal is filling the baby up. Also, my son, did not eat baby food at all. Refused, so we choose to go all regular food and he at it up. If you are okay with it, try cream of wheat, oatmeal, mashed potatoes. Good luck!

Take the cereal out of the bottle. My Ped told me no cereal in the bottle and plus, how is your baby going to learn to eat from a spoon if you keep giving it in a bottle? Do you mix formula into the cereal when you make it? Just keep trying to feed him with a spoon, and he will eventually get it, some just take longer than others.

You are now teaching your child little by little how to eat so please stop cereal in the bottles. Try a food for a few days and see if he likes it. Don't give up the idea of food is just so new that even the reflex to swallow isn't there for new eaters. For a while your child will push food out and maybe even get chills when you give them certain foods but remember it is new. By next month your baby will be eating like a pro. This is a good time to encourage lifelong eating. If you don't give foods now they probably will never like their veggies. Try banana or even avocado. Anyway, hope this helps but no more cereal in the bottles.

He might not be ready for solids yet and that's okay. Children develop individually at their own pace. Plus, the most current AAP recommendation isto start solids between 6 and 9 moths of age. So just stop the solids for a while and watch your son for the next couple of months. He'll let you know when he's ready.

Before our move to Oklahoma a few years ago I had spent the last 3 yrs working for a pediatricians office. It is perfectly normal for all babys to go through spurts of not eating as much as normal, you need only worry if you cannot get him to eat or drink at all. All children develop the taste for "real" food at different stages, he may just not be ready for it yet, and thats ok too. Just try the solid food like once a week and he will let you know when he wants it. Its also better to start with plainer vegetables than with the fruits that you said you were sarting with. They have less taste to them and may be an esier transition from milk and cereal to solids.

It's normal for them to eat alot during a growth spurt and then go back to eating normal amounts afterwards. My daughter is 4 and she still goes through phases where she'll eat me out of a house and home then she'll go to eating hardly nothing for awhile. Also, she was a very gassy baby and toddler. When she got old enough to talk and express her feelings, she complained alot about her tummy hurting and we recently found out that she is lactose intolerant, which is what was causing the excess gas and constipation. I wish a million times I had known that when she was a baby! You might try switching formula and see if it helps.

Feeding baby foods at 6-12 months is to help baby learn how to eat solids - how to move his jaw, how to move his tongue, when to swallow, etc. - so baby food in the bottle doesn't help him learn that. At this point it's not for nutrition but for development.

I've been very blessed with a little boy that loves to eat, and will eat the food even if he doesn't care for it at first. (You should have seen the faces he made with green beans!) I've fed him Nature's Goodness (Del Monte) or Gerber Organic because they have no additives except water or ascorbic acid (vit. C to preserve color). Beech Nut has some good varieties, and I've heard good things about Earth's Best organic baby foods, but they're more expensive and not as widely distributed. Some baby foods taste icky because they've been cooked for safe storage - like canned produce. A baby food processor is also a good idea because when baby needs to start on chunks (to learn chewing), you simply process for a shorter time. We have one of those, too.

Sorry this is so long, but I also found my boy likes the added texture of baby cereal in his purees, so I mix in rice, oatmeal, or barley cereal to thicken the food up a bit. That way he gets additional iron and B vitamins, which breast milk is deficient in. (Breastfed babies only need iron supplementation after 6 months though: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSCOL56981720... ) I don't know about formula.

Hope some of this helps! Best thing, I think, would be to be persistent and patient. It can take many tries before a kid will accept a new food.

Becky E.

My son tried some mashed foods at around 6 months, but never really got the hang of them or wanted them....so we waited. And offered a bit of our food of our plates when he started looking at it and reaching for our food. He was about a year old before he really "ate" anything solid. He was growing normally and right on track, so the doc wasn't concerned. The next six months he varied how much he ate solids-wise...some days/weeks you couldn't give him enough, others he barely ate a cheerio! We continue to nurse, so I know he's getting enough, especially since he's still growing and developing and meeting his milestones!! Babies know enough to eat when they are hungry and to stop when they aren't. If he's still wetting and soiling diapers daily, and still growing weekly/monthly....I wouldn't worry about the solids. Give him time and he'll come into them on his own schedule. And if you're still pumping/nursing, he's getting what he needs. Hang in there mama!!

I wouldn't worry at all about it.

One of my 4 babies didn't care much for solid foods until she was 14 months. I would offer some soft foods all the time, but she preferred to just nurse.

I never do jar food, either, but maybe you should when babies are on formula.................I don't really know.

Hi A.,

I was not sure if it was formula in the bottle or breastmilk, but breastfed babies not need any solid foods at all for the first year of life as breastmilk provides 100% of their nutrition. I am not sure about formula fed kids.

I peronally never gave my kids solid foods until they were 9-10 months old and then just small amounts as their primary form of food was breastmilk.

I would stop giving cereal in a bottle and then just grind up the food you cook - just be sure to not add salt or other stuff until after you take the babies portion out. It tastes so much better than the jarred stuff and is so much healthier. Look at the ingredients on the baby foods in the jar - I was personally shocked!

My daughter was pretty gassy when we started solids. But after a week it seemed to get better. I think her system just needed to get used to it. He might not be ready for solids too. I would wait another week and try again with some other orange veggie (squash or carrots) since they are sweeter.
My daughter (8 months) will also eat less on some days. I think it just depends on what they did that day, teething and growing. Some days she will eat a whole stage 2 jar of food for lunch and other days she will just eat maybe half of one. I wouldn't worry too much about it unless there are other unusual behaviors.