First Foods for 6 Month Old

I used the super baby food book too. Ruth Yaron is the author and it is a great book. I used earth's best brown rice cereal as my daughters very first food then we went to avocado and sweet potato then I think banana. Have fun!

Rice cereal first
then vegetables
then fruit
wait 3-5 days before trying every new food to test for allergies.

I would probably hold off on the bananas until she's just a tiny bit older. My little girl broke out in the worst diaper rash when she first had bananas (around 6 months). Bananas have a lot of potassium. We were told in the beginning to start on simple grains, rice cereal like you mention, green beans, applesauce, things that are easy to digest. This is all new to her stomach, so you should keep it simple. :)

Avacodo is a great first food. None of our babies ever had the rice cereal - it is a completely refined, processed food product. Avacodo has all the extra iron that your 6 month is starting to need at that age and plus it has more potassium than banana's! I always bought organic avocados in the bag and right before feeding time I would dice it up and throw it in the food processor with a small amount of formula (to make it creamy). Definitely feed him/her the veggies first, preferably the green ones with the blandest taste, then sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, then fruits.

Veggies Veggies Veggies!! I went so far as to mix the veggies w/ the rice cereal w/ a little bit of breast milk and my children ate that for breakfast for the first year of solids... I started w/ the green veggies and then moved to the sweeter ones.

Once on solids a friend told me to steam the veggies first and feed the children their veggies while you're finishing up the rest of the meal. It works great! My kids eat all their veggies b/c they're hungry when they sit down - I also love the fact that they're being 'trained' to have veggies curb their hunger. I then serve them their plate w/ the protein and carb... all the veggies are done so there is no fighting over that! 3 years later my kids LOVE veggies and eat them right up. We always use fruit as dessert.. Good luck!

My baby would have absolutely nothing to do with baby food - pretty much you can give a baby anything you eat that won't choke her (my son had a taste from african food and things with chili peppers - I am not advising this at all!)

Mashed banana's, mashed avacados, smooshed beans or peas. Asparagus stems were popular too - he would hold them and suck on them

The stuff in the baby food jars is not really healthy - you are better off using your cuisinart to grind and blend whatever you are having for dinner. Google organic homemade baby foods.

Also - for teething, we used to give him a leg bone of a chicken (cartalidge, shart edges removed).

Best of luck! Soon your baby will be feeding you mushy bisquits already pre-chewed!

You've already gotten some good advise, but I wanted to also recommend wholesomebabyfood.com. This side is a wonder! It has various articles but also has great information about each specific food including age of introduction, possible allergens, ways to prepare it and great ideas for finger food as you advance. Good luck!

I started my daughter on papaya, pears and apple sauce all during her 6th month. She loved them all! I waited about 1 week in between introducing new foods, to make sure she didn't have any allergic reactions. She also was on rice cereal, and would often mix the fruit with the cereal. She loved it either way.

start with rice cereal for at least a week. then do veggies before fruits (or she won't like her veggies). wait at least 5 days to start the next new food to make sure there aren't reactions. if she gets more than one new food and gets a rash or digestive problem or whatever, you won't know which food caused it. i gave orange veggies 1st then green ones then fruits. don't forget spinach and other foods you may not like. bananas can cause constipation and peaches and prunes do the opposite. (for future reference!)if i remember correctly, you can switch from rice to mixed cereal around the time you start fruits going by this schedule. oatmeal is last on the cereal list. i give cereal in the morning and food at night until my daughter tried most foods. then fruit with cereal in the am and veggie with cereal in the pm. one small 1st foods jar (1/2 when starting out) or 1/2 a 2nd foods jar til later when food is replacing bottles. also give a little bottle after eating to wash it down. just like we do. have fun and buy lots of bibs!!!

S. m

I used a book called "Super Baby Foods" which was great in showing what age to introduce certain foods and how to make the stuff yourself and freeze in small ice trays for use at later meals.

It was very fast and easy and certainly tasted a lot better than the jars...
Good luck.

avacado, avacado, avacado...

One of the major reasons "they" recommend starting with rice cereal is that it's supplemented with iron, and breastfed babies need more iron in their diets around this time. I would check with your doc, but I think most formulas are supplemented with iron, meaning rice cereal probably isn't quite such a big deal.

Many sources will suggest starting with vegetables, and I've ready varying ideas on this--some folks like to start with fruit, because it's sweet and baby will like it. Others recommend starting with veggies, because it teaches baby not to just want sweet foods. We started our first on peas, and he gagged constantly...we thought he was just struggling with texture, so we fed him peas for a week...then we gave him beans...which he did not gag on; apparently, he just hated peas. Poor kid! Anyway...the advantage, here, of starting with cereal is you can water is down quite significantly until it's almost like feeding them formula with a spoon. We used a food mill for our children (it was easier for us than buying all that food), and we could water down (breast-milk-down) his food with a combo of breastmilk and cereal--so I liked starting w/ cereal for that reason.

I've actually read too, that starting with meat isn't a bad thing. A lot of kids struggle with texture issues with meat, but if you really grind it up good, you can even start with meat; I guess there are some cultures where meat is a traditional first food.

Anyway--we started with veggies; our kids are great eaters--but I couldn't begin to tell you if the two are related!!!

You need to start with rice cereal. This is gentle enough for the baby and you need to make sure that baby can tolerate it. Once she adjusts to eating, then you can move to the yellow veggies. You must start with veggies so that your baby does not develop a love for the sweetness of fruits and not the veggies. You have to start with once veggie and go with it for a couple of days so that they get the taste of it and to make sure she is not allergic to anything. Once the yellow veggies are being eaten then you can move it around. You can choose other veggies, etc. Then you can move to fruits. Once again you have to try each fruit/veggie for a couple of days to make sure no allergies show up. Good luck with everything.

S.,
First of all, congrats on your baby! Now, on to the food. My ped told us to try out the same food for 5 days before introducing the next food. That would allow us to determine if they had any food allergies. Start out with the rice cereals, and easy things like bananas, applesauce, any of the Gerber 1st foods that you can buy - you can also puree yourself! Stay away from cinnamon flavored foods...
Good luck - and have fun! It is such an exciting time!
J. L.

I followed a book - "Super Baby Food" - when starting our daughter on solids. It was fantastic. There was a two page spread sheet telling you when to start the baby on what food. I couldn't have done without it. The book is by Ruth Yarron; it cost $12 and I used it as the food "bible" for two years. It is also available at most libraries. Good Luck.

My son hated plain rice cereal (can you blame him, it's nasty!) I mixed it with pureed fruit. Here's my suggestions:

pear
pumpkin
apple
banana

then later:
broccoli
cauliflower
sweet potato
potato (this was a little too thick for my little guy, he kept gagging)
carrot
peas
green beans
beef
lamb
pasta
baby yogurt

I made all his food myself and froze it in ice cube trays. This way you can start with one food at a time.

I always stated my babies on rice cereal. They say that's easiest to digest. After cereals I always did veggies then fruit. This worked well for my 4 children

My BIGGEST piece of advice for you (and every one else with this question) is to always start out with vegetables, NOT fruit!! The reason I say this is because if you start out with fruits, your child will get used to the sweet taste, and inevitably not want anything to do with the vegetables, which can cause problems when the child gets older.

Start with rice cereal first. After you see how that goes, you can introduce baby food.

One of the best pieces of advice I was given was to start with the veggies and don't introduce fruits to your baby until a long way down the road - Fruit tastes better! If your baby learns that food means the sugary sweetness of fruit, you can kiss introducing those veggies down the road successfully goodbye. Who wants to eat green beans over bananas? Not me!

Another vote for www.wholesomebabyfoods.com. I LOVED how easy it was to use!

Make your own food! It is EASY, more nutritous, and so much CHEAPER!

I bought a veggie steamer and borrowed a food processor from my in-laws. I bought frozen veggies in the winter and fresh at the farmers' market in the summer. I spent a couple of hours steaming, mashing, and putting in ice-cube trays and then moving the frozen cubes to labeled and dated, gallon sized zip bags. That's it....once every month or so.

Also look at applesauce in the adult portion cups. There are several varieties that have no added sugar and have other other fruits added to them (once you've introduced them to your little one). They are MUCH cheaper than baby applesauce.

I also bought no sugar added peaches and pears in the can (which takes the cooking process out of fresh fruits)and mashed them and froze them in the cubes.

We only bought premade baby food when we would travel or for things that I didn't want to make in a large batch.

My daughter loved it all! I hope this helps!

With all 3 of my children, I started them out on just rice cereal. Then we added the baby food, but I'd start with the yellow veggies first, then the green veggies before starting the fruits. Also, always give the fruit after the veggies once you're feeding both at each meal (I thought of it kind of like a dessert). Congratulations on your baby girl!

I also recommend Super Baby Food. It's a wonderful book and I've used it for all three of my kids. I never did cereals. I started with avacado (the BEST first baby food ever), and then went to other veggies and fruits according to the books suggestions and what my kids showed a taste for. Be aware that some formula fed babies have a tougher time adjusting to flavors, since they're used to getting the same flavored "food" all the time. Others love the changes, but if you're daughter is the former, don't get frustrated, just keep trying!

Make your own baby food! www.wholesomebabyfood.com is a great resource.

My boys never had jarred baby foods, and neither had rice cereal. There is no nutritional value to it, its bland, and rice is binding... so your child will likely get constipated.

Good for you for waiting until 6mos to intro solids. My boys' first food was homemade applesauce at 6mos. Then we pureed some sweet pea's, and around 7mos they had ground up chicken or beef. By 9mos they were eating table foods, whatever we were eating chopped up into small bits, and by a year could easily feed themselves with a fork nad spoon and a plate.

If you start with a spoon and plate now, it will be habit, and you won't have a baby that throws everything on the floor. :) Pureeing foods is super simple, and you can spoon htem into ice cube trays to freeze. When frozen, transfer to a freezer bag and label it. Each cube is about 1oz of food. Its so simple. The website listed above has great starter tips.

It doesn't matter which food you start with, fruits or veggies, your child will have a preference no matter what. My boys both started on homemade applesauce, and both preferred veggies as babies (homemade sweet peas at that!). Lots of my friends started veggies first under the impression that if the ystarted fruits their child would prefer sweets, but no matter how hard they pushed the veggies their child still preferred the fruits. I don't see th downside in that... your baby prefers fruits is a good thing, fruit is excellent for everyone.

I think using homemade baby foods is best for babies. I really believe because of it, my boys are healthy non picky eaters because not only were htey exposed to lots of foods through breastmilk, but they had texture and lots of flavor from the get go of solids through homemade foods.

I have to add another vote for http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/ Great site! You should take a look at the charts that show what foods to give at what age to minimize the chance of developing food allergies. It's my understanding that you start one new food every 5 days to make sure she isn't having any kind of reaction.

I would skip the cereal since your baby is formula-fed. There is really no reason you need to start with that [and if you do, avoid the mixed variety- it contains wheat, which should be avoided until she is a little older]. If you're going to start foods, you might as well start with foods that have some nutritional benefit. Sweet potatoes and squash are excellent first foods because they have a smooth texture and are packed with vitamins. Avocado is also a great first food because it is full of good fat, is smooth and creamy, and a little bit more "bland" than some other first foods.

I held off on giving my son fruits because I was worried he would develop a sweet tooth...but, even though I waited, when he finally did have fruit he loved it and still preferred it over veggies. Humans are hard-wired to love sweet things. Whether you start them now or later, she will probably love the sweetness of fruits. I think the most important thing is that she is given vegetables as an option from the start, and that they are always offered, even if she rejects them.

It's fun to see which foods your baby loves and hates. To my surprise, my son ended up loving broccoli and still loves it now at almost 2 years.

One more thing- there are plastic bibs out there [Target has a store brand kind which is cheaper] that have a big pocket to catch food/liquid. Those are great for minimizing the mess and protecting clothes. Also you will probably want to get some kind of mat to put under the high chair. Eventually that wont matter because she will throw food when she gets a little older! But it will help for now.

If you are interested in making your own baby food even if it's not all of the time, I got a mini food processor at Target [called a "mini-chopper"] for $10 and it worked great. You can get ice cube trays and freezer bags from the dollar store- it's actually very cheap. Anyway, good luck and have fun!

I made my own baby food, which is a lot easier than you might think. But in searching for recipes I found this website. http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/ It is awesome. Even if you aren't making your own food, there is a printable chart that tells you when to start what foods. And it even gives suggestions of things that babies can eat that aren't typically found in normal jarred baby food. It also lists the beneficial ingredients in each food so you can make sure your baby is getting a variety of vitamins and nutrients. I love this website!

I would start out on the cereal first. When you do move on to other things make sure you only do one new food every few days, that way if she has a reaction, you'll know what its from.