can I mill ordinary oats to give baby as porridge

[yackityyak]

Does anyone know if it's ok to give a 6 month baby finely milled ordinary porridge oats rather than buying the really expensive baby cereals that come in tiny quantities and are gone after only a couple of meals. If so could I just mix them with warm milk or would they need cooking for a while. Are the baby cereals pre-cooked in some way to aid digestion? Any info. gratefully appreciated.

You can just use normal porridge oats and cook up in the normal was. No need to mill them, unless you want to for some reason.

I've no idea about 'baby cereals' I didn't use them for either of my DC, sorry.

was = way

it's ok to give them normal oats that aren't milled afaik - by 6 months they can start on finger food so they don't need really finely pureed style food. in fact you can just give them exactly the same food you eat (watch salt content and food for allergies) without mushing it up at all so feel free to just cook up porridge normally and serve that up - if you leave it a bit it goes hard and you can 'slice' it up as finger food

Shop around, I found a ready-brek style oat cereal that was suitable for DS1 - lower in salt than the special baby versions in their tiny packets. I think the one I used (4+ years ago!) was Tesco own brand or something...

I think ground normal oats would be fine but you'd need to cook them properly as you would when making porridge as they expand quite a lot in the milk so might cause digestive problems for baby if you just serve them mixed into warm milk. HTH

At 6 months a child can eat what you eat within reason (no honey, whole nuts, avoid lots of salt and sugar etc).

DD loved normal porridge cooked in a normal way. And muffins and bagels and toast and eggs and pancakes and on and on and on.

Baby cereals are just not necessary.

I imagine you could just mill them and mix with warm milk. Or do as Hetty says, and just make normal porridge.
Or what about Ready Brek? That's just milled oats and vitamins.

Normal Ready Brek is fine if you prefer that option too.

DD had normal porridge from 6 omnths as I was making it for me and her older brother. I used to leave it to go a bit stodgy for her so that it stayed on the spoon better.

Another vote for Ready Brek - it's only finely milled oats with a few extra vits - no salt or anything else added.

I started giving my 6 months old baby normal porridge as it is 100% wholegrain oats only. The baby porridge I was buying before - I was shocked to see that it contains 39 g of sugar per 100 g, that means 8 spoons of sugar per 100 g can you believe that?!
By the way my son loves the normal porridge now: I mix it with follow up milk until creamy texture and I also mash and add to it some pear, apple and banana.

I've only ever used normal porridge for my children, no reason they need special baby porridge. Mine always just ate what we ate.