started on Baby rice - what next?

[milkmummy1]

Now DS is 6 months i started - a week ago - giving him some small amounts of baby rice in the mornings during his milk feed. he has taken it ok. how long do i stay on the rice for and do i increase to another meal a day? there is no schedule at such on there but i know you gradually increase the amounts. just not sure how long to stay on the rice til i try something different and how long it takes to build up to 3 meals a day. thank you

Forgot to mention - started weaning him onto aptimil at 6 months which he has taken fine too as he only had breast before. will he def need boiled water as well now? hes notvery good at taking it.

If he has had rice for a week and seems fine, i would try a tiny bit of carrot next, as that is quite gentle on the tummy too. Try a combination of carrot/rice or one or the other for a few days, and if he is still fine with it, then move on to apple or pear. Leave it a few days between each new taste before you introduce something new. I'd say it would be a at least a couple of months if not more before he is ready for 3 meals a day; there are lots of good books which advise on this. Good luck! Keep trying with the water every day - he will soon get the hang of it.

thanks littlepin. TBH, very confused what to do for best. dont know much about BLW. woudl try it if i thought best for DS. just seems like he isnt that fussed about the rice. even though i waited until 6 months (wanted to follow latest guidelines, plus he was a month prem so didnt want to rush it) it just feels like he doesnt really know what to do with the rice when i put it in his mouth. perhaps he wasnt ready? perhaps he will prefer a nice apple puree or something.

Milkmummy - my DS didn't like plain baby rice but as soon as I started on other bits and pieces (fruit and veg purees) he LOVED it!!! He is a fantastic eater (although I did wean at 14.5 weeks).

i started with purees before going to BLW (which is soooo much easier)

anyway things like sweet potato, pear and parsnip are good and not allergenic

start gradually and i think DS was on 3 meals within around 4 - 6 weeks of starting weaning but he has always had a healthy appetite

milkmummy I'm doing a bit of both -

Purees started with pear and apple which mix well with the rice, carrot, sweet potato and butternut squash (even though I hadn't eaten them before) and a bit of broccoli, now trying courgette and potatos.

Finger foods, ricecakes, melon, toast soldiers, steamed / boiled carrot sticks.
I would like to do more BLW and will probably move that way but means liaising with the childminder and at the moment I am happy with doing a mix

I weaned at 16 weeks and also have a dd who likes her food She also didn't like plain baby rice. I started with liquidized fruit and then veg over about 4 weeks (2-3 different things per week for allergy purposes.) after about 4 weeks she was eating 3 meals a day but she was big and thats why I weaned early, milk didn't fill her up.

In the beginning they do take about 3 attempts with the same mouthful and spill most of it due to the unfamiliar texture. If this helps.

Sorry forgot to add much depends on babies appetite for length on increasing meals. If he appears satisfied with 1 meal no need to rush. The signs with my dd were taking an interest in me eating, losing interest in bottles or not lasting very long between bottles, hungry after 2 hours. I did take things quickly and as someone else mentioned left it a couple of days between different foods and checked for nappy contents and rashes incase of allergy. She went onto 3 meals before we had tried lots of variety. My dd also liked the banana baby cereal.

If he was prem, maybe he isn't quite ready? I guess you can keep offering stuff, and just see if he's keen.

By the way, can we PLEASE put to rest the notion that big babies need to be weaned early because they're big? If a particular big child is (say) snatching and merrily eating food, or the parents want to wean earlier than six months then fine, fair enough. But that's NOT cause and effect. It's coincidence. I have a 99th centile baby who was just fine on breastmilk till 6 months, and who, coincidentially, slept through UNTIL she started weaning. Now, is that evidence that big babies should all be weaned at exactly 26 weeks? No. It's not. And it's not evidence that solid food won't help SOME babies sleep better. The plural of anecdote is not data...

Sorry - hijack - I was tired of being hassled to wean my thriving child simply because she was big, and it's still a sore point.

Oh bugger. And I liked it so much!

Actually, just thinking. Maybe the plural of anecdote is data, but data does not equal evidence - if you see what I mean - data needs to be interpreted. Also, it would have to be a fairly big plural (ie large cohort) to properly constitute data. I am shamed, nonetheless, that I didn't know that - originally have a linguistics background.

Milkmummy - I weaned my ds at 6 months too, and initially he was very resistant to baby rice, so I stopped trying for a few days. ( we were on holiday in Mallorca at the time) Then a couple of days later I offered him a bit of banana muched up between my fingers on the beach and he loved it. He then enthusiastically sucked on an orange segment, and we were away.

I didn't want to do BLW so I offered him some fruit puree later on and he took it very happily and hasn't looked back since.

He prefers foods with more of a flavour to them and never really got on with rice on its own, though he liked it mixed with fruit puree.

Why not add a bit of pureed apple or pear to the rice, and see if that goes down any better?

Also, my ds got to 6 months on milk very easily, and didn't have much of an appetite for solids until I cut his milk back a little - he still had way more than the 20 oz recommended, but he was taking 40 oz prior to weaning, and I had to cut it a bit to give him an appetite.Some would say that was wrong, but I felt it was the right way to go.

I used to give him 5 oz milk before lunch and tea, then solids, then a top up of milk if he wanted it, plus an 8 oz bottle morning and night.

HTH

Jojay - out of sheer curiosity - and nothing else, I promise - why didn't you want to do BLW? I did it, my sister not, and when I try to find out why, she gets all big sistery and knowing best on me... All our girls are happy, well, great eaters, so I don't have an axe to grind - just really quite curious.

I knew someone would ask that!!!!

Quite happy to answer though!

I offered my ds a chip sized chunk of cooked carrot from my Sunday roast one day when he was about 6 months. He took it, chewed off a chunk, tried to swallow it, choked and threw up his entire milk feed, plus the lump of carrot.

It probably wasn't quite soft enough or something, but I'm afraid it put me off the whole 'they eat what you eat' concept.

He's now 9 months and happily eats cooked carrot sticks now, amongst lots of other things, but I believe that he needed to learn to chew gradually, working up from purees.

Just my opinion, but he's a very good, non fussy eater - so far - who enjoys his finger food.

So, so far so good!!!

My friend's daughter, however, I think was an ideal candidate for BLW, as she happily swiped all sorts of things from her mum's plate and ate them, from about 5 months.

I believe it has a place, and suits some babies, but not all.

Haven't read it all but this is what I did for DD. Went to the market & bought, broccolli, sweet potatoes, swede, carrot, parsnip. Pears, apples & mangoes. Boiled them individually, blended and put em in ice cube trays, froze and decanted into bags. I now cook a bit of farfallini pasta or rice and add them in different orders, so DD might get sweet potato & mango or broccolli and cauliflower. The veg & fruit cost about 5 pounds and I have a couple of months worth of baby food in my freezer. By mixing with pasta it's blw too. These are for the days that we eat crap that you wouldn't give a baby

Thanks, Jojay - yes, the whole throwing up just everything is pretty unnerving. Mine did it with banana. I ended up giving her the choice between carefully made carrot puree and a stick of carrot. She wouldn't entertain the spoon, and went for the carrot like a baby possessed. Point is that both our little ones are well, we're happy mums - job done!

UCM - I know what you mean - I've had to think much much harder about what I eat, which is good, but sometimes a bit knackering. My staples for when we want junk are pancakes, fishcakes and, like you, pasta sauce from the freezer.

Sorry - went for the carrot stick.

thanks everyone. so am i right that the small amount i have given him so far is only once a day, ie around breakfast time? that is not what im not sure about - ie how long is it until i start trying him at lunch and then dinner? im also not sure how much milk to give him and whether to cut back. he has 7oz of milk every three hours (but goes through the night...) and then he has 3 teaspoons of babyrice around 10am. i have been doing this for just under 2 weeks since i started the babyrice.
ps didnt know that food allergies may cause a nappy rash though now i think about it i was silly not to put two and two together as he had an unusal rash when i took his nappy off the other day.