Baby rice and porridge with formula

[Harry26]

Hello, my little one is turning 5 months and she’s purely formula fed on SMA.
Am I able to give her the Cow and Gate ready made baby rice and porridge or is it best to just mix a porridge with her normal formula? TUA

Don’t use ready made. Use her formula mixed with normal porridge oats or oat bran porridge (smoother texture). But NHS recommends 6 months. Don’t use baby rice there’s no nutritional value in it.

Ahhh thank you so much

Definitely use porridge oats with formula. As she's not 6 months yet, ground the oats to powder so there's no lumps, I used to put mine in the blender to completely grind them down

Do ready brek. Loads of vitamins in there. I would also wait til 6 months

Agree.

I think avoid oat bran at this stage as it's too high in fibre for their little colons

Please do not use ready brek. It is not recommended for babies. Rolled oats either ground or blended once cooked with either water or formula is fine.

Ready brek is just ground oats though? We were advised it's the same as infant porridge by the council weaning class

Should I use gluten free porridge oats? Thank you all for your advice so far! It’s so daunting. I will wait until 6 months

Why on earth not? It’s literally just finely milled oats (with added vitamins and iron as per many cereals). Genuine question, not having a go and assuming OP will wean their baby closer to 6 months.

The NHS recommends it

No need. Gluten free oats are just for coeliacs. Oats are naturally gluten free anyway just traces of wheat in them for being ploughed in fields near wheat or in factories near wheat.

wheat/ gluten is fine for non coeliacs :) it’s a big part of most people’s diet

Ready brek is absolutely fine for 6 month old babies as a pp it is just fine oats. Op if you want to give your baby pre made porridge it OK but making some porridge up with own formula is better even for your budget and you know how much to make up.

The NHS recommends Ready Brek (amongst others) from 6months onwards as it is a fortified cereal with added iron and vitamins.

I used to help run a weaning/healthy eating group and we recommend ready brek

I’ve honestly never seen anything saying this. Have you got a link please?

Glad that you've decided to wait until 8 months. You might find this guide from the Caroline Walker Trust useful as it has some good suggestions of first foods to try and I can guarantee that all of them will have more flavour than baby rice which seems to have the same flavour, consistency and nutritional value as wallpaper paste