Chew on this: A helpful, handy baby-feeding primer
An excerpt from The Parent Trip
It’s pretty much agreed that as far as food is concerned, babies can get by on breast milk for the first year of life. To me, that’s like saying “women can get by with one purse in perpetuity,” which theoretically, of course, is true, but do I really want to carry a sequined silver evening bag roughly the size of a banana on a day trip to Disneyland? Am I expected to tote my lip-gloss and compact to the Opera (never mind that I don’t go to the Opera) in my hot pink, laminated, moisture and mold-resistant, you-could-fit-a-case-of-diet-Coke-in-it diaper bag? And which of these two options—if I am going to be allowed but one—do I bring to a job interview? On a hiking trip? To a funeral?
Armed with a combination of this obviously sound reasoning and the permission of your pediatrician, you will set about researching the best time and means of introducing solid foods (which frankly aren’t very solid when you start out, but that’s another matter altogether). After considerable googling, you may stumble across this line on a parenting-advice web site: “Mothers often report that they knew their babies were ready when they picked up food from a plate, chewed it, swallowed it, and wanted more.” As readiness-indicators go, I would agree the only thing that could beat that would be if baby tied on her own bib and held up a hand-written recipe for pureed Coq au Vin.
When you were pregnant, perhaps you made a point of telling people that you planned to make your own baby food. Why wouldn’t you? You know how to boil water and you are fairly certain that your $200 stainless steel wedding-gift blender can handle more than some frozen fruit and a carton of organic yogurt. After exhaustive research, you will discover that you need a master’s degree in nutrition just to feed a baby. If you’re going to make your own baby food, make it a PhD. The safe handling/preparing/storing requirements may be daunting enough to force you to give up, but look on the bright side: Few things say “I love my kid” like forking over for ridiculously overpriced organic baby food you have to drive thirty roundtrip miles to purchase.
Still, even when your pantry is stocked Andy Warhol-style with a rainbow of tiny jars of all-natural edibles, you can’t just open and dispense these rations willy-nilly. Oh no, there are rules: First and foremost, one must always start with single-grain cereals (rice, barley or oat but not wheat before her first birthday because it can trigger allergies). These cereals must be iron fortified and can be mixed alone (but never together) with water, formula or breast milk. I genuinely and enthusiastically applaud the women who opt for breast milk as their mixer of choice. For me, one of the greatest advantages of feeding Sophie “real” food is that my tired, saggy boobs are going to get a much-needed break. I will continue to nurse her the other four or eight times a day her little tummy demands it, but when we’re in the kitchen, the milk jugs will be out to lunch.
Once you’ve determined how you will liquefy your cereal choice, you must introduce it solo for several days, making sure to look for signs of allergic reactions—the most common of which are rash and diarrhea. Since babies frequently develop rashes and diarrhea anyway, it may take you several months or years to be sure that your baby is indeed tolerant of a particular grain.
Once you have made your way through the grain choices, you are encouraged to move on to cooked, mashed vegetables (but yellow before green, why I am not sure especially since G comes before Y in the alphabet so this is very hard to remember, and not carrots because they contain relatively high levels of nitrates and even though nitrate poisoning is extremely rare, the nickname “blue baby syndrome” is enough to scare a person off of them forever). After baby has been successfully—and without asthmatic incident—introduced to a colorful assortment of vegetables, you can progress to fruits (but not strawberries or oranges because they too are highly allergenic and not grapes because the skins make them little round death-traps even if you dice them into pieces so small you can actually see the little protons and electrons bouncing around in the pulverized nuclei). Last in the baby food lineup are your meats (always well cooked and strained but never, ever hotdogs which are essentially the carrots of the protein world, being that they pack an unhealthy dose of those potentially poisonous nitrates). And for heaven’s sake, do not give baby even one bite of your processed cheese doodads or maple nut scone because they might contain honey or corn syrup, both of which contain “bacterial spores that cause food-borne illnesses,” which can be (dear God) fatal in infants.
Are you getting all of this? Taking notes? Wait! It’s not over yet. You must never feed a baby directly from the baby food jar, as doing so can introduce bacteria from the baby’s mouth into her food, where it will reproduce and proliferate like drunken rabbits on spring break. This is presuming she won’t eat the entire contents of the jar, which of course she will if and only if you transfer it into a bowl. As with breast milk or formula, parents are cautioned never to heat baby food in the microwave because of those hazardous “hot spots” nuked food can develop. I say, don’t heat her food at all, by any means, ever. This isn’t something I do to be cruel; it’s a handy trick my friend Barbara taught me. When your baby eats food for the first time, she has no idea what to expect. But if you give it to her heated up from the get-go, you’re unintentionally creating a warmed-food snob. More importantly, you’re up the creek if you’re forced to serve it up cold, say in a restaurant or during a blackout.
It is important to stop feeding your baby when she is full. “A baby who is full will close or cover its mouth with its hands, turn its head away, shake its head ‘no’ or cry,” explains yet another grammatically-challenged web site. (A baby is not an ‘it!’) Again, since babies often perform these exact actions when they are hungry, tired, frustrated, sick, or just trying to play a nice game of peek-a-boo, you may have to rely on your instincts here.
Other than seeing that she’s getting enough but not too much, watching her sugar and salt intake, closely monitoring all of the expiration dates on her assortment of edibles and making sure your “helpful” mother in law doesn’t sneak her a peanut or slice of bacon when you’re not looking, that’s about it. You should be well on your way to a wonderful feeding experience!