Baby Food

I always seem to get weird looks when people see the baby food that I feed my kids. Doesn't seem weird to me...but that's only b/c this is all I know. The idea came from that 3rd book I mentioned in the "Babies, Babies, Babies" post. The book is titled "Dr. Denmark Said It!" by Madia L. Bowman. Again take what you want from parenting books etc...I didn't like her infant schedule recommendations however, I did LOVE the nutrition stuff and thought it made sense. So here is the basic idea.

She says that you can begin pureed baby food w/ your infant at 12 weeks of age b/c that is when salivary glands begin to function. Made sense to me. I did actually start that early with Caroline b/c she was so darn little. I waited until 4 months w/ Wyatt and Hope. Whenever you start introduce the rice cereal first. Then begin adding the pureed foods to that as you introduce them. You can do store bought or home made. She says to begin w/ bananas @ 1/4 tsp for 3 days to introduce it and make sure there isn't any allergy. Then add to the banana and rice cereal, apples, or pears, or whatever fruit you're wanting to introduce next. After some fruits are introduced begin putting veggies into it. This was brilliant to me...babies are used to the sweet breast milk so by sweetening the veggies w/ the banana and apples (or peaches, pears, prunes) they are more likely to take it. Continue introducing veggies 1/4 tsp at a time. Then she says to introduce the protein. I wait until they are about 8 months to introduce the proteins only b/c for my babies it seemed to constipate them for some reason. Now with the protein I usually only do black eyed peas because they are supposedly the best protein food available! Cool.

Below are her recommendations on portion size and ratios etc. I work up to this amount and do not expect them to eat this much when just starting out...but this is where they have all seemed to get to rather quickly.

Breakfast
1 banana
2 T fruit
3 T protein
3 T starch

Lunch and Dinner are the same
1 banana
2 T fruit
3 T protein
3 T starch
3 T veggie

I do make our baby food mostly b/c it was the most cost effective on a one income family, and I knew exactly what was in it b/c I made it. The best part is I make it about one time every 2 months (the bananas I have to make the most often). I puree the food and then put it into ice cube trays and freeze. I have all my little zip lock sacks lined up in my freezer and just reach in there and pull out what I need for each meal. The great thing that I measured it out and each ice cube is about 2 T of food. I then measured what one banana would be and it is about 4 T pureed. So I pull out 2 cubes of banana, 1 cube of fruit, 1.5 cubs of veggies, 1.5 cube of black eyed peas, warm that up and add my 3 T of rice cereal and we're good to go! So stinkin' easy.

So this is just my take on baby food. It's what seemed easiest to me. Take it or leave it. I highly recommend putting all your food together into the goop. My babies haven't ever rejected a vegetable when served this way. They eat all of this food and could maybe go for more. Go for it! Have people stare at you when you feed your baby this not so appealing to look at baby food...but it does taste good (I've tried it!). Have fun feeding your baby!