According to the books I’ve glanced at, solid foods can begin at 6 months. We began at 4, with little tastes here and there. By 5 months, little EC was getting a pre-milk solid meal once in awhile, and since she turned 6 we’ve been doing solid pre-milk meals twice a day during the weekdays—that is, whenever Empirical Mom isn’t at home.
Here’s what she’s eaten so far, all blended from whatever it is we’ve had on hand:
Bananas: she’s ok with them, I don’t like blended bananas, so not too much
Pears: she loves them
Apples: she loves them. Preferably gala.
Plums: she hates them
Avocados: she hates them. As an addition to pears or apples, no problem.
Carrots: she loves chewing on solid carrot pieces. She hates blended carrots. As an addition to apples or pears, tolerable in very small quantities.
Zucchini: she loves chewing on solid pieces. As an addition to apples, she likes.
Sweet potatoes: she loves them. I love them too. I make extra so I can share with her.
Rice cereal: she loves it made with milk, not so much made with water.
It has seemed much less convenient to me so far to figure out how to buy baby foods off the store shelves than to just throw things into the blender, so that’s what I’ve been doing so far. That 15-year-old Magic Bullet is really handy. I steam the carrots and sweet potatoes; otherwise, all these have gone down raw. I only peel the sweet potatoes; everything else goes in whole. If we could get clean sweet potatoes around here, I’d probably leave the peels on those too; but what’s on offer is so gnarly (am I officially old for using that term?) that it’s best to just strip it down to the clean innards.
I give her bits of whatever I’m making for myself to play with when she’s sitting in the high chair at the kitchen counter. That’s how we had our first choking episode a couple days ago, with a nice ripe kiwi piece. She had a strong enough bite with her gums (no teeth yet) to get off a nice big chunk and inhale it. Cue Dad reflexes: I had her out of the high chair and tipped over in seconds. She must have gotten it out and swallowed it, because I didn’t see it come out but she did start breathing again. That’s the end of kiwis and oranges for a bit. I’d been letting her play with grapes and popcorn (supervised, of course) because she showed no interest in mouthing those things yet. But that’s now stopped too.
As an aside, the texture changes that all the solid food has caused to her #2 ensures that we won’t have to worry about exploding diapers anymore. At least, not of the run-up-the-back kind that we used to have.
As another aside, somewhere near the end of the 5th month I stopped giving her solids for a week. She promptly stopped pooping for a week. The metabolism of mother’s milk must be nearly 100% efficient.
As yet another aside, she will have to start drinking water at some point. So far, she’s shown zero interest in that. She does like to drink out of my water glasses, because she likes the motion. But she has no intention of letting any of that flavorless clear fluid down her throat. Each experiment just leads to an outfit change. Or a walk outside to dry out.
What comes next? Whatever we have on hand, I suppose. The guidance I’ve taken to heart is just to avoid nut butters, honey, shellfish, and cow’s milk until 1 year. I’ll avoid wheat until probably 9 months. I’ll make up some teething biscuits from oats as soon as she starts having teething issues. Other than that, we’ll see!