Good morning! Well I received such an overwhelming amount of encouragement & feedback yesterday I am now so excited to start posting regularly. I started thinking yesterday also about how lucky I am to be very well connected to so many amazing medical professionals who are experts in pediatrics! I have a few RD friends who work in peds & one of my very closest friends is a pediatric Nurse Practitioner. SO, I'm gonna use ya'll (or any of my other RD friends) as reference points! If you have anything to add to my blogs that I may have missed, please feel free to comment away below :)
Now, I feel like I need to back track just a little to cover some important milestones when Noah started solids. I have to be honest, I did NOT make every single bit of his baby food from scratch with an incredibly awesome, super expensive, baby food processor. Nope.. I'm a bad mommy.... haha actually, I'll be super honest, I never really had a huge desire too, and here are a few reasons why:
1.) Baby food has come a LONG way! I was incredibly fascinated by all of the amazing different varieties. And as someone who was trying to lay a strong foundation for his veggie-loving tastebuds I found the amount of veggies he would be exposed too with the options that were available out there, were truly awesome. PLUS, what's even better is that almost all of them are available in Organic! Like previously stated, I'm NOT 100% organic, BUT w/ Noah, I really try to be. His body is so tiny, and he deserves to be fed the best of the best. Take a look at all the amazing varieties I found below, and these are just a few!
2.) I was just SO amazed by all the different varieties, I was a little intimidated to make my own. We started solids with this little guy below. I was thinking, WOW I can get Spinach and Rutabaga into this kid - woohoo!! I did rice cereal for 2 days, and the diabetes educator in me, could not shake the fact that I truly felt in my heart he should be eating something with more nutrition besides carbs!! So we went straight to Spinach, rutabaga, and avocado. Now, my girlfriend, (the pedi NP) told me the reason why they start w/ the cereals is for the correct texture (so they learn to swallow correctly), for the iron (that you can't get from breast milk), and because it is easiest on their GI tract. All of those made sense to me, but my son had already weaned himself from breast feeding (long story), and his Organic formula was fortified with iron. We got around the constipation issue by staying on top of prunes every so often. Note: Prunes were the ONLY fruit he had for the first 2 months we started solids. If you give your baby sweets before veggies, they will never go back.
3.) The last reason why I chose the pre-made baby foods were mainly for the texture. I worked as an inpatient RD for a couple of years and saw people with swallowing issues on a regular basis. I wanted to make sure he wouldn't choke when he was learning how to eat, so this put my mind at ease. Also, let's be completely honest, I just could not find the time needed to make them the way I wanted too. If you are thinking these little pouch guys are expensive, you're right. HOWEVER, Babies-R-Us has deals on them frequently. Also, my logic tells me that if I buy a bunch of organic veggies and have good intentions to make baby food and never get around to it, then I wasted all that money. So for me, it would probably cost me the same amount.
Take home message: Moral of the story for today... start developing your kids pallets from the start! Noah's first foods were veggies, and I'm so very proud to say that he never turned his nose up at the them. Remember these are the foods they were created to eat! Yes, even beets and rutabaga! If you think they aren't going to like them, they never will. You will indirectly project your food preferences on your kids, I promise, it may not be intentional but you will. Be MINDFUL of this, and allow your kiddos to decide for themselves! :)
Side note: Avocados are AMAZING, I mean all those healthy monousaturated fats are awesome!! Plus, if you are ever in a bind as a restaurant, you can pretty much get a side of avocado every single place you go. Plus they are easy for little ones to eat. See for yourself a few reasons why they are so great below.
Hope you mommas continue making awesome foods for your precious little ones!! And if you have some easy ways to make home-made baby food that are fast, I would LOVE to hear it, so please share below. If you don't have the time, or just don't want too, then that's ok too. Good thing in today's grocery store we have options!!!!
Have an awesome and blessed day!
The Veggie Momma
Great read! Is interesting to see everyone's take on solids. I did make my own baby food. I tried the baby bullet but that thing wasn't for me. I used a food processor instead and sometimes I just mashed with a fork and added breast milk to Thin it out. I felt the same way with the cereal, but I knew i wanted to take it slowly and see how things went. I used organic earthsbest oatmeal and cereal to start out then ventured to sweet potatoes. I just boiled a bunch and mashed them up and put them in ice cube trays. The process went on with the veggies and fruits. I must say that I did not have the problem with ace about "not going back".. Once we passed the three day rule for things I wold mix things up like apples and peas or butternut squash and peaches.. He did go through a phase recently and sometimes turns his nose about textures but I just continue to offer or present it in another way.. Sometimes I bust out a green smoothie. I enjoy all the pouches as well especially because we are driving and on the road a lot it was easy (and still is) to have the pouches on hand. Ace still enjoys them from time to time but definitely is showing his personality and what he prefers. He LOVES dairy so I have to be careful with how much I give him because he just wants more and more after that. I'm hoping your blog cans we've as some accountability for me and keep me on track with all the exciting veggie talk! I feel like The last year I have really learned a lot about foods and clean eating and my goal is to find balance and moderate. Joseph's family is not very conscious of what the eat and because we do travel fast food tempts us a lot. Right now I'm trying to focus on meal planning and when we get settled in our new house I plan on having a really fun veggie garden. We also found a company that delivers organic produce, eggs, milk and breads to your front door which we will be utilizing because I want to grow my pallet! They just bring what's in season at that time so I think it will be great for us. :)
ReplyDelete