Baby's First Foods?

[brittanydee]

I am not a parent of a child with celiac disease, but I'm concerned about wheat allergies/reactions. I'm trying to figure out what's the best solid to start my son (now 3 months) on in a couple of months. I am hesitant to start him on cereal (even rice) because there is really no nutritional value.

What have your experiences been with first foods? If you started your kids on cereal, did you wish you had done something different? Or did you start your kids on fruits/veggies?

I ask only because I figured I'd have a pretty good chance of finding this information here. It's really hard to find information on not starting with cereals. Thanks in advance.

[Mother of Jibril]

This website has really good information about starting solid foods (including alternatives to cereals and what to do if you suspect a food allergy): Open Original Shared Link

My son has a severe intolerance to casein, so we decided to wait until he was six months old to introduce solid foods. We started with sweet potatoes... he hated it! Then we tried bananas... another rejection! You should have seen the horrible faces he made We also tried apples and pears (with similar reactions) before we finally caved in and tried rice cereal. He still loves rice and eats it almost every day. You might want to cook your own rice (brown rice would be best... more nutritious) and grind it in a food mill. It's easy, plus it's cheap and a lot more healthy than commercial baby foods.

To make a long story short... we figured out that my son is also intolerant to corn (and we assume gluten). I think he might also have "oral allergy syndrome," which is a reaction to certain fruits that resemble tree and ragweed pollens (apples, bananas, stone fruits, etc...). He's perfectly happy eating a diet of mostly meats, vegetables, legumes, and rice. He likes avocado too... that's a great food for babies.

[Juliebove]

Rice cereal is usually started first, not because of the nutritional value but to get the baby used to eating solid foods and because most people are not allergic to it. Yes, some people are allergic to rice but that's rather rare.

My daughter didn't much like rice cereal or any other baby food. What she did like to do was grab food from my plate! And because she got her teeth by the time she was a year old, I pretty much let her have what she wanted. I do not think I gave her any eggs or peanuts prior to a year old because for allergies sake. However, I didn't know as much about allergies as I do now and it's possible I gave her a baked good containing egg. And no cow's milk for the same reason, although she did have formula that was based on cow's milk.

Bananas were one of her first foods. She loved them! Also very ripe pears, peeled and mashed. And applesauce. Some babies like avocado. She did not. You can cook a potato, then mash it and thin it down with some formula or breast milk. Some babies like mashed sweet potatoes, but Angela did not. I remember special ordering some wheat free teething biscuits for her. They were made of barley. Not so good for a kid with a gluten allergy as she used to have.

One of her first finger foods was canned green beans served straight from the can. To this day they are still a favorite food. I also remember giving her Cheerios. They are easy for little hands to pick up. But they do contain wheat. There are some similar things called Perky-Os that are gluten free.

She flat out hated the meat baby foods in the jar! Would never eat any of those. In a pinch, she would eat the jarred cereal that was made with fruit juice. I would keep a jar of that in the diaper bag for those times when we were dining out. At home, I gave her regular oatmeal or rice that had been cooked in extra water for an extra long time and if necessary, thinned down with formula. Sometimes the rice was cooked in chicken broth with a bit of finely minced cooked chicken breast added.

She would eat the little hot doggie/Vienna sausage things that come in a jar. Of course she didn't get these until she was old enough to pick them up. She also liked the soft fruit snacks by Gerber.