Thinking about solids
November 22nd, 2011 | 
Author: As our Little Prince is turning 6 months in a week, Darius and I have been starting to look into and acquire items for starting solids. We’ve had a highchair for a little while already (Thanks Grandpa and Grandma A!). Now we have some sippy cups with handles, a whole bunch of baby size spoons, and a set of baby sized no-slip bowls.
I’m not going to lie to you, Marge, I’m really nervous about this whole feeding my baby something other than breastmilk thing. I’ve been doing a lot of research into it. I don’t want to push LP to start solids before he is ready. While he’s starting to exhibit some of the signs – good at sitting on his own, losing the tongue thrusting reflex – there are still others – developing the pincer grasp, being really interested in our food, mimicking chewing – that he’s not doing yet. I am a little worried that I’m so nervous about this that I’ll purposefully misread the signs, but everything I’ve read said that when a baby is truly ready, it is hard to miss.
As for how to feed him, I’ve been really conflicted. I really like the idea of Baby Led Weaning. Letting LP explore food on his own instead of feeding him. But I doubt that daycare will be willing to go along with this (I haven’t actually asked though). I realized over the weekend that this is okay. That I can make mashes, purees, etc for daycare to feed him and do BLW at home. In fact, if LP enjoys food, it may make daycare feel better, since with the reverse cycling, he just doesn’t take a lot of milk while he is there.
I did offer LP smells of banana, strawberry, blueberry, and raspberry over the weekend. He wasn’t overly impressed with any of them. But, he did seem more interested in the raspberry than in the others. He is his father’s child. I also let him lick an apple slice, but then he made a funny face and wanted to nurse. I’m guessing he was trying to get the taste out of his mouth. 
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it is fairly hard to miss when they are ready. Both mine let us know by reaching out to take the food in the hands of the caregiver who was holding them. Peaches would redirect the fork from her dad’s mouth to her own. Monkey would SCREAM at us and grab for things until we handed over the goodies. So try not to worry overly much about misreading the signs.
~giggles at the apparent raspberry preference~
I gave you solids at six months because that was the recommendation from the pediatrician and others at the time. I know you would have been quite happy to have continued nursing as your sole source of nourishment. Meredith on the hand was reaching for food at five months. It was hard to keep her from grabbing for food at every meal; so Dad and I waited as long as we could and at five and three quarter months, we gave her solids. I agree with Gail. DJ will let you know. Remember as you have said many times to me, the average time for a child to do something is an average which means there are those who are ahead of and those who are behind. As my mother use to say about baby milestones, “they will all get there eventually.” Enjoy the time you have for nursing only. It will be over sooner than you want.