This is a big milestone for every baby – their first bite of solid food! Parents panic and research a whole lot. What can we feed them? What can they eat? How to feed them? Which style/approach of weaning should you choose to adopt?
For some, the transition is difficult. And for others, it is easy peasy like ABC. Fortunately for us, Ethan was the latter. He began showing an interest in food at an early age approximately around 3 months. Our visit to his paediatrician during his fourth month granted us the approval to begin solid-feeding. My baby boy was ecstatic!
We started off with jar foods as we were keen to know what he was or wasn't interested in. Apple puree was our first choice and that was a terrible idea! Ethan screamed at us so badly and rejected the food. We were afraid that he wasn't ready for food yet, and confused at the same time because he showed keen interest in the apple puree. We switched it out to pear puree and it was an instant hit!
Later on, we found out why he had put up such a huge protest against the apple puree... it was sour af. (Point to note: Never feed a fussy baby apple puree from a jar. ) He is fine with homemade apple puree, made out of either Organic Fuji Apple or Jazz apple. Yes, my baby boy is that picky and that specific – I blame his dad for the genes (LOL).
We moved onto baby rice and the first brand that we bought was Heinz. My family is a bunch of curious folks so we bought different brands of baby rice to try out and to see if there was any in particular that Ethan was exceptionally fond of! As it turns out, all baby rice are pretty much the same in terms of taste but there are some points to note which parents might wish to be aware of:
- For some brands, their baby rice contains milk powder inside (eg. Nestle) so all you've got to do is add your own water into the mix. We chose baby rice that came without milk powder as we would rather have the hassle in preparation and to provide Ethan with a more nutritious formula milk (or even expressed breastmilk)!
- Baby rice comes in either a finely-milled powder form, or "crystal-like" granulated bits. Personally I prefer the powder form as the porridge made would often appear smoother.
Ethan accepted the baby rice without a hitch and soon, we began adding vegetable purée into the porridge to give his food more nutrition. As dessert, we would give him three spoonfuls of fruit purée to prevent constipation.
I have begun cooking my own chicken broth to add into his purée and of late, we've also tried adding in chicken breast meat and salmon. I'm going to be very honest and share that both types of protein contributed little to no additional flavour to the porridge. I aren't expecting Ethan's porridge to taste salty or anything, but I was hoping to give it some depth of flavour such as how the addition of pumpkin purée makes the porridge sweet!
In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing a couple of my baby recipes. One of them is Ethan's favourite – Chicken, Corn and Carrot Purée blended with Homemade Chicken Broth!
For now, here is a simple starter baby purée: "Pumpkin & Broccoli Purée". Click the video to watch how I made it and do subscribe to support us!
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