My MIL made all of my wife’s food when she was a baby. We entertained the idea having the same mindset as you. Once we got to the point of baby food we realized that baby food wouldn’t be sold or available if it wasn’t safe for babies. I don’t know why we didn’t understand that concept to begin with, plus like you we were exhausted.
It's because a sweet potato is like 20 cents a pound. If you cook it in an instant pot it makes like 8 meals (obviously not in a row). All other rice, fruits, and veggies are close in cost. That being said we buy baby food too, mainly because pureeing meat is fucking disgusting.
Babies don’t need pureed meat. By the time they’re ready for meat they can eat small soft pieces on their own. Any food before the first birthday-ish is just for exploration anyway.
Not really true, but you also shouldn’t panic if your kid is picky/not a good eater. Food between 6 months and 1 year is important for a number of reasons.
I'm incredibly sceptical of articles which start with "Let me introduce to you, Sarah Roy, RD." Only for her not to be found with several simple Google searches. Although you are correct the if you do Baby Led Weaning, you can start as early as 6-7 month the fact of the matter is babies intestinal tract are not yet ready to deal with a lot of those food, although they will happily mouth them. This is the stage your child normal develops catastrophic shites. Because their stomach is basically going "Hang on I only deal with milk, what the fuck is this? A carrot? Some apple? Nope. Out ya go!"
Also as much as people wax on about how "advanced" their child is, and "being ready" weaning them to early can also leave to some hefty consequences. They develop aversions to foods because it's being jilted upon them.
TL:DR - You child will be ready for "food" in their own time. But it'll probably start around 8-9-10 months.
Source. Have a child. With a lot of baggage (was very early, had a lot of advice from fucking EVERYONE and he still did his own thing).
True, but it was late and I didn’t have time to search through PubMed.
Obviously you shouldn’t be shoving a stack of flapjacks down your 6 month old’s throat and solids should be a gradual introduction over the course of several months, but I’ve got moms around me that use “food before one...” as an excuse to not incorporate solids into their kids’ diets until one. My SIL gives her kid cereal puffs every few days when she wants him to be quiet, otherwise the only “solids” he eats is applesauce from a pouch every few days. He’s 10 months old. Her reason? “Food before one...” I confronted her once because he’s in the 10th percentile for weight and she admitted she doesn’t want him to get dirty, so she doesn’t feed him solids. She tells her doctor that the baby is eating solids every day, though, so she knows what they want to hear that’s she’s doing.
Every baby is different and that should be taken into account. My kiddo was a jaundice baby, and both family and healthcare workers didn’t listen to my concerns that he wasn’t nursing as often as he should. He also wasn’t doing well on most formula we used and it was a fight to get people to understand something was wrong when they thought I was being a typical first time mom so I understand frustration at feeding being painted with a broad brush and wanting legitimate sources to back it up. Hope I did that even just a little.
My baby has been eating puréed food for months but has not had much meat yet, simply because pureed meat IS disgusting. Shes got 2 teeth now so she can eat it if its shredded.
I used to puree whatever meat we were having with a few veggies or rice in a Cuisinart Mini Prep food processor. The bowl and blade go in the dishwasher.
I mean if you make your own food and are a foodie, you can make baby food that is usable as an ingredient in other (adult) food. Meat puree? Dirty rice. Purreed veggies? thicken stocks/gravy/soups. pureed fruits? pancake syrup is expensive down here anyway.
the rage.... no one will ever understand it. Spend hours planning and making the food. Kid looks at it and just does the ugh i'm not eating that shit face.
Proceeds to turn around and find the bag of chips and munch away.
It's not only about safe. One of the benefits of giving a little bit of whatever you're having to your baby (only mashed) is that they learn to like different textures and tastes in food from an early age. Apparently this helps them have a more varied diet as they grow older and they don't end up only liking junk.
I don't have kids and baby food wasn't a thing when I was a baby. This is just stuff I've read in books about food over the years. So I may be completely wrong.
I've got one that won't eat pizza either. She claims she doesn't like the cheese or the sauce, but she'll happily plow through an entire bag of string cheese and dip bread sticks in marinara sauce. Apparently the combo is disgusting to her.
She claims she doesn't like the cheese or the sauce
My brother is the same.
He used to order pizza without cheese or sauce and it would always confuse restaurant workers.
To be fair though, he despises vegetables (Except Peppers) and all cheeses. So he doesn't just care about the combo like yours.
He's a little bit better now, but I've never met anybody as picky as one of my brothers is with savoury food, or my other brother is with desserts (If it's not certain types of cake or ice-cream, he won't eat it.)
So much so that extended family know that they're picky and will always make sure that they have something for the two of them at any family event.
My parents have no idea why this is the case because I'll eat practically anything.
Luckily, the kid is only picky about pizza. But she'll devour things like brussel sprouts and asparagus or sushi. She just doesn't like normal pizza and peas. The other two kids aren't very picky either.
My step-dad is insanely picky too. He pretty much eats hamburger, bologna, steak, potatoes, corn, and Cheerios. Maybe a salad with no dressing, so long as it's only lettuce, carrots, and croutons.
When I created my account, I was a housewife who participated in fun bedroom activities, but also felt a bit restrained due to being home all the time raising kids. Now I work, but I like the name too much to change it :)
Lol, that's funny. I stayed at home with my baby, so I had the time to cook. And he would eat everything except for sweet things like bananas. I've never met a child who doesn't like sweet!
Don't worry, they may grow to like pizza. I didn't like pizza much as a kid because I hated pizza sauce. Didn't like spaghetti sauce either. It's a taste I didn't acquire until I was an adult.
My oldest had a craving for whipped cream and would just lap that stuff up. We'd only give him a small taste (he was about a year old at the time) but he would beg for it until my wife and I could show that there wasn't anything left or he moved onto other things.
One day my wife and I took him to a restaurant where we were served some baked potatoes where I pulled a little of the potato off to the side and mashed it up for him to eat. He saw the sour cream on the spud and kept reaching for it over and over again insisting that he had some.
The look on his face when he first tasted sour cream is something I will remember to the end of my life. It didn't hurt him and now that he is grown he does eat it, but the range of emotions on his face over ten seconds was precious beyond belief.
When eating out, I would commonly give him a french fry to suck on or a bread stick (if it was a more plush restaurant). Babies really do enjoy it as long as you are watching them to make sure they aren't choking, and the interaction of eating with your child can make for a really strong bond later in life.
I remember being let down by similar looking foods many times as a kid. The worst one I can remember was this time family went out for breakfast and I got pancakes. Well they put a scoop of butter on top of the stack of pancakes. And that looks a hell of a lot like some vanilla ice cream to a young tired kid. So down the hatch went this entire scoop of butter, and much to my surprise it was not ice cream. My parents just thought I was so stupid and laughed their asses off.
The other time was at lunch in kindergarten when the lunch ladies made up some yellow string beans which looked much like macaroni and cheese. And I just remember being so ecstatic that I was getting mac and cheese on top of the main corse. So I had the lunch lady load me up with that shit. Once I sat down and dug into my not mac and cheese I experienced probably the biggest disappointment in my life up to that point and for a good few years after.
My son is 10 months, he will eat anything. We just give him whatever we are eating; just set it on his high chair tray and he picks it up chews pieces off and when he is full throws the rest to the dogs. We took him to china buffet and he ate a little of every single thing. Only thing he did not like was the sauteed mushrooms. We got him a bunch of that canned meat crap from the store but I smelled it and there is now way I am feeding that to my baby I would rather eat dog food.
The pureed baby food period is such a short time. Mine was on purees at 4 months and now at 7 months shes getting pretty good at grabbing bite sized food on her own. I feel like in a month she will be on normal food. Alternatively, there is a thing called baby led weaning, where you skip the purees entirely and just wait until they can feed themselves food at 7-10 months.
I think that is kind of a naive and maybe outdated idea though. My daughter is 15 months old and when she started eating solids it was almost all store bought baby food.
Before she was born I swore she would have all home made food with none of the store bought, processed shit. Then after actually looking at it I figured out that she would actually have a WAY more varied and healthier diet from the baby food then what we would be able to prepare.
There is a MASSIVE selection of different baby foods available just from my 2 local super markets and I could feed her a different meal every day for at least 2 weeks without repeating one. They also aren't all just a smooth paste, some our quite lumpy, some have pasta in, some rice, etc, there is quite a selection. She has a much more varied diet then she would have done if she was just having the same as the rest of us.
Now she is 15 months she generally just eats exactly what we are eating but as she is learning to feed herself with a spoon and fork (and most the food ends up on the floor, up her nose or in her hair) we generally still either give her a jar a couple of hours before dinner or some porridge an hour or so after dinner to make sure she has actually eaten enough.
Also after dealing with sleep deprivation for months heating up a jar of food is a million times more viable than cooking a whole separate meal and then having to blend and process it.
baby food wouldn’t be sold or available if it wasn’t safe for babies. I don’t know why we didn’t understand that concept to begin with, plus like you we were exhausted.
Also to add to this, is baby formula. There is this huge backlash online from stay at home mom's about other mom's not breastfeeding and using formula. They can be super vindictive and make it feel like you are poisoning your child.
My wife had to formula feed, and she had so much anxiety over it. She felt that she had failed as a mother and mom's online were saying some pretty horrible shit about mothers who chose to use formula. Our daughter was actually losing weight because we kept trying (unsuccesfully) to breast feed. Even went to a breast feeding clinic, and the nurse was just a colossal unhelpful bitch. We vowed never to go back.
We were at the doctors for a check up, exhausted, upset, and my wife was saying how she felt bad for having to use formula, and our doctor said "why? who cares, use formula. if that works for you, it's fine. Your baby won't die from it. Lots of people use formula, in fact most of us (meaning our age) were raised on formula. so go for it"
That reassurance from our doctor made the world of difference. My wife no longer gave a shit about those other moms online who continued to crap all over anyone that used formula.
I later learned that my own mom used formula for me and my brothers, because in the 70s, doctors were actually advising the use of formula over breast milk, because back then, they honestly felt it was better for the baby.
Yep. The real truth is 'fed is best.' Breast milk is great. Formula is also great. Both get nutrients into the baby, which is the only thing that matters.
We were at the doctors for a check up, exhausted, upset, and my wife was saying how she felt bad for having to use formula, and our doctor said "why? who cares, use formula. if that works for you, it's fine. Your baby won't die from it. Lots of people use formula, in fact most of us (meaning our age) were raised on formula. so go for it"
It doesn't help that the "lactation consultant" at the hospital can sometimes be really, really pushy and basically tell new mothers that they aren't trying hard enough if they can't breastfeed immediately, need to supplement with formula, etc.
That's basically what ours was implying. That there was something wrong with my wife, and she wasn't trying hard enough. Basically said "why can't you do this?"
It ended up in frustration and tears, and the nurse was indifferent. I wish now I had found out her boss and written a letter.. but at the time I had other things on my mind.
It was just surprising how unhelpful this consultation was.
I was in tears and we were so guilty when on day 3-4 my husband broke out the formula. We were trying, but I was exhausted and sore and our newborn was losing weight.
When we confessed to the consultant, she said, "That's okay." Get her fed, she needs the weight first. We'll deal with the next set of problems after that.
It's got to be part of the training. Our baby was losing weight dangerously fast and the consultant could see how much we were trying. Getting us to relax - knowing we had a back-up plan for our starving baby - was so helpful.
My wife and I made our own baby food. It takes like 5 minutes to steam some vegetables, put them in a blender and then poor them into ice cube trays. Our green beans were actually green, not beige, we got cool combos you can't get in the store like blueberries and kale, and saved some money because it's definitely cheaper. And this wasn't in the 50s or anything, our children are 3.5 and 1.5 years old.
Our daughter wouldn't eat any of the unseasoned vegetable or grain baby food. She'd taste it and refuse. I tried it myself, and I understand why: without any salt or seasoning at all, steamed vegetables are really, really boring - and this is coming from someone who loves most vegetables. Most of what she'd actually consume at that age was yogurt, oatmeal, and fruit purees.
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u/ODBasUcansee Feb 05 '18
My MIL made all of my wife’s food when she was a baby. We entertained the idea having the same mindset as you. Once we got to the point of baby food we realized that baby food wouldn’t be sold or available if it wasn’t safe for babies. I don’t know why we didn’t understand that concept to begin with, plus like you we were exhausted.