Hannah has started on some solid foods for about a month now. So far, she has accepted all the foods without putting up a fuss or fight.
For the record, Hannah has tried Japanese short grain white rice porridge, carrot, potato, sweet potato, silken tofu, garden peas and pumpkin. All of them were given in their pureed form. I used a metal sieve and a spoon to puree each steamed food and then stir in a little hot water to achieve a thinner consistency (almost runny) to help Hannah accept her first taste of each food. I tried to avoid adding milk so that she could get to the original taste. But if she rejected any of them, I was prepared to add some of her formula milk to help her ease in. :)
Throughout the process, I’ve learnt more about steaming foods and pureeing them. I used Russell potatoes as they cooked faster and were easy to mash. However, these potatoes are huge; I required a small portion due to Hannah’s tiny intake then. I switched to buying baby potatoes so that I could use a whole potato each time without having to eat so much leftovers. For carrots, I had to chop them up into really small pieces as they took a longer time to soften when steamed. When it comes to silken tofu, it only took 2-3 minutes to steam smaller pieces as it was already cooked. Over-steaming it will change its mildly sweet soy taste…not nice already. The skins of garden peas were too hard for Hannah to consume. They were the stuff that didn’t pass through the sieve.
Apart from rice which was cooked in water, all other foods were steamed for about 20 minutes unless otherwise mentioned. Steaming, as compared to boiling, retains most of the nutrients in the foods. Now about peeling and cutting up the vegetables, I did it just before they went into steaming so as to minimise oxidation (process which can break down certain nutrients present in foods). This is especially important when I need to cut up the vegetables into many small pieces. The larger the surface area to volume ratio, the faster the rate of oxidation.
I tried to use organic vegetables but this is not always possible due to availability in the supermarkets I patronise.
Since I fed each type of food for 3 days before introducing another new one, I tried to vary the presentation. I can’t imagine myself eating garden peas puree twice every day for 3 consecutive days! Say day 1: pea puree (am) + pea porridge (pm), day 2: pea puree (am) + pea & mashed potato mixture (pm), day 3: pea puree (am) + pea and carrot puree mixture (pm).
Initially, the experience of eating from a spoon took Hannah some time to get used to. I had to demo the movement of my tongue and lips to mimic the pushing of food to the back of my tongue and then swallowing it whenever she took in a little morsel. She would watch and try to do it her own way. But most of the food came back out of her mouth! Hee hee. At least she seemed to enjoy the experience. By around week 2, her swallowing ability improved. Now she has upped her intake from 1 to 5 tablespoons.
Her favourite food has to be the Australian butternut pumpkin puree. Even I fell in love with it after stealing a spoonful from her bowl. It was so sweet and delicious. I couldn’t scoop the puree fast enough to satisfy her demands (she kept opening her mouth for more – reminded me of baby chicks wanting food from their mommy bird). When the bowl was emptied, she still opened her mouth for more! :)
Well, it’ll be spinach tomorrow. She might throw me the yucky expression for the first time! Ha ha. :D
Hihi! Don’t get it. Day 1 u intro-ed peas, by day 2 there’s potato, day 3 carrots? How does that equate to one new food a day? or did u start with only one meal of solids a day? Do u freeze portions? If not how do u manage to prevent e food frm going to waste since she takes in only teaspoonfuls at a time? Tks for sharing!
n do u give half e milk feed first, then solids followed by remainder of milk feed, or do u give e solids in betw 2 milk feeds?
Hi Kym,
Sorry about the confusion! The 3-day sample menu is based on introducing pea as a new food. There were rice, potato and carrots given during the 3 days becos’ these were already introduced to my baby earlier on. The sequence of foods I introduced to Hannah looks like this: rice, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tofu, peas, pumpkin, spinach, etc. So by the time I intro peas, I could mix with other foods she had previously eaten without developing allergies.
I started with one meal of solids a day. Then I increased to twice a day after she got used to the idea of eating solids. I don’t freeze portions as I prefer to feed fresh food to my baby. (Although the nutrients stay in frozen foods, the taste can be different.)
It can be challenging to cook in small portions. For porridge, I used one chinese sppon of ground white rice with 2 cups of water. For carrots, try to buy the baby carrots (unpeeled ones please). Otherwise, I would cut a third of a normal sized carrot for one meal and refrigerate the rest for later use. For potatoes, try to buy those really small baby potatoes as potatoes don’t seem to refrigerate well when cut up. I use a small potato at any one time. For sweet potatoes, they refrigerate fine when a small portion is cut off. For peas, they are the easiest! For tofu, I would cut out about 1/6 of a block and refrigerate the rest tied up in a plastic bag. Pumpkin is treated like sweet potato.
Whenever there’s unfinished food or excess food, I’ll eat them as part of my lunch or snack, hee hee :) Say for eg, I tried to steam baby corn for Hannah today but found out that it is still too hard for her to consume. So I threw it into the pot cooking my instant noodles! Extra ingredients lah :)
Hannah has 5 feeds of milk per day. When it was time to intro solids, I fed her just before her 2nd feed of the day (around 10.30-11am) and then she would drink her milk all at one go. Since the amount of solids she took was so small, it was easy to finish up her milk. Now that she is having 2 feeds of solids per day, the second solid feed is just before her 4th milk feed. Every baby is unique. We will somehow develop our own schedule suitable for our baby.
Hope that the above helps :)
oooh i love pumpkin too. very sweet. especially ozzie or japo ones.
Hihi. Tks for e detailed clarification. :) wow sounds like a lot of work and thought needs to go into preparing each tiny meal for e precious one!
I understand that u will be working something like part time? How will ur baby take solids while she is at infant care? Do they provide such meals or it won’t be a problem for u coz u wld be off work to prepare it for her by then?
Hi Kym,
You’re welcomed :)
BTW, when Hannah starts eating bigger portions of solid food, I intend to cook porridge at one go for both lunch and dinner. Saves time. I will use a thermal food jar to keep the portion for dinner. By then I should be able to vary her ‘desserts’, such as fruits, fruit juice and yogurt, to go with lunch and dinner so that they are not so boring. It is recommended by many mothers to add a slice of ginger to the cooking porridge to reduce ‘wind’ when the food goes into the baby’s tummy (of course, don’t let the baby eat the ginger!). I tried adding it today and it made the porridge smell and taste better too.
Hannah’s infant care provides lunch (mostly porridge if I remember correctly). I will only be able to pick her up after lunch time. Hence, dinner will be done by me then. There are some mothers who actually prepared lunch for their infant care givers to feed their babies. Wah, I think I’d go crazy waking up so early to do it man. Even with slow cooker you have to wake up early in the morning to add vege and/or meats and wait for it to cook for about an hour. I’m in the line of teaching and have to wake up at an unearthly hour to get to work already.
I’m so long-winded! Hee hee. :P
wow, this world only mummy good =)
Including West’s and Claire’s mummy :)
I read that milk should still be the main source of nutrition for babies up to one year of age. As you start on solids from 6 mths onwards, how do you guage when we should up the solid intake and correspondingly decrease the milk intake?
Eg. When hannah increased her intake of solids frm 1 tablespoon to 5, did she drink a lot less milk?
Tks for sharing!
Hi hi Kym,
Hannah’s milk intake remains unchanged since the day I started her on solid foods. :)
As she’s still growing and her solid intake quantity is variable (dependent on her liking for the food), her main source of nutrition is still milk. On good days, she could down 10 tablespoonfuls (that would be the cod fish+carrot+spinach porridge, pumpkin puree and sweet potato+egg yolk+broccoli puree), and on bad days, I could only coax her 2 tablespoonfuls (almost anything with avocado!)
I think we should strive to encourage our babies to take 3 complete solid food meals (with well-balanced nutrients) per day. Every baby will do it in his/her own pace. I believe that we would be able to tell when to cut back on milk feeds by judging the amount of solids our babies take. Right now, Hannah is still at the trying out phase with 2 small solid feeds per day.
THe above is just my opinion. Hope it helps :)