I was so excited to start solids with my daughter when she started showing interest in food! That is until I actually started the process and realized it was more stressful, messy, and time-consuming than I initially expected. My daughter didn’t immediately take to solids, which required me to adjust my expectations pretty quickly.
If I’ve seen you in the office with your baby, you know my spiel on introducing solids goes something like:
It’s all about exploration at first. Discovering how food feels in the mouth, how to move the tongue. Your baby may eat none of it or they may eat tablespoons worth and that is all normal. Their nutrition is still predominantly coming from milk.
This is all true information, but I really struggled to make my mom brain listen to my pediatrician brain. She ate so little for the first few months after we introduced solids. I compared my daughter to other babies who were eating more solids and was stressed that she wasn’t doing as well.
She would blow raspberries/spit immediately if we tried to put anything puree consistency in her mouth. It wasn’t until closer to 8.5 months that she started taking purees. This meant that I was forced to try baby-led weaning. Nothing against BLW, but I was not quite ready for that at the time. I would boil her veggies, try chunks of meat or baguette, only for her to basically just lick it then drop it. It was really disheartening to me, even though I know her actions were developmentally appropriate.
In addition to her not eating as much as I wanted her to, I had a lot of stress about her iron intake and exposure to the allergens. Breast milk becomes low in iron over time, so it’s important for babies to get iron through the diet. Allergen introduction is important because we have excellent data that early introduction of peanuts reduces the risk of a peanut allergy, and data supports similar findings for other major allergens.
I envisioned that she’d eat peanut butter mixed into yogurt, scrambled eggs, and steak regularly. Instead I was lucky to get a few Bambas or licks of meat into her. I had to reset my expectations and be comfortable with fulfilling my job of offering iron-rich foods and the allergens to her. I had to be okay with letting her take the lead on actually consuming it.
At one point when I was stressing about her intake, my husband asked ChatGPT to describe what/how an 8-month-old should be eating, and he read that aloud to me at the table. I have to say ChatGPT did a pretty good job summarizing what is normal for that age, and it was helpful for me to hear it read out loud to quiet down my anxious mom brain. My husband was pretty proud of his contribution to the discussion, even if it was AI.
Despite my stress, at 12 months now she is doing much better. She likes a lot of different foods and enjoys eating. My anxiety is not gone, but with time I’ve also become more comfortable with the day-to-day differences in her intake and the mess on the floor. Admittedly, I’m still not very keen on giving her a pre-loaded spoon. I know that this action will facilitate her development, but it also leads to her dropping the food off the spoon onto the dog, hitting the spoon on her head so the food is all in her hair, or banging the spoon on the tray so that the food ends up in my hair. This just kills me, so more often than not I spoon feed her then on the last bite or two offer her the spoon. That is going to have to be good enough for now.
I’m hoping this writing provides solidarity for other families trying to feed their baby! Even though I have knowledge about the ins and outs of infant nutrition, that hasn’t made the process easy for me. Deep down I knew all along that there really wasn’t anything to worry about, but as you can see that didn’t stop me from stressing.
Myself and all of the pediatricians at CMC are here to talk about your baby’s journey with solids, to troubleshoot anything that has not been going well, and to provide a lot of encouragement that you are doing amazing!