Solids

Noni turned six months old this past Thursday!  It's typically recommended that parents wait until babies reach this particular age to start feeding them solid foods, and it's not unusual for some mothers to breastfeed their babies exclusively for the first year of life. 

This was my plan…to wait a year.

Well, about a week prior to her six month birthday, we were having avocado one night and gave her some.  I didn't see any reason why not to, and she was all but hurting herself trying to get it out of our hands as we were eating.  After all that commotion over it, though, she had the most confused look on her face when we went to put some in her mouth. 

Following that night she had a taste of apple banana as well as poi--a traditional Hawaiian food (made from the root of the taro plant) that has all sorts of health benefits.  Plus, the consistency makes it ideal as baby food.   Her father had been inquiring as to whether or not I'd be willing to let her have some once she made it to six months.

Poi

Now, I will admit that I'm not a huge fan of this food personally.  However, my man likes it and can convince me to eat it every now and then, and having Noni develop a liking for it while she's young is certainly fine with me. We've also given her purple Okinawan sweet potato.

I ended up getting a few library books about starting babies on solid foods, figuring we'd just go ahead and jump right into it.  Well, I barely looked in those books.  It become clear to me that all that they talk about when it comes to the subject matter is great information but is far beyond what I'm interested in given how simple I like to keep things.  I doubt that I'm going to be doing much in the way of pureeing then freezing food in ice trays for later use.  I'm more of the "cut an avocado, mash it up, and give it to Baby" type, and even in taking that simple approach I was really starting to understand that although my decision to breastfeed exclusively for a year was honestly and truly neither here nor there, it most definitely has it's benefits.  Primarily, it's super convenient!

(In addition to simply mashing certain foods up, I've also added breast milk to get the food to the right texture if needed.)

 Noni seems to like the taste of the foods well enough but seems to not have a whole lot of interest in them.   Being so young and on a determined quest to discover everything by putting it in her mouth, "eating" solid foods isn't so much about satisfying hunger but more about having one more thing to explore with her gums like she does her toys, our fingers, her foot, fabric, etc.

Tasty foot. Next to her head you can see the object she's supposed to be chewing.

I'm realizing that she's perfectly fine just breastfeeding right now.  In fact, she seems to prefer it that way. At this stage, when she wants food she knows where to look for it.  There's no confusion there.  We will probably still give her tastes of certain foods that are mash-up-able and ones that she can handle, but I can already tell that it's not going to  be that big of a deal whether we do or don't.  It's mostly fun for us just for her to be able to taste some of the fresh fruits and things we have access to, and we will just continue to gauge her response to the process and increase it as she demands it or shows more interest over the coming months. I'm not going to make it a "must do" thing at least until she's a year or closer to a year old.

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On another note, the child has a tooth coming in!  Two days before turning six months, she was chewing on my finger like she enjoys doing, and I felt something hard.  I didn't see the tooth when I looked in her mouth, but it was definitely able to be felt. Then, Saturday morning I examined her gums again, and there it was. The tooth is visibly breaking through. Seems like there's one trying to come in next to it as well.

We are on our way!

:)