Easy Table Foods to Start With

Multigrain Cheerios – I think this is an easy stand by in any house hold.

Toast, Margarine, and Jam – Make it just like you like it.  Remove the crusts.  Then pull bits from it that are the size of your thumbnail at first.  Later as your baby gets better at eating, pull larger bits.  Even later, make Toast Fingers.

Ripe Pear – And when I say ripe, it’s ripe enough to shave pieces off with a spoon.  Rather than cutting up slices or cubes, just eat the skin off and use the spoon to make thumbnail sized shavings to offer.  Later, include the skin.  And then when your baby is really good at controlling their portions, offer whole slices.

Banana – Break the banana up with your fingers into thumbnail sized bits.  Later, when baby is confident with controlling how much goes into her mouth, offer larger pieces.

Steamed Broccoli Florets – The florets are the ‘green leafy part of the broccoli.  Steam these on the stove or in the microwave until the florets are brightly fresh colored and comes off of the stem easily with a fork.  Flavor these as you would your own steam broccoli with margarine and spices (but hold the salt!).  Offer the florets to your baby.  Later when baby is a better eater, offer some of the stem.

Steamed Asparagus – Same instructions as Broccoli.

Squash, Carrots, and other Nutrient Dense Roots – Steam, boil, or roast until these are soft enough to mash with a fork.  You can leave these as chunky or as mashed as your baby likes it.  Flavor these as you would eat them.

Other Tips…

I found that if I was eating at the same time as my son, he'd monkey me more and do much better.  I had to slow down my eating quite a bit and I've started including things like clementines and oranges into my meals (not his, not yet, their too acidic and cause diaper rash) so I have to take time peeling and eating for myself while he's eating.  Our meals generally took at hour at first.  Now we're down to about 30 minutes until he seems done.

Anything you can put a light gravy or sauce on to help make it slippery is great too.  You can get very small sized pasta, prepare it like you would for yourself.  Take a tablespoon of cream cheese.  Grate a kids snack wedge of cheese.  Melt those in the microwave and add whole milk to consistency and you've got a great, easy to eat baby pasta.  Just add or take away sauce to your baby's preference.

We went a long time too where I was offering a full range of foods.  I offered a puree or yogurt, a helping of 10 month chunky jarred food, and something off of my plate and I went with whatever he seemed happiest eating.  A lot of food ends up on the floor or goes uneaten, but this is how learning happens.  If I was anxious about my son not getting enough fruit or vegetables, I'd stir in a little vegetable puree into whatever he was eating.

When I was seeing next to no gagging, I gave my son larger bits and now he has a really good handle on how much he can put in his mouth or bite off.  But he still sometimes tries to bite off a little bit more than he can chew.

Just try to relax and keep working with it.  The doctor might prescribe your baby some vitamins if you're concerned about nutrition and may recommend that you stay on the formula until your baby comes around to eating more solids.  Technically, babies are still suckling well into 2 or 3 years of age and many can expect to have primary nutrition coming from breast milk or formula until then.

The Basics in Transitioning (or Starting) with Solids

I’ve always been big on nutrition.

During pregnancy, I was advising other moms on healthy diets—how to cook and eat whole foods (not the organic store chain, but rather brown rice instead of white, using more legumes, etc).  I was super annoyed when my pregnancy blood work came back showing me borderline gestational diabetes and borderline anaemic in spite of my stellar eating habits.  I’m proof positive that hormones can and will screw you over in that department anyways, but it’s still no excuse to slack on a healthy diet!

Later, I was huge on breastfeeding (or rather, exclusive pumping), taking vitamins and continuing to eat right in order to provide my son with the best nutrition—putting wheat germ on my cereal… the whole nine yards.  It shouldn’t have been any surprise to friends after that I’d be super keen on my son’s diet when he transitioned from breast milk to foods.

The question always comes up: what do I feed my toddler?  And there are many answers to that with a whole array of options that can sometimes be confusing or difficult to break down.  The purpose of this post is an attempt to make it all a little simpler.

First, I want to put down some ground rules that seem to get forgotten in all of the hoopla on toddler nutrition.

Until your baby is 18 months to 2 years, breast milk and/or baby formula will very likely be your baby’s primary source of nutrition and calories.  So if your six month old isn’t keep up with the champion Baby-Led Weaners eating chicken straight off the leg, you are so far from alone… and in fact, the six month old eating chicken straight off the leg is the odd ball out.  So up until 18 months to 2 years, solids are for fun.  Relax, introduce them and see how much enjoyment your baby gets out of them!

Variation is the key to better nutrition and to keep things interesting.  But always have your fallbacks ready.  Try introducing a new food, or an old food presented in a new way, every week.  Some things will fly, some won’t.  A lot of food ends up on the floor.  Don’t sweat any of that.  Now is not the time to be talking to your baby about starving children in African nations.  Now is the time to keep eating interesting and fun.

Don’t be afraid of mess.  Fearing the clean up after only holds your baby back.  It may seem like a lot of work at first, but once you’ve done it a few times, you’ll quickly see how fast and easy post meal clean up can be.

Encourage without pressure or stress.  Babies are little empaths, reflections of you.  If you’re stressed over meals, that teaches baby that meals are meant to be stressed over… and they’re not.  If you’re having difficulty with the process (fear of gagging, fear of baby not being able to control their portions, etc.), take a break from trying to re-examination in yourself what the issue is and try to overcome that on your own before trying again.  Or sometimes a little exposure to the issue helps.

For example, I had a great big huge fear of my son gagging and choking and I wouldn’t be able to save him.  It would keep me up at night with worry.  What I discovered was that I was PPD and I couldn’t find it in myself to trust my son with his food.  So when I got treatment for the PPD and when I did other activities with my son so I could learn to trust him better, I was able to trust him more with his food.  Now I fully know that he knows how to handle himself with his food.  It took some time and a little exposure, but under different, less stressful circumstances.

So with those ground rules in place, on to the adventure of eating!