The First Food I Fed My Baby and Why

For the first six months of your baby’s life, he will only be drinking breastmilk or formula. A recent change recommends that babies are not introduced to solids until 6 months.

Once your baby can begin eating solids, you will face a lot more choices, such as what should their first food be? As parents, we want to nourish our children with the best foods.

When my first two children began eating solids, my pediatrician told me to start with mixing rice cereal and breastmilk/formula.

I followed those guidelines, but my kids weren’t excited to try this soupy mixture.

Five years later, I had my third child and the recommendations for introducing solids to infants has changed.

• Babies should wait until they are six months to be introduced to solids.
• Rice cereal is no longer encouraged as the best first food.

Pediatricians still recommend that you:

• Introduce a single food at a time.
• Make sure the food is soft and not a choking hazard.

I decided that I would feed my child a wide variety of whole foods from the get-go in hopes to avoid having another picky eater. I planned a perfectly ripe avocado to be my baby’s first food.

Her first food was actually oranges. My daughter managed to sneak a piece from the table before she even turned six months! She sucked the juice from the orange and screamed in excitement at the new-found flavor.

Two weeks later, she was officially 6 months and I had a ripe avocado on the counter, just waiting for her. I mashed it up with a fork and anxiously waited for her to devour the green goodness. But alas,  she was not having it. There was no excitement, only a turn of the head.

I was slightly annoyed, but as she continued to try new foods with different textures, she willingly ate a variety of foods. It’s important to keep trying foods your baby has previously dismissed. Most children need to try a food 10–15 times before they can decide if they like it.