Signs your baby is ready for solids...

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FutureHKmom

Registered User
I've read many of the threads on starting solids and most of them talk about reading your baby's signs to see if he is ready....what were some of the signs to show that your baby is ready for solids? Thanks!
 
my baby is 5 months old and she is still exclusively breastfeeding, and i haven't started solids yet. i just spoke to my lactation consultant back in the US and she said that i would *know* when the baby is interested in solids. she asked me -- is she sitting up yet? is she interested in the food you eat? apparently when they want solids they just lunge for your food. and that's when you should try solids. if they keep it down then they're ready to eat. if they spit it out, then they're not ready.

so i'm waiting to see how things unfold...! :-)
 
-breastfeeding every hour around the clock, both sides instead of just one
-swiping my food
-more than doubled his weight

He lapped up his first bowl of rice cereal and we haven`t looked back~
 
Hi Shenzhennifer - when you say swiping at your food, do you mean he actually reaches out to try to touch your food? My son doesn't really do that, but he watches intently as the food travels from the plate to my mouth and moves his mouth like he's chewing as he watches my food and as he watches me chew. it's actually really cute!
 
Actually, my son used to watch us eat - this is also one of the `signs`. I often ate with him on my lap and was surprised one day when he swiped a piece of omelette off my plate and tried to put it in his mouth. He looked like a cat, it was also very cute.
I made a really big deal in my head about introducing solids to him (I wanted to wait til 6 months) but when it comes down to it, it`s only a couple of teaspoons of runny cereal that tastes like your milk anyway. Why not just give it a go and see if your son likes it? By the sounds of it, he just might. It takes awhile for them to start eating other stuff anyway, and just to get used to having stuff in their mouths like that.
 
Thanks Shenzhennifer! I think we will be trying with some rice cereal this weekend! I was wondering - when you first fed your son solids, when did you feed him? Before or after BF or at a totally different time than when you BF? At what time of day? Thanks!
 
That`s a good question. I found a lot of conflicting advice on that on websites and in books. I went in between and followed my own instinct. I started out feeding him about 30 minutes or so after his breastfeed, to make sure he got the good stuff first, wasn`t too full from it, but close enough after the BF to still have interest in eating. Because of his napping schedule at that time and so I would have enough time to express milk (I was on holiday in Canada and didn`t have my pump), I started around 1-1.30 pm.
When I started feeding him another meal, it turned out to be a hassle because his meals were then at all different times - that`s just how it worked out. I wanted to follow Annabel Karmel`s schedule of first feedings, but it didn`t really work out for me, though I experimented with which meals to start with. I really wanted him to have dinner, though, bc I was praying that he felt fuller at night so he would leave me more alone:)
So now that he`s on 3 meals a day, and I just serve the meals at roughly the same time each day and let the breastfeeds fall where they may. It`s fairly predictable now.
Good luck with your son`s first meal this weekend - make sure to take a video~
 
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