My son has been having Gerber Organic Stage 1 foods mixed with cereal for the past 3-4 weeks (lunch and dinner) with the rest of his meals being breast milk (nursing or EBM at daycare). He is having around 20oz per day of milk. We were originally giving him cereal and stage 1 at breakfast also, but our Ped said that at his age (then 6 mos) most of his nutrition should still come from breastmilk and not to get him too full on cereal, so we scaled back to the two times a day - he was okay with this as he is never really hungry first thing in a morning. We are about to start him on stage 2 foods, and I need advice on how much/how often to feed him this? Do I mix it with cereal or do on it's own. It's very confusing!!!
There's really no reason to give cereal at all. The only nutritional value is the added iron which most babies get enough of from breastmilk/formula/vitamins anwyway. I would just eliminate the cereal altogether.
Everyone does this a little differently - because there's really no right answer. Here's what worked for me...
I breastfed at all the regular times (every 2-3 hours for my son) and just stuck some "snacks" in between milk meals. I always made my own baby food so I don't really know about the stage 1/stage 2 etc thing, but a quick word of caution about feeding only "real" baby food - your baby may become texture sensitive and avoid anything lumpy or with texture. So do try and mix it up a bit - feed him some regular adult applesauce, cottage cheese, plain whole milk yogurt with fruit or vegetables mixed in, mashed banana, mashed sweet potato mixed with EBM... all of these are good baby food - no need to by a special "baby" version. Your son is probably also getting old enough to try cheerios - they'll be fun for him to pick up.
As for mixing food with cereal, I wouldn't bother. I tended to use cereal as a thickener, or to "beef up" my food, but I agree with the other posters - it is pretty worthless as a food item. Lots of times cereal was a good way to get my son to have more EBM during the day - which was an issue for him because he started refusing bottles at 7 months. But I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Definitely prioritize the breastfeeding over the food, but you can slowly phase in more and more food - he will likely just eat more and not cut down on his nursing.
I don't have advice on the food but I just wanted to say to please make sure you are breastfeeding prior to a solid feeding. I am sure you are but I didn't and I lost a significant amount of milk and had to supplement at 10 months. I was so sad!! I didn't realize how that can effect your breastfeeding so dramatically.
Honestly, everyone is going to have their own way of doing it!
Nutritionally speaking, your breastmilk is sufficient nutrition for him until at least one year. Some children refuse solids for a very long time and no harm will come by continuing to primarily breastfeed (which is what I did.)
As far as what I did for solids, when we starting going up a stage, I would just give cereal and mashed (real) bananas at one meal and try another food like squash or sweet potatoes at another- either with or without cereal, depending on what baby seems to prefer.
Of course, making your own baby foods is really the best way to go nutritionally as well- you get to control what is in the foods. There is a great little food mill: http://shop.nurturecenter.com/kihabafomigr.html
Or just mash soft cooked or steamed foods with a fork or potato masher. You can then freeze the leftovers (make sure to never store food that baby has eaten directly FROM, as you don't want to store germs from saliva) in ice cube trays and then dump them into freezer containers or bags and only thaw as you need it!
Organic foods are best- try Trader Joe's, Woodman's grocery, Whole Foods, Wild Oats, or The Fruitful Yield for organic items. They also have pre-made frozen baby foods now at Whole Foods as well.
Congrats on breastfeeding! Keep it up!
There is a great site for mamas at:
http://www.mothering.com/discussions/index.php
and they also have a magazine called Mothering that you can find online or at your library that has tons of great baby info!
(Oops- edited to add that I saw you are already using organic in jars- good for you for going organic too! Also, if you boycott Nestle products, they just bought Gerber- fyi!)
-Amanda R.
aspiring IBCLC
Mommy to Pixie, expecting #2 in November
Since breastmilk IS more important than the food at this stage, what is often done (as I did with my 2 boys) is each meal is breastmilk/formula and then solids immediately after. Can do as much solids as they want since it is a topper to the meal, not the main course. So can do stage one until your baby seems to want more food and then start stage 2 since the stage 2 jars are about twice as large as stage 1. The consistency is not much different if at all. More variety of foods in stage 2 and the stage 2 begins with combining foods. At 7 months we did breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime meals. Bedtime meal was just nursing before bed. Hope this helps!
