Feeding Your Baby
Think your baby might be ready to start solid foods?
Feeding
your baby real solid food after six months of breastmilk (or formula)
is an exciting time, for you and for him. As you 
approach this
transition, there are some questions you'll want to ask yourself.
1. Is my baby actually ready for food, or is this my idea? Some babies are grabbing at mom's food by five months. Others are completely disinterested when you offer them rice cereal at nine months. There is no rush on this. Babies who are breastfed are getting the perfect food and don't actually need solid food until the end of the first year or later. Discuss this with your pediatrician, but don't be concerned if your baby shows little interest in solid food. It's good to get clear right from the start that your child is in charge of how much he takes into his body. Your job is just to make sure what he's offered is healthy.
2. What do I want my baby taking into his body? This is worth some thought, and every family will make different decisions, regarding questions like:
- Is organic food worth the extra cost?
- How long do we want to wait before introducing sweets?
3. How can I manage introducing new foods to reduce the risk that my baby will develop food allergies by meeting certain foods too early?
4. How much time do I want to put into food preparation? Is making my own babyfood worth it?
5. What are my goals for my baby's eating? This may sound like a strange question -- obviously, you want your child to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet and to enjoy her food. But there are some other worthwhile goals.
To reduce the risk of power struggles around food, eating disorders and obesity later in life, you want your baby to take charge of her own eating as soon as possible.
That may well conflict with another goal most of us have: a clean kitchen, dining room, high chair, and baby! It may even conflict with an image you have of yourself as a nurturing mother bird spooning food into her chick's open mouth.
But the latest research shows that the sooner babies assume control of their eating, the better. I'm not saying you shouldn't feed rice cereal to your six month old, or that she is ready to handle her own spoon immediately. I'm just suggesting that you see the time period of spoon-feeding as limited, and instead emphasize foods she can feed herself along with whatever you're feeding her, such as soft chunks of sweet potato, thawed frozen peas, or cheerios.
There's no law that babies have to eat food that requires a spoon. Give her a spoon to hold while you use another spoon to feed her. And if she wants to grab your spoon and feed herself, by all means let her. Over time, your baby will start to prefer to feed herself, probably first with hands, and then with a spoon.
In the beginning, babies use their whole fist to grab food, but his motivation to eat will help him develop a pincer grasp, which is an important developmental step. Do you have a child who hates to get his hands messy? Cut up small pieces of dryer food such as bread, hard boiled egg, and vegetables.
Your little one really wants to learn to feed himself. If you get out of the way, he will. And the mess? He'll get neater with practice, I guarantee.
