…”solid” food. Two milestones in about 1 week – amazing!
So, here’s the play-by-play… We took Toren to the doctor for his 4-month visit about 2 weeks ago and she said we could start feeding him “solid” foods. But, she suggested we do it not to actually feed him but rather to get him used to the idea of eating solid foods as he should still be getting almost all of his nutrition from breast milk at this point and will only start eating “solid” foods when he’s ready.
It took us a few days to pick up rice cereal and bowls and spoons, but then we gave it a try. That was about a week and a half ago. The rice cereal box’s directions for “baby’s first time” resulted in basically a liquid. We were also told not to give him cereal in a bottle. Well, that resulted in a rather annoying (I’d like to say amusing, but it wasn’t really) attempt to feed Toren completely liquid rice cereal with a spoon that, well, is almost flat. Toren wasn’t interested and I couldn’t really get anything into his mouth. This made for one particularly wet bib.
Since I really know nothing about babies, I figured I should just follow the directions. Debi, however, suggested we mix up the rice cereal to whatever consistency we though made the most sense and then try that. So, we made a thicker, more pudding like mixture and tried that. It certainly made it easier to feed the cereal to Toren, but he really wasn’t that interested. He probably ate about 1/3 of what we put in his mouth, gagged every so often, and spit the rest out. Oh well, we tried.
After a few days of that (and a missed day here and there), we decided to try a different food: green beans. I tried feeding him the first time and it went about as well as with the rice cereal. That was two days ago. Debi fed him last night (I usually feed him but I was gone during his “solid” food time) and, while she didn’t tell me today because she didn’t want me to feel bad, apparently Toren figured it out and ate pretty much all of what she gave him.
So, without knowing about last night, I started feeding him tonight and was shocked when he opened his mouth as the spoon approached, chomped down on it, and swallowed the green beans. He seemed to really be enjoying it. Only once he followed up his previous successful feeding with a successful feeding for me did Debi reveal that he did the same thing last night. So, long story short – Toren is now, at 4 1/2 months, eating “solid” food. Seeing him develop and learn these things, I have to admit, is pretty cool!
Rant One:
A Toren update without a rant wouldn’t be a Toren update, now would it? What’s the problem this week: “solid” food. Why is mushy, pureed baby food called “solid” food? It’s not “solid” (unless you mean “solid” like one of my students used it a few weeks ago to refer to her weekend as “very good” – I think). It’s pureed. Perhaps it started out as a solid, but so do breastmilk and formula. So, why call it “solid”? Why not call the intermediate stage between liquid and solid something like “mushy”? I tell ya’, baby stuff just doesn’t make sense.
Bonus rant:
Why don’t people make scientifically accurate baby books? The first book I read to Toren was a zoo book. I know it was just supposed to be cute, but it depicted all of the animals as friendly and fun – including lions and tigers. Like I want Toren to think lions and tigers are cute and friendly! It also depicted the hippopotamus as purple. Um, yeah, not so much.
So, Toren just got a few new books from my Mom that I helped pick out. They are cute and fun and mostly scientifically accurate, but they are still problematic. I actually looked through them when my Mom was shopping for them and thought they would be good, but I didn’t examine them carefully. While examining them I only found 1 or 2 scientifically inaccurate or misleading statements (e.g., “the air contains oxygen”, which is, of course, inaccurate because “the air” is oxygen, at least partially oxygen – between 18% and 20%). Debi found another today. I’m sure creating children’s books is hard, but couldn’t someone run these by a scientist before they actually publish them? I mean, really? I’m a sociologist and I catch these things…
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, we correct the inaccuracies when we read to Toren… Lucky kid! 😉
