How to Feed Your Baby

There is a lot written on baby care. You may remember my frustration with the sleep books. Food is another hot topic in baby care. As in the case of all things baby, people have very strong opinions, so I think it's best to take the literature (and the websites) with a grain of salt. The way baby books and websites and message boards are written, one would think that you could permanently damage your baby by accidently feeding her strawberries before her first birthday. And while food allergies can be a serious matter, I think feeding, like sleeping, is another area where it's best to pay attention to your baby's cues.

Laurel has teeth now...7 in the front and a couple of molars in the back. I have been working on weaning her since I went back to work and now I generally only nurse her two or three times a day. We pack bottles of formula for her to drink at daycare, but she will usually only drink one or two 4 oz. bottles. Compared to her baby friends, she has always eaten a lot less solid foods. She shows a lot of interest and wants to try what you are having, but until very recently, so little would end up in her mouth that I could hardly worry about the nutritional value of it. Things are changing. She's getting better at feeding herself. She used a fork (kind of) at my mom's house last week! It was a very small fork, and she mostly used it for stirring.

So far, we know that Laurel loves cheese, bread, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, yogurt, mango, and pasta. She loved eating rice with a peanut-y Thai curry sauce this weekend. She ate bowl after bowl of minestrone soup last week. Naturally cake is now at the top of her list, with all the birthday celebrations lately. I am incredibly paranoid about choking hazards, but obviously from this picture, Laurel can handle lots of "big people" foods. She ate the whole slice.


So far, she's pretty much a vegetarian. I give her tofu and eggs for protein. I tried to give her some cow's milk, which she absolutely hated. I think she almost threw up, actually, she was gagging so hard. So maybe we'll try soy milk. At this point, she's eating pretty much what we eat. If it's too hard for her to chew it, we grind it up in the baby food mill.