Kingston has been sitting up since 4 months. He can sit up unassisted all day, but needs something behind him in case he topples! He also has been reaching for food for a month. We've had a few close calls with him grabbing a piece of bread out of Todd's hands and trying to shove it in his mouth, grabbing a hand full of my dinner at a play date, and dipping his hand into my blackened chicken pasta at Joe's Bar and Grill during lunchtime, just to name a few! He had also begun giving us this pitiful look every time we ate anything that almost made me want to take my dinner to my room! Even with all these sure signs that he was ready for solids, I still held strong.
However, this weekend I read a Dr. Sears article that talked about solid readiness and Kingston displayed all of the signs that he was ready! The article also mentioned an interesting concept about drooling babies and how drool is necessary to break down solids. Kingston is a drool kabob! We are constantly going through bib after bib, sometimes up to 10 a day. I figured with the way this kid drools he should be able to dominate solid food with no issues! .. grasping at straws much?! Yes! This baby was ready and we were ready to feed him!
We chose to feed him on a random night when I had my parents over for dinner. My mom brought over an avocado and we were in business. As soon as Todd came home we broke out the Baby Bullet. I was so nervous that you would have thought I was in labor! In fact this was probably the most exciting thing we have done together since birth! Everybody was so excited to see how he would react.
I hadn't pumped any breast milk recently, so I chose to use frozen milk. First mistake. You cannot use frozen milk for batch baby food making. This completely slipped my mind and I whipped up some fresh avocado and breast milk. It tasted great, the texture was awesome, and the verdict? Kingston LOVED it! He ate as if we had been feeding him forever. He leaned forward for each bite, guided the spoon to his mouth with his hands every time, laughed and squealed while he ate, and turned his head when he was done. It was picture perfect and truly solidified our decision to feed him a few weeks early.
The next day, staying over at my parents house, I realized my mistake with the frozen milk. We had to throw out the entire batch. Since we had no pump with us and no milk, we had to mix a fresh avocado with water. That did NOT go over well. A couple non-interested bites and we called it quits. The next night we didn't feed him at all. When we got home, I pumped milk to put in the next batch of avocado. We fed him that the next day, but all of our jars started going brown. They had a very bitter smell and taste. We had already fed him avocado for 4 nights, which is what the Baby Bullet booklet says is a good time frame to introduce foods. We thought avocado would be the perfect first food to feed K, but decided that it was too complicated to keep fresh.
Which led us to...sweet potato:
We tried sweet potato for the first time last night, using plenty of fresh milk. It was easy to whip up, tasted delicious, and Kingston liked it! I also think it is going to store a lot better. We made enough for an entire 12 serving freezer batch and 4 refrigerator servings! We fed him right before we went out for sushi and he slept the entire time we were out. He was a happy boy!
We are not sure what we are going to try next or how long we will stay with purees before we try a more baby-led weaning type route, but we are excited for the journey of feeding this little boy. We are still nursing 10-12 times a day/night and are not planning on letting solid food interfere with nursing in any way. We will be sticking to sweet potato for the time being, but will update when we try a new food! Banana? Zucchini? Peas? There are so many options!! We are excited to try them all!
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