Contents:
- Medical Video: The Complete Guide to Starting Solids
- Why baby cereal?
- What kind of baby cereal should I serve?
- How do you mix baby porridge cereal?
- How solid is the texture of cereal that I have to make?
- How much cereal should I give?
- Why should baby porridge cereal not be given in a bottle?
Medical Video: The Complete Guide to Starting Solids
After your baby is 4-6 months old and shows signs of being prepared to eat solid food, you can give your baby solid food. Baby cereal can be one of your choices.
Why baby cereal?
Apart from being porridge, baby cereal will serve as your baby's main source of iron throughout the first year, and maybe for the following year. Baby cereals are also quite easy to digest, relatively not trigger allergies, and are usually well received by the body, making porridge cereal one of the first foods recommended for babies.
What kind of baby cereal should I serve?
The best thing is to provide grained cereals such as rice, oatmeal, or wheat. This type does not cause allergies and allows you to introduce your baby to one of the new foods (or in this case, seeds).
How do you mix baby porridge cereal?
You can use formula or breast milk, although there is no harm if you want to use water. You also have the option of buying baby cereal packaging that has not been mixed. Technically, packaged cereal does not offer any additional benefits than comfort and tends to be quite soft, so you might need to add a few extra cereals after your baby is accustomed to swallowing thick food textures.
After your baby regularly eats cereal properly, you can also add your baby meat porridge, fruits, and / or vegetables to the cereal mixture, and not give it separately.
How solid is the texture of cereal that I have to make?
For more details, we should make the first portion of baby cereal as dense as possible. How dense it depends on how well your baby feels the texture, because there will be a difference in each baby handling solid food. Your initial goal should be to offer a food mixture with a spoon, similar to the texture of apple sauce.
If you are the type of person who likes to follow recipes, you will be happy to know that every baby cereal box has instructions for how to mix and prepare your baby's first cereal portion. Most recipes suggest mixing around 1 tablespoon of cereal with 2 ounces or 56.6 grams of formula milk or breast milk.
If you don't like measuring portions and prefer to measure with instinct, just use two spoons or more dry cereal in a bowl and then add enough liquid to make the mixture of thin and runny cereal. Then let your baby determine. Too runny? Add more cereal. Too thick? Add breast milk or formula milk.
How much cereal should I give?
Chances are your baby will tell you how much portion he wants. If he only wants a few bites, he might refuse and start fussing. If, he devoured a lot, that means you have to give more portions.
If you need a rough number, try giving 1 to 4 teaspoons at first. Be prepared to give more portions, because this number can increase rapidly in a short time even for a few days.
Why should baby porridge cereal not be given in a bottle?
Although the habit of adding cereal to a baby bottle is one of the long-used methods, there are several compelling reasons why you really don't do it unless advised by a pediatrician.
- Ready or not. The baby's digestive system is not considered ready to process cereal until around the age of 4 months. When it is long enough to digest cereal, it must also be prepared to eat it from a spoon.
- Too hard to eat. Offering cereal in a bottle (or even on a spoon) before the baby is fully prepared can increase the possibility of choking and / or breathing thick mixtures into their lungs. Unless there is a medical reason to give it earlier, it is not recommended to give it early.
- Activation of allergies. Exposure to solid food before the age of 4 months can make babies at risk of experiencing food allergies in time which can minimize the risk by just waiting 4-6 months until the time is right.
- Excessive portion. Perhaps the biggest reason for not adding cereal in bottles is related to excessive portions. With instinct, your baby knows how much milk or formula to drink based on volume, and not based on the number of calories.
Although giving excessive portions to babies is difficult to avoid, this is also difficult when only giving breast milk or formula milk. Once cereal is given, things will become more difficult, in fact, placing cereal in a bottle is considered by some to be a form of forced feeding that can cause babies to "overdose" calories.
