Baby Care - 5

Pacifiers
I don’t believe in them. If they are going to self soothe, I much rather they learn to use their fingers or thumb. For one thing, when they learn use their fingers, you don’t have to keep searching for a pacifier and making sure it’s clean. Just wash their hands a few times in the day and no searching. Next, when they start crawling around they have to use their hands to crawl and pick up things etc, so they can’t have their fingers in their mouth at the same time and so without really doing anything about it, they will quit putting their fingers/thumb in their mouth or at least reduce their dependence on it significantly. Stats say most kids like over 95% stop thumb-sucking by 1 year of age on their own without any assistance.

With a pacifier you are stuck and you actually have to do something about having them break that habit. For one thing they can have it in their mouth and crawl around and pick up toys etc. Second, if they use it to fall asleep (most common use) then you have to get up and put in their mouth till they are old enough to do it themselves. How many wakings is that? The average person supposedly wakes up 3 or 4 times in the night. So with a baby (even when she has finally learned to sleep through the night) you could be waking up to put a pacifier in. What a pain. I say, go natural. Let her find her thumb herself. D2 was using his thumb since he was 3 months old, as soon as he could get his fingers in his mouth. Before then he would randomly suck on his hands. It’s a great help, he soothes himself to sleep so well. I don’t have to look for pacifiers, or boil them or anything.

Many parents talk about the pacifier soothing their baby. This is somewhat true, since at such a young age, nursing or feeding is such a comforting time for the kid. But in another way, everytime the kid talks (cries at this age), we shut them up with the pacifier. I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem nice.

I know many parents swear by it. I still say, go with what you think feels better. I choose to differ, but that is just me.

Solid Foods
Regarding solids, I started with rice cereal first. I used Earth's Best Organic Rice cereal. It has a bit of texture (looks like tiny rice flakes) rather than the Gerber one which looks like rice powder.

But first you have to watch for signs of readiness. Our doctor said you can start solids anytime between 4 and 6 months. You don’t want to start too early if they are not capable of swallowing well they can choke more and also there is danger of allergies developing later in life or so some studies say, and is it really worth it, if it only means waiting a month or two to feed your baby solids. Many parents believe feeding solids makes your baby sleep through the night. I say, one is not related to the other. If your baby’s brain development is at the point to sleep through the night, then she will, otherwise she won’t.

You also don’t want to wait too long because there is a window of opportunity to introduce solids and if your miss this they can get hung up on textures and refuse to eat. As babies grow older they start having opinions, imagine that, and the older they get the stronger their opinions. Babies see everything in black and white. Yes, they want it, or no, you can forget about it.

Signs of Readiness
So what are these signs of readiness to eat solids. Both D1 and D2 ate well almost from the start. I like to believe because I really waited until all the signs of readiness were there.

First – They must at least double their birth weight. This is an easy one.

Second - Around 4 months babies also start drooling more (teething etc), when they start drooling lesser (this is really a question of their ability to swallow and a little tricky, because when the teeth come closer to erupting the drooling really increases a lot). You see, when babies are drinking milk, they are not swallowing, the milk is simply squirting down their throats.
Watch for signs like when the baby burps does it always drip out of her mouth or does she swallow up small burps. If she is swallowing well, that is a good sign she is getting ready to start eating.

Third sign - Does she like to watch you eat. D1 will stop anything he is doing as soon as someone is eating near him. He watches very intently. And even works his mouth sometimes like he is chewing.

Finally - Is she drinking tons more milk (I guess the official word is more than 32 oz – D1 never got close to that number so I think that number is way too high) suddenly and remains hungry or needs more feeds for more than a week. Start solids. Most important, she should be able to hold her head steady. Its not necessary for her to be able to sit by herself, but should be able to hold her head steady when picked up.

For their first solid feed (just like with bottle introduction) start when they are not full of milk but not quite hungry for their next meal. Because it is a lot of work to eat and a slow process if the baby is hungry she will not have the patience to eat it and will get frustrated and associate that feeling with solids. So between meals is the best time.

For a few days D2 ate a small amount of cereal between meals. But it was soon obvious he could eat well, so I would feed him at his feed time but before he asked for it. That is I waited till about 2 to 3 hours (depending on when the naps fell in between) and then fed him cereal before he cried for a meal.

Anyhow, I started with some rice cereal mixed with breast milk (since D2 hadn’t had formula yet). You can also use water and formula of course. With D1 I used formula since he was mixed fed with breast milk and formula. The more nutrition the better I feel. But all baby cereals are fortified with iron so she might get constipated right away. Don’t feed too much rice cereal even if she is good at eating it, rice is binding and doesn’t help with constipation. I still mixed only about enough in 1 to 2 oz of milk, even if D2 could eat up more. Too much iron is constipating. Besides let their bodies adjust to the new food and learn to digest it slowly.

Most importantly, introduce foods one at a time. I usually wait a week for each new food introduced. I started the boys on their cereal at about 4.5 months. They both ate well almost from the start. The reason for at least a week or more between new foods is simple, if your baby develops rashes or other symptoms, you know right away which foods are doing this. D1 didn’t do well with peaches and that fruit family when he was little. It was a standing joke in his daycare, that he was an exotic kid, because I had to hunt up fruits like mango, papaya, etc for him.

The second week I started with yellow vegetables - squash. After he took that well ( a couple of days) I let him eat as much as he wanted to (so it would take the place of a nursing or bottle at daycare. The vegetables have enough fiber in them to counter the constipation of the iron in the cereal. I tried to keep the proportion of vegetables and cereal about 50-50 and maybe a little more vegetables than cereal.

Until they are 6 months old they are still supposed to be primarily on milk. So even though D2 was doing so well and would love to eat all day long, I waited till he was 6 months before adding another solids meal time in the day. But I continued to introduce one new food at a time.
With D1 I started with Rice cereal, Banana (really ripe one squashed up), apple sauce ( you can do regular apple sauce by the time they are 9 months or so), yellow vegetable, sweet potato, then green vegetables - beans, peas. Then other fruits - pears etc. D1 had a reaction to the pears, peaches, apricots - all fruits of that family. So I quit and started guava, mango, papaya (I guess he wanted to be an exotic baby).

Bananas are constipating too and D2 became constipated with his cereal in the beginning so instead of fruit I started with vegetables. Rice cereal, squash, carrots, oatmeal cereal, sweet potatoes and then fruits - banana, apple, pears etc., then peas, beans. You don’t want to start your baby with fruits, they might like the sweet fruit taste and reject plain veggies. But you also don’t want to introduce green vegetables since they are harder to digest, so the sweeter vegetables seem the way to go, squash, sweet potatoes etc. By the time they have tried through all these foods, they are ready for the pre-made baby pastas or really your own food, make sure it is very soft and mashed up.

I tried to buy organic foods as often as possible. Other than the cereals, I did use Gerber foods too. They don’t have preservatives so they are probably fine too. Now they have an organic line as well. The organic brand we got was Earth's Best and I don’t know if there are others, doesn’t have many food choices and seems to me they offer mixed foods (mixed vegetables or lasagna) etc more. And since babies are supposed to start eating one food at a time the organic ones didn’t always work out. (I am talking about 6 years ago, by now I am sure things have already changed and there are more choices and more readily available).

Self Feeding
No matter how good they are about eating, it is still messy. Those cute bibs - useless. In my opinion you have 2 options - feed them naked easy to wash the whole baby off and you don’t have to take food stains out of their clothes or get one of those long bibs that covers almost their whole body. I used cotton diapers, the ones that are not pre-folded. Works great. It just drapes over D2's whole body. They stay messy eaters for a really long time.

They have to start feeding themselves at some point. And if you don’t use a bib much they will resist it later. Although 6 months is still early, you can go the naked route in the beginning and try the bib when she is ready to sit on the high chair by herself.

D2 loved to grab the spoon and feed himself. He hindered more than helped at this point. So I offered him his own spoon to wave around. This was a really good idea. Because pretty soon after he sat on his own and ate, he would want to feed himself (couldn’t do it, but try telling him that). So with D1 I would give him his own bowl and a spoon with a little food in it and then my bowl and feed him from that. He loved to try and feed himself (couldn’t get anything in for a long time, but loved trying) and only then would be let me feed him (they do want to survive). And I say, when they want to feed themselves go with it. It gets truly messy, but if you don’t encourage that phase they will come to believe only you can feed them and then you are stuck for a long time. Feeding themselves is not really a concept many Indian families have, and I have seen many an Indian kid who won’t feed themselves even at 3 and 4 years old!!!! So this is a real danger.

With D1 and D2 I didn’t use a high chair. When they were ready to sit well on their own, I had a tiny table and stool (backed up to a corner) so he wouldn’t tip over and have support to sit him on. D1 loved the independence of sitting down himself and getting up. Instead of being strapped in. Do you realize how often we strap up our kids like prisoners, in the car, in the stroller, and in the high chair? In fact, they spend a very small part of their early childhood being free.
They will try to get up between meals sometimes, but you keep reminding them and holding their hands to bring them back to sit down. And so long as you don’t offer them any food anywhere other than at the table, they soon figure out they have to sit and eat. This is a really good idea, because they do understand they have to eat at the table. In a high chair they are strapped in, it isn’t something they learn, it is something that happens to them. So when they outgrow it they don’t always know to sit down and you have to teach them that whole idea anyway. Teaching them limits is more effective then tying them up I believe. With D1 we didn’t even baby proof our house other than some basic precautions, we just set limits (we did use visual or other apparent barriers), but not exactly physical barriers for everything and never had trouble with D1 playing with wires or things like that. It really works. It seems like more work because strapping them is so easy. But one time or the other you have to do it and it is easier when they are younger and more malleable and get the idea than when they are older and stronger and faster.