Doing Her a Solid

Sadie's five months old today, and to celebrate, we're starting solid foods.

If you'd asked me a few months ago I'd have said I had no desire to start solids until she was at least six months old. That's easy to say when you're banking 8-10 oz. of extra milk every day. But things are changing. I can't remember the last time I froze spare milk. Everything I pump just winds up being fed back to her by the babysitter. And the frozen supply, no matter what I do, is slowly dwindling. Now that my schedule is getting busier and I need a babysitter more often than I used to, that supply is going to dwindle even faster.

There's a list of requirements a baby must meet before a she can be considered "ready" to start solid foods. They should have doubled their birth weight AND weigh at least 15 pounds, be at least 4 months old (the AAP recommends 6 months), be able to hold their heads steady, be able to sit well while supported. Of all of these, Sadie has not hit the first two. She's still only 14 lbs. and change -- and is not even close to doubling her birth weight, which would put her near 16 lbs.

Regardless, everything else tells me she really needs to start taking in more calories. It's the lack of weight gain that has me concerned -- although she's hungry all the time, she isn't putting on weight except for the intermittent growth spurt week (and those are exhausting for both of us). And frequently she'll just want to eat all day, and no matter what I do -- eating oatmeal, pumping more often, waterloading -- has made much of a difference. The girl wants to EAT. My sister-in-law suggests drinking a pint of Guinness every night as a surefire way to up my supply, but my barley allergy (or is it hops? I forget) makes that a less than ideal option. I don't think Scott would appreciate dealing with the digestive issues that drinking beer gives me, on a nightly basis. He already puts up with my garlic obsession.

So, I admit I broke yesterday. I just wanted to see what would happen. I waited until dinnertime, put Sadie in the Bumbo, mixed half a tablespoon of rice cereal with 2 tablespoons of milk, warmed it up and offered it to her. And...what can I say? The girl is a Slurry. She ate it up like she'd been waiting for it her whole life. Well...by "ate it up," I mean she ate about half of it and the rest of it wound up on her bib and all over her face. You could see her trying to process this new style of food consumption as she wrapped her entire mouth around the spoon and tried to suck the cereal out of it. It was messy, but we got a few good spoonfuls in there. When we finished she was hungry for more.

Tonight I'm going to up her serving to a tablespoon of cereal, 4 tablespoons of milk. This is all per her doctor, by the way -- I didn't just decide out of the clear blue to start feeding. But now that we've started, I have a feeling we aren't going to be stopping.