Alex's First Solids

So I fed Alex his first meal of solid food yesterday. Both Aaron and I felt he was ready. He'd been watching us intently whenever we ate and seemed to copy the motions. So I bought some rice cereal, since I hear that is the easiest to start out with (easily digestible) and you can easily make the cereal thinner and then thicken it up with subsequent feedings.

For the first feeding, I followed the instructions on the box, but it seemed awfully thin--mostly breast milk really (which is what I mixed with rice cereal). As expected, he got most of it on his front, but he caught on to how the spoon worked really well. Soon he was opening his mouth wider to allow the spoon to enter his mouth. It was pretty exciting giving Alex his first meal of solid food.

Today, I decided to make the cereal thicker than last night (twice as thick). I think that the box suggested to make it so thin because a lot of babies get their first meal of solids at 4 months and that's what a 4-month-old needs. So I decided to try it thicker. This worked really well and Alex was fine with it. It was also nice because it didn't dribble out all over his chin like it did yesterday. When it didn't make it into his mouth, I could scoop it back up and try again. He ended up eating about 6 tablespoons, and still seemed hungry, so I gave him a bottle too. We'll see if it helps him sleep longer, as some claim, but I know it didn't help last night. In fact, Alex used to sleep through the night when he was about 3 months old. Then around 4 months he started waking up once a night. Then while we were visiting family a couple weeks ago, he started to wake up twice a night, about every 4 or 5 hours. And the last few mornings, he's been waking up around 6 or 6:30, instead of 8 a.m. This is getting really frustrating. Anyway . . .

My little boy is growing up--eating his first solid food! So much excitement to come as he tries new food. (Although I'm sad to leave the whole only having breast milk time. It made things easier when you didn't have to think about what to feed him. Oh, well.)