First day of applesauce

Today we introduced baby to applesauce!  He's been eating formula mixed with rice cereal for a few weeks now, and the doctor told us we should introduce bananas or apples next.

He's done very well with the rice cereal so far.  A few people told us we could mix the rice cereal with formula in his bottle and that it would help him sleep through the night.  My wife read that the rice cereal doesn't always lead to better sleep, and some paperwork from the doctor said that we should never mix the rice cereal in the bottle.  The paperwork told us that part of the reason to feed him rice cereal is to give him practice being fed with a spoon rather than eating from a bottle.

He enjoys eating the rice cereal and is getting the hang of eating from a spoon.  Up until this point all he has "eaten" is liquid through a nipple; I put eaten in quotes because he is technically drinking after all.  When we first introduced the rice cereal we mixed very little in with the formula.  Each day we mix a little more rice cereal to get him ready to eat solids gradually.

Today my wife went to Whole Foods and bought some organic apples to make applesauce.  We were given this Beaba babycook machine that blends and steams fruits and vegetables in one cool little device.  I haven't used it yet but my wife mixed the apples earlier this afternoon so they'd be ready for his evening feeding.



When it came time to actually feed him my wife prepared the rice cereal and formula as usual, but also had a bowl with applesauce in it.  His first few spoonfuls were rice cereal, then she began mixing it with the applesauce.  It was really cute to watch, and funny to see the facial expressions he made as he ate the applesauce.  My wife tasted it and said it came out a bit tart because there's no added sugar, but I also tasted it and didn't find it to be tart.  Mostly I found it to be bland.  It could also be because I'm used to the taste of apples and baby isn't; it's really the first thing he's ever eaten with real flavor.  I guess the milk and formula have flavor, and the rice cereal probably does too, but not much flavor.  He pursed his lips and made funny faces and I was worried that he wouldn't like it, and I might be right.  But there are a lot of foods you don't like as a kid, and it's a new experience for him.  He did a little crying, but sometimes he's too hungry and/or impatient to be fed with the spoon and we switch to the bottle to get some food into him so he's in better humor.  We gave him some spoonfuls mixed with rice cereal and a few of pure applesauce.  He didn't like the pure applesauce too much, but we got as much in him as we could.  We'll see if he likes it better tomorrow.

For the next three to four days we'll be giving him apples, then we'll probably introduce bananas after that.  This is something else we learned from the doctor; this way if he's allergic to the food we give him we'll know right away what he's allergic to.  If we fed him several different things and he has an allergic reaction we won't really know what caused it, so it's important to introduce foods one at a time.

In one month we'll start feeding him vegetables, but until then it's all fruits.  We'll do bananas next, then avocados.  It's a lot of fun to feed him with the spoon, and I can't wait to see how he reacts to all the new things he's going to get to taste.