I started Maddie on solids at 4 months, she is currently 7 months, at first she hated it so I didn't push it. The apples tasted like lemons to her, or at least she looked like I was feeding her lemons. I offered the next food 1 week later, then she seemed interested in eating it. The first successful food was bananas and breast milk. She loved it but I'm not surprised because with the breast milk added to it, it was sweet as candy!
I started to feed her every other day, waiting 4 days in between each food to see about allergies. We are now on solids 2x a day, fruit in the morning and veggies at night. She has now expanded her food to sweet potatoes, avocados (she does best with these mixed with bananas), prunes (surprisingly one of her favorites), bananas, zucchini, squash, carrots, applesauce, strawberries mixed with apples, watermelon in her mesh feeder, and peas. She loves peas!!!
Making baby food came very easy to me once I figured out how to tell a good veggie from a bad one. I've never done a lot of "from-scratch" type cooking so that was difficult for me. Thank goodness for google, and the ability to take pictures and send them to my aunt so she could tell me if it were good or not!! I started making one serving at a time, I'm now making batches of 20-30 servings. Just add approximately 1 cup of the food you plan to use, enough breast milk, water or formula to get your desired consistency (1/4 cup for pretty much everything except sweet potatoes, they require about 1 cup, these measurements are for stage 1) and blend!! I use the Baby Bullet. I absolutely love it! It is super easy to use, easy to clean and easy to store when not in use because it takes up hardly no space. The baby bullet comes with a spatula, batch mixer and single serving mixer, a freezing container with individual slots for the food, and 6 storage cups with turn dial dating on it so you don't lose track. Truly everything you need all in 1 box.
Now I didn't go out and buy any more storage containers. I make my batch, put a ziplock bag in a cup and pour my batch into it. Pull the Baggie out with the food in it, cut a hole in the bottom corner and squeeze it out into an ice cube tray. This makes perfect portions. I put in in a gallon size freezer bag, freeze it, pop them out and put the food into a smaller freezer bag, date it, throw it back in the freezer and I'm done! I pull out 1 cube at a time to thaw for each feeding.
When I had my son, who is now 5, I didn't have the knowledge of how to feed him better. I failed at breast feeding and gave him jar food. There is NOTHING wrong with formula, my son is perfectly healthy! But with my daughter, I tried harder and told myself I wasn't going to be lazy! Plus, right after having her there was a recall on baby food bananas because there was glass in some of the jars distributed. Right then I knew that I was not going to subject my child to that if I could help it.
Maddie has been so fun since we started solids a month ago. Each feeding is an adventure. She has so much personality! She tries to feed herself, and of corse we make a mess. It drives her daddy crazy to see her with food on her face! Hehe.....
In the photo shown, it compares $3 home made baby food (30 servings) to $3 store bought baby food. The savings are phenomenal! 1 sweet potato makes about 20 servings. So you spend a couple bucks on sweet potatoes from the store and make it yourself with 10 min of your time, or get 1 serving for about a dollar when you buy jar food. It just makes sense to me to make our own!
