What and when do you feed your baby? Part 1/2

Isabelle enjoying her food!

Isabelle has been exclusively breast feed for 5 and half months and has always been on the 95 percentile for her weight and height..  I hope and plan to  continue breastfeeding Isabelle for at least 18 months, and I feel that breast milk contains such important antibodies for our growing children, its natures miracle juice!

At 5 and half months Isabelle had started all the tell tale signs of wanting to try food, as a larger baby I thought that her natural instincts of wanting to give some food a go my sign for letting her. BUT....

What do I feed Isabelle as her first foods?  

Do I need to cook her foods?
Can i just give her raw vegies? 
Where do I get the information from?
Who do I believe? 

These were just some of the questions I had as a first time mum, but there were so many more.. so I went about doing a lot of research and have found and read many books, researched on the internet asked other mummas about the topic of which foods first and why?  

What I plan to share with you is the information I found. I don't intend to offer any nutritional advice or even assume that what I am doing is right! 

These are the books and websites I have consulted with and I would recommend mums to have a look at. I will add to the list as I read more;

• Well Adjusted Babies
• Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine by Dr Gabriel Cousens 
• Baby Greens by Michaela Lynn
• Creating Healthy Children by Karen Ranzi
• Evie’s Kitchen by Shazzie
• wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com

What I have found in did find in my research was  A LOT of conflicting information on when and what foods to introduce at certain ages.  In my travels of researching this information I would higly recommend Well Adjusted Babies. This book is one of the most balanced books I have found on raising healthy children. It covers the topics of which foods and why? The importance of calcium, iron but not in the conventional sense, Dr Jennifer Barham-Floreani makes aware that cows milk is not the answer and infact leafy greens provide far more nutrients that our main stream conventional foods would like you to think they do! She talks about Immunisation, pregnany and it goes on!




The next book I would recommend is Creating healthy Children - Another fantastic book which looks at attachment parenting, the importance of raw food in our children's diet and so much more! 

And then there is Baby Led Weaning, Do I do that or do I offer pureed foods. Personally we will do both.


But back to the topic :) ... So with all this conflicting information I decided to put together a chart that lists three authors time lines of the introduction of food into a char (I have omitted their names - If you would like this information please contact me personally and I will let you know who they are)  by looking at this chart you can see there are a lot of different stages that they say to introduce foods.  I will update a spreadsheet in the next week or so which highlights the foods we have decided to introduce to Isabelle and when and why!

So why is there so much conflicting information out there?  How are we as first time mums supposed to filter through all of this information and know what is right. 


As you can see in the below charts some people recommend foods at different stages! Some experts say to introduce cauliflower and Broccoli at 7 months others at a later stage. Some say Carrots at 4 months others say 9 months. 


It wasn't until I put all the information ( and there are more experts out there but I chose three that I actually like) that I could see how confusing this all can be!

Download chart by clicking here

Why is there so much conflicting information out there?
This I don't have the information for. But what I do have is motherly instinct on what is right for my child..  this is one of the main reasons why I put together a food chart which allowed me to see all the conflicting information and also the correlations.


When did I introduce Solids to Isabelle?
We decided to introduce solids to Issy when she was looking at food and asking for it. For Isabelle this was just before six months. Isabelle is a big baby and her cues were saying to me mum id like some of that!  She lets us know when she is not hungry, I strongly believe that breast milk is the most important meal of all. And she is breastfeed before all meals to ensure that she is getting the essential nutrients first.


Which Foods do we introduce first?
We decided to introduce banana and avocado as her first foods. Why? These are natural encased pureed foods perfect for little bubbas.


Do I steam her foods or just blend her foods.. Surely blending foods is ok?
I found out that steaming foods is not the same as blending, steaming babies foods breaks down the cellulose structure of food is to hard for a babies system to digest. You could say here is your answer as to why not to introduce babies food at all if you look at it from a RAW perspective and some mothers may not. But this is what we decided to do.


Why don't we just do baby lead weaning?
For us we do a little bit of both. I found that as Isabelle is a bigger baby wanting more food and really asking for it we found that giving her some pureed food and in conjunction with Baby Led weaning was right for us. For more information on Baby Lead Weaning this is great website http://www.babyledweaning.com/

So when do we plan to introduce Raw foods to Isabelle?
We will probably do a blend of both with Isabelle... being high raw and also warming her foods. 

Along with Baby Lead weaning we believe in the Ayrvadic method for raising children. That means that for the first two years of a babies life we will warm Isabelle's food, in conjunction with Baby lead weaning we will also offer raw fruit.


Babies and children have a unique constitutional type. According to the Ayurvedic theory of doshas everything in the universe is comprised of different proportions of space, air, fire, water and earth.


Babies tend to dislike the cold or being exposed to windy conditions. On the whole they have low, delicate appetites and love sweet, warm food. Gabriel Cousens talks about this in his book Rainbow Green Live Food see link here

Hopefully some of this information may be useful for you?  And if you have any information on raising healthy children we would love to hear from you!

Isabelle is now 6 months and she has had her first taste of  a Green Smoothie and I will continue to keep this up. We do intend to raise her as a Vegan at the moment, as she continues to grow this might change to vegetarian but her diet will contain a very high percentage and on most occasions Raw Food.

If you know of any authors who have some great information out there! please let us know we can share this information on our face book page! In out world its all about learning and sharing the information we find!

In my next post on this topic part 2 - I will explain a little further why certain foods are introduced at certain ages, and I will also put up a spreadsheet showing you which foods we plan to introduce and when.


Sarah :) and Issy!