Any suggestions about brands of rice cereal to buy?
3 Answers
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We use a mix of cereals, from different brands. When we started, we switched between rice cereal and oatmeal cereal. And we've used Earth's Best and HappyBellie (spelling?). HappyBellie seemed to have slightly more iron and other stuff.......... but I'm not sure how easily this stuff is all absorbed, so it's probably a wash, I don't know.
We started just after 5 months, and I think in the beginning, it was only about once a day. Our son wasn't a huge fan of cereal initially. We had more luck with bananas and gave that to him to get used to the idea solids, then we cycled back to the cereal again. Online, there were many sites/people recommending against starting with the sweeter foods, having him get used to the green veggies so he doesn't develop a sweet tooth. But at the end of the day, that didn't work for us. We started with bananas and cereal.
Interestingly enough, our pediatrician wasn't a fan of us starting with avocado as one of the first foods. She suggested nicely that we stick to the "traditional" options. But she tends to be very conservative, and our son never had any problems with avocado (we let him have it early on anyway).
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Didn't your pediatrician give you a handout? We followed the instructions on ours. Which was about 1-2 servings, where a serving is 1-2 tablespoons. So not very much. I always mixed the rice cereal (Earth's best, seemed to be as good as any other) with milk.
That said, rice, although traditionally a first food, doesn't have to be the first food, and if you look at its properties and the current science of infant nutrition, you might actually give a child something else instead. Avocado, for example makes for a very good, nutrition dense first food, and is super easy to eat.
This site suggests you can grind your own rice cereal for making baby cereal using a clean coffee grinder. So you can buy the most organic brown rice you desire, and grind that up (see video on this page). The usual reason for using commercial flakes is that they have been fortified with iron, and by 6 months a breastfed baby starts needing iron in their diet. Other sources for that can be found as well, if you introduce meat also earlier, again, totally possible and ok.
That said, the handout we got from our pediatrician looked ancient. It had been photocopied a million times. I don't think it reflected the most recent advances in thinking.
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Just to echo the "not very much" advice... it was helpful to us to remember that liquids (breastmilk or formula) are an infant's main source of nutrition and calories and that the solid foods are primarily just a chance to play with (ahem, practice) eating. So just a taste is a fine, a bit more is fine, a whole lot more is not such a great idea... too much solids too quickly = constipation. At least, for our second child, for whom we didn't read the baby books or doctor's pamphlets anymore... ;)
We used Earth's Best, and switched to oatmeal before we finished the box (less constipating).
