Heath turns 6 months old on Monday. He’s been making attempts to grab the food on our plates for over a month and I think he’s been developmentally ready to eat for a little while now. We were going to wait until after Monday, but he managed to convince us that he really did want to play with these funny toys.
At lunchtime I sat down with a chicken and salad roll. Heath was playing on the carpet with some toys. He stopped what he was doing, crawled over to me and started crying to be picked up. Once on my lap, he started making pretty acrobatic lunges towards my food. He then turned his attention to his dad’s plate, at which point we started wondering whether we should just go for it. We decided that we would.
I hadn’t decided on his first food yet, but I was thinking of things like pear, banana or a broccoli stem. Of course, we had none of those things in the house and we’d just returned from the shop so we gave him a strawberry because that’s what we did have. It turned out not to be such a great choice because it was so slippery that the poor baby really struggled to pick it up. He got a small taste, but that’s about it.
I should point out that strawberries can be allergenic and some sources recommend that children aren’t given any berries until they are 12, or even 18, months old.
We also offered him a piece of lettuce which he was able to pick up and suck on briefly.
This evening we let him have a pear and he managed to get actual bits of pear into his mouth. He didn’t know quite what to make of it and alternated between attacking the pear with great enthusiasm and pulling funny faces. At one point he gagged very slightly and spat out a small piece.
I can’t believe how quickly my little baby is turning into a little boy!
[5 Months 4 Weeks]
Filed under: Baby-led weaning | Tagged: lettuce, pear, strawberry
