Question:
feeding plan? (did u see gerber's... i was shocked)?
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
feeding plan? (did u see gerber's... i was shocked)?
Fourteen answers:
2007-12-27 19:24:50 UTC
When my son was about 7 months old I saw that and tried to follow it for a day....my son threw up before breakfast was over. He is a big boy and a good eater and it was way too much for him. If you actually followed that you would be sitting in the house ALL day feeding him.

I mentioned it to his pediatrician and he joked and said the people that write that stuff don't have kids and have no idea how hard it would be to follow.

You may want to start to introduce a lunch or start with an afternoon snack.

I would just give him the sippy cup with half juice half water or even all water at all of his meals. I do that with my 10 month old and he still doesn't drink all of it, its more of a learning thing.

Just try to gradually introduce more foods he'll let you know when he is done. He may want some more variety so go ahead and mix it up a bit!
lovelylady
2007-12-27 19:22:47 UTC
I also saw their website that says they should eat like 1 jar at a sitting. Really what your baby needs most now is breast milk or formula and the other food are just complimentary. My 7 month old eats 2 times a day. Breakfast and supper. This am she had a large breakfast and almost 0 supper. I try to feed her lunch but she doesn't seem interested. Follow your baby's lead. That sounds like plenty of cereal and veggies ect.

As for meat they are a great first food. Good iron.

I don't give my daughter juice cause its packed full of sugar and little nutritional value but mixing it half and half sounds good. You probably could dilute it even further if you want but their isn't really a hard and fast rule about it.
practicalwizard
2007-12-27 19:24:25 UTC
yeah, i have a copy of this suggested plan. it's a suggestion. the bottom line is, for the first year, your child will get his primary nutrition from formula or breast milk. everything else is for learning to eat, testing foods and practice. i started with fruits and veggies at 6 months (cereal at 4 months), per my pediatrician's suggestion. the meats and stuff i don't think i did until 7 or 8 months. juice i added after 6 months. (i figured if he could eat fruit, he could have juice) i started cheerios around 9 or 10 months and other small pieces of things followed that, like the diced fruits and veggies, wagon wheels etc. i still dilute his juice and he's 2 now. it saves money and keeps him from drinking so much sugar. it also adds more water to his diet. you want to transition to 3 meals of solids a day within the next couple of months. take your time. like i said, he needs primarily formula or breast milk (which ever you do) until he's 1.
Zachary's Mom
2007-12-27 19:24:15 UTC
My son is 6.5 months old too, and we're feeding him about 1 jar of food (fruits & veggies only so far...) a day - at this age, it's really important that they continue to get a lot of formula/breastmilk... that's where his main nutrients come from. He also has some reflux issues, so we've started solid foods a little later/slower than most people do. Our pediatrician is actually thrilled about it - she says that most people start solids with their babies too soon and that waiting until closer to 6 months to really dig in is actually better for him.

Also... keep in mind that Gerber is trying to sell baby food... so they are going to push to feed more and more at younger ages.
2007-12-27 19:36:19 UTC
So, you're shocked that Gerber wants you to feed your son more of those awful little jars? Of course they want you to feed more jarred food! That brings lot of $$$$$ for them!



Seriously, there's nothing wrong with mashing up a small portion of your meal for your son. Use a small food processor or a fork. Let your son self feed while you eat, then go ahead and spoon feed him.



As far as how much, how often and whose schedule to follow, I've always just kept a good eye on my babies for cues on how to feed them. I understand that formula babies are different, but if your baby is breastfed, then forget all about the Gerber website and just watch your baby. He will make it very clear when he's ready to move on, and he will make it very clear if you're moving too fast for him.
manda
2007-12-27 19:38:20 UTC
During the first year, the only nutrition baby needs can be met by breastmilk (or formula). Solids are about experimentation and learning during the first year. It's important to follow baby's leads and not to push it.

A better site (one that isn't trying to sell you baby food and juice) is www.wholesomebabyfood.com, and www.askdrsears.com.

And juice is not necessary at all, so don't sweat that. It's much better for kids to get the nutrition from actual fruits and veggies, rather than the sugar jolt that juice provides.
xxunloved_little_angelxx
2007-12-27 19:25:48 UTC
Follow your baby's cues. If he wants more, feed him more. If not, don't force it on him.



Gerber doesn't seem to have any idea of what age it's okay for babies to eat certain foods. Your son's ped should have given you an idea of what foods should be delayed - if not, you can always call and ask. Some of their 2nd foods and even their cereals contain things that should be delayed until 9 months or later.
?
2016-10-02 15:00:52 UTC
you do no longer could desire to feed any good ingredients until eventually 6 months of age in spite of the incontrovertible fact which you will supply toddler rice cereal as early as 4 months is critical. At your toddler's 6 month pass on your typical practitioner supply you regulations on which ingredients are ok and the thank you to introduce new ingredients. wish this permits!
kittie
2007-12-27 19:21:33 UTC
You are the parent not gerber, only you know your child. I followed no feeding plan, i fed my son mashed potatoes mashed beans, mashed carrots, small bites of spaghetti, everything that he could easily swallow.

Feed him 3 times a day he is at the age where he can eat more.

Just let him eat or drink to where he don't want no more, trust me he will let you know.
Rob
2007-12-27 19:24:41 UTC
Don't worry about what Gerber says - they just want you to buy more food. Since most pediatricians now recommend waiting until close to 6 months to start ANY food (including cereal) your son sounds like he is right on track. Just add a new food every 3-5 days, and if he is still getting most of his nutrition from formula that is fine. You will notice that he starts to seem hungrier and hungrier and you will be able to add a half jar for lunch, and maybe another half jar at dinner. And in a couple months he will be sampling small chunks of real food too. He doesn't really need any juice at all, but if he likes to have a little half and half juice as something different now and then that is fine.

He will be eating food for the rest of his life, there is no hurry. lol Just go with your instincts on what you think he needs and don't worry about what some company says he "should" eat.
tokra417
2007-12-27 19:20:52 UTC
every child is different it sounds like your doing a great job. Go at your own pace he'll let you know in some way he's ready for the next step.
?
2007-12-27 20:25:51 UTC
gerber doesn't have your child's best interest in mind



gerber has THEIR best interest in mind.....which means to sell you more food so they can make more money!



your son should be getting started on solids.....he should only be experimenting right now....not eating whole square meals
its_victoria08
2007-12-27 19:20:50 UTC
Hm. He should be eating more than that, I think. It kind of depends when you feed him. I was always told babies that age should have 5 small meals a day... breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner. It kind of depends what time you eat though.



The juice seems fine. It's good to dilute it to 50% juice/50% water.
2007-12-27 20:47:12 UTC
Ok sit down for a second, calm down, and really engage your brain, not your panic. I don't want to seem condescending but you have succumb to fear based marketing and you need to just go back to logic and instinct. Gerber has only one goal -make money for their shareholders. They really don't care about nutrition or babies.



1) Babies under 1 year of age need breastmilk and nothing else. Everything else is for fun and fine motor control development. Spoon-feeding wallpaper paste (aka infant cereal) is neither fun nor educational.



2) No one neeeds juice. Not a baby, not an adult. Period. Sure I enjoy juice and drink it, but I hardly require it to survive. I need water. Babies need mother's milk.



3) Yes meat or meat substitutes -or rather sources of protein, healthy fat (for toddlers), zinc, and iron are needed only as breastmilk intake decreases. Diets high in cereal are deficient in zinc and protein, they are also deficient in iron even though marketing would have you believe the iron added to infant cereal is usable and needed by the baby. It isn't.



A 6 month old should be having at MOST 1 meal per day.



Take a look at your baby, he is growing and thriving. He is a great weight at 6 months. And I assume healthy, happy, and alert. Breastmilk or formula didn't magically become deficient at 6 months and one day.



All mammals are protected by the same thing -they can't physically eat food until they are physiologically ready to digest it. For humans this means picking up the food, placing it in their mouth, gumming it, moving it back with their tongue, and swallowing it. The most obvious of course it the tongue thrust that newborns have -this reflex actively keeps food out of their body until they can digest it. But the other steps all have safeguards as well.



For healthy, full term infants the ability to eat food develops around 6-9 months. In recent years there have been numerous studies looking at the risks of certain things (allergies, asthma, anemia, etc) in relation to when solids are started and almost all have shown that the lowest risks are when solids are started between 6-9 months.



However it should also be noted that babies with allergies may refuse solids for up to a year, and that breastmilk is nutritionally complete for at least the first year of life despite earlier statements that it is not. An unpleasant feeling in the mouth is often a first sign of allergy and may cause babies to spit out rather than swallow allergenic foods. This is a very useful safeguard that should not be overridden.



http://www.kellymom.com/nutrition/solids/delay-solids.html

The following organizations recommend that all babies be exclusively breastfed (no cereal, juice or any other foods) for the first 6 months of life (not the first 4-6 months):



* World Health Organization

* UNICEF

* US Department of Health & Human Services

* American Academy of Pediatrics

* American Academy of Family Physicians

* American Dietetic Association

* Australian National Health and Medical Research Council

* Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

* Health Canada





http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintroductie/vast_voedsel/rapley_guidelines.html#choke

It appears that a baby's general development keeps pace with the development of his ability to manage food in his mouth, and to digest it. A baby who is struggling to get food into his mouth is probably not quite ready to eat it.



http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintroductie/vast_voedsel/rapley_guidelines.html#early

The babies who participated in the research were allowed to begin at four months. But they were not able to feed themselves before six months. Some of the younger babies picked food up and took it to their mouths; some even chewed it, but none swallowed it. Their own development decided for them when the time was right. Part of the reason for this study was to show (based on a theory of self-feeding) that babies are not ready for solid food before six months. It seems that we have spent all these years working out that six months is the right age and babies have known it all along!



It seems reasonable to predict that if parents choose to provide babies with the opportunity to pick up and eat solid food from birth they will still not be able to do it until around six months. The principle is the same as putting a newborn baby on the floor to play: he is being provided with the opportunity to walk but will not do so until about one year – because his own development stops him. But: everything depends on the baby being in control. Food must not be put into his mouth for him. Since it is very tempting to do this, it is probably safer to recommend that babies should not be given the opportunity to eat solid food before six months.



http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintroductie/vast_voedsel/rapley_guidelines.html#choke

Many parents worry about babies choking. However, there is good reason to believe that babies are at less risk of choking if they are in control of what goes into their mouth than if they are spoon fed. This is because babies are not capable of intentionally moving food to the back of their throats until after they have learnt to chew. And they do not develop the ability to chew until after they have developed the ability to reach out and grab things. Thus, a very young baby cannot easily put himself at risk because he cannot get the food into his mouth in the first place. On the other hand, the action used to suck food off a spoon tends to take the food straight to the back of the mouth, causing the baby to gag. This means that spoon feeding has its own potential to lead to choking – and makes one wonder about the safety of giving lumpy foods off a spoon.



Why not cereal?



http://www.kellymom.com/nutrition/solids/first-foods.html

Cereal is not at all necessary, particularly the baby cereals. Regular (whole grain) oatmeal is more nutritious for your baby.



http://www.askdrsears.com/faq/ci2.asp

The truth is, there is nothing special about these foods that makes them better to start out with. Babies don't actually even need rice cereal



http://www.llli.org/llleaderweb/LV/LVDec99Jan00p130.html

Meat provides additional protein, zinc, B-vitamins, and other nutrients which may be in short supply when the decrease in breast milk occurs. A recent study from Sweden suggests that when infants are given substantial amounts of cereal, it may lead to low concentrations of zinc and reduced calcium absorption (Persson 1998). Dr. Nancy Krebs has shared preliminary results from a large infant growth study suggesting that breastfed infants who received pureed or strained meat as a primary weaning food beginning at four to five months, grow at a slightly faster rate. Dr. Krebs' premise is that inadequate protein or zinc from complementary foods may limit the growth of some breastfed infants during the weaning period. Both protein and zinc levels were consistently higher in the diets of the infants who received meat (Krebs 1998). Thus the custom of providing large amounts of cereal products and excluding meat products before seven months of age may not meet the nutritional needs of all breastfed infants.

Meat has also been recommended as an excellent source of iron in infancy. Heme iron (the form of iron found in meat) is better absorbed than iron from plant sources. In addition, the protein in meat helps the baby more easily absorb the iron from other foods. Two recent studies (Makrides 1998; Engelmann 1998) have examined iron status in breastfed infants who received meat earlier in the weaning period. These studies indicate that while there is not a measurable change in breastfed babies' iron stores when they receive an increased amount of meat (or iron), the levels of hemoglobin circulating in the blood stream do increase when babies receive meat as one of their first foods.





http://www.westonaprice.org/children/nourish-baby.html

Finally, respect the tiny, still-developing digestive system of your infant. Babies have limited enzyme production, which is necessary for the digestion of foods. In fact, it takes up to 28 months, just around the time when molar teeth are fully developed, for the big-gun carbohydrate enzymes (namely amylase) to fully kick into gear. Foods like cereals, grains and breads are very challenging for little ones to digest. Thus, these foods should be some of the last to be introduced. (One carbohydrate enzyme a baby's small intestine does produce is lactase, for the digestion of lactose in milk.1)



[...]



Babies do produce functional enzymes (pepsin and proteolytic enzymes) and digestive juices (hydrochloric acid in the stomach) that work on proteins and fats.12 This makes perfect sense since the milk from a healthy mother has 50-60 percent of its energy as fat, which is critical for growth, energy and development.13 In addition, the cholesterol in human milk supplies an infant with close to six times the amount most adults consume from food.13 In some cultures, a new mother is encouraged to eat six to ten eggs a day and almost ten ounces of chicken and pork for at least a month after birth. This fat-rich diet ensures her breast milk will contain adequate healthy fats.14

Thus, a baby's earliest solid foods should be mostly animal foods since his digestive system, although immature, is better equipped to supply enzymes for digestion of fats and proteins rather than carbohydrates.1 This explains why current research is pointing to meat (including nutrient-dense organ meat) as being a nourishing early weaning food.



http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713793510~db=all

The results indicate that in a group of healthy, well growing 12-month-old Swedish infants one-quarter is iron-depleted, although iron deficiency anaemia is rare, and one-third may be zinc-depleted. The high cereal intake of Swedish infants from 6 months of age may have limited the bioavailability of both iron and zinc from the diet.



http://www.jpgn.org/pt/re/jpgn/abstract.00005176-200201000-00009.htm;jsessionid=HW2Ny1WpvFRtf9h3hRTlGQMdLxXhWm20yJYNjLFZJCF2wkfjvTRn!1071114923!181195629!8091!-1

Conclusions: These results confirm that meat as a complementary food for breast-fed infants can provide a rich source of dietary zinc that is well absorbed. The significant positive correlation between zinc intake and exchangeable zinc pool size suggests that increasing zinc intake positively affects metabolically available zinc.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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