Hello Chris, I haven't written to you directly before but I do enjoy your
posts to Lactnet.

This morning you wrote:

"Personally, after buying all sorts of expensive organic baby food with my
first and having to give it away, I found that kids who are really ready for
solids don't need baby food."

In general -- for most babies -- I agree with this -- it was certainly true
with my first, who *never* was willing to eat any form of mush but became
enthusiastic about eating solids the day she discovered avocado.

However, my second taught me to remember how variable babies are.  She *loved*
mush, even though she didn't start solids until close to 8 months, and for
quite a while she preferred mush to solids.    She was in no hurry to move off
mush at a year, in fact.  When -- believing exactly what Chris writes above
about kids who are ready for solids, and since oral trouble of course didn't
occur to me -- I moved her unilaterally to table foods around 12 months, she
became a very picky eater, prone to gagging.

Now at 2 and a quarter she is receiving speech therapy for phonemic trouble
which seems to have been caused by some muscle trouble in her mouth -- we
don't know exactly what kinds, since she clearly has less of it now, and she
nursed fine until a year and a half and drinks find from a cup both before
that and since.  Her love of pureed food was clear many months before we
thought anything about her failure to speak intelligbly.   It took me almost
another year to put all of this together.

Fortunately not to many babies have this kind of trouble.   But since the ones
who do don't necessarily come with little signs on their jumpsuits, it does
remind me how important it is -- as always, my mantra -- to follow each baby's
own signals, and each mother's own instinct, rather than generalizing.

Warmly, Elisheva Urbas
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NYC