My second child was offered solid foods, to feed herself, from about 7
months.  She played with it, painted her face and her hair with it, but
wasn't interested in eating it. She sat at the table with us and saw us
eating, but it was not for her.

When she was 11 months old and still not interested in solid foods, my
pediatrician suggested that we do a blood test.  He called to say, "Her
hemoglobin is fine.  She won't need solid foods for quite a while." (Smart
man! He knew that she wouldn't need any solid foods until her birth stores
of iron began to diminish.)

Sure enough, when she was around 14 months the food she was playing with
began to find its way into her mouth.  She was "exquisitely" healthy both
before beginning solids and afterwards. The solid foods were a "supplement"
to her main course--breastmilk.

Breastmilk is full nutrition for a full-term baby until the need for some
iron.  And even then, the iron stores don't plummet immediately.  As baby
needs iron, she will want to eat foods that have iron in them and she won't
overfeed if left to her own natural appestat and allowed to feed herself.

We've talked before on Lactnet about the poor nutritional density of rice
cereal. It can displace breastmilk, which has full nutrition, with
carbohydrates to which synthetic vitamins and ferrous sulfate have been
added. Not a good step toward nutrition.

And lest the chewing issue come up again, babies who don't eat early are
not chewing-ly challenged. Once Alison got teeth she chewed just fine. And
being deprived of early spoon feeding didn't inhibit her development of
social eating.  She uses spoon, fork, knife and chopsticks.

As usual, we need to remember to "look for feeding cues." Many feeding
problems are avoided by expecting that a baby will want to eat solid foods
that the family eats when she is ready to do so.

Patricia Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Upper Midwest, USA
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