Baby's First Bites
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Welcome, this is Birth, Baby.
Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.
Ciarra is a Birth Dula, Hypnobirthing Educator, and Pediatric Sleep Consultant.
Samantha is a Birth Dula, Childbirth Educator, and Lactation Counselor.
Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey.
All right, y'all, we have Naiomi Catron with us today of Milk Diva.
We love having her on, and this is not the first time, and we're gonna have her on again, because we just adore her, and she has so many great little nuggets of information.
But today, she's gonna talk to us about introducing solids to babies.
I think you call it babies' first bites.
So let us know what you're gonna talk to us about today, Naiomi.
Well, first of all, I just wanna tell you, I feel like y'all are Oprah and Gail, and I'm Dr.
Phil, and I get to come on a lot.
And one day, I can be cool like you guys.
I don't know too much about Dr.
Phil and how that ended up turning out, but I hope it's not a bad comparison.
I think we're still with Phil.
I think we're good with him.
Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Dr.
Phil ended up bigger than Oprah.
Oh, I don't know about that.
Okay, I don't know about that.
Controversial episode trigger warning.
This is it, this is it.
He's a bald white man.
I'm not sure that I really identify with him necessarily, other than him being the sidekick.
So, but no, I totally love you guys.
Today, we're going to talk a little bit about, I guess you guys will ask some questions and we'll get into some of the things people don't realize about introducing and transitioning to solids.
How much milk?
When do I kind of like decrease the milk or what kind of first foods or some common mistakes?
And I'm telling you guys all this from a place, I did everything wrong, so I don't want anyone to feel shamed or like, I don't know, guilty about anything they may have done already.
This is not what this is about.
But I did spend a whole summer last year in an infant nutrition course and I learned so much.
I was like, I need to tell everyone.
So that's what I'm hoping to talk about today.
I love it.
Well, of course, Birth, Baby!
is the place to tell everyone, right?
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And just more time to hang out with you guys.
So I love it.
That's actually why we're all here.
Right, basically.
So we hear so many differing opinions, right?
On when you're supposed to start Solids with your baby.
If you're in any mom group anywhere, I don't care where you live, there's somebody talking about starting Solids at four months old, or that their doctor told them to add rice to formula, whatever.
So when should you actually start introducing Solids to your baby?
That is a really great question.
And the fun part about all this, how God works is that while I was getting ready to put all this information together over the last six months, the World Health Organization came out with a paper, like an actual document that they never do.
It's like once every 10 years.
And it's updated recommendations on feeding children from six to 23 months.
And so it goes very much in line with what I learned all last summer.
And it is, they're saying not to introduce any solid foods until six months of life.
That is their statement.
There is no maybe at four and a five and a half months, they're saying to begin starting solids at six months, if your baby has met all the developmental steps.
And so I actually have a free download for parents who might want to know what those steps are, more in detail, because there's some videos showing you like, what does it mean to sit up with little support?
So I have that in there and we can put that in the show notes.
And I also have a quiz people can take to see how ready they are to introduce solids to their baby, like to test their baby food knowledge and they get the free checklist as well.
But to answer your question, I know that some people and pediatricians might recommend starting solids before six months, but the recommendation is six months of life.
And if you like, I can go into maybe why that is, or maybe some things that could happen if you start too early or too late.
Please, please, because I think this is so important, because I think parents just rush into wanting to do this.
We're all guilty of it, right?
Especially with my first kid, like I was so excited to-
It's exciting.
And they're kind of reaching for you.
And we as humans just, our life evolves around food, does it not?
And it's a relational thing.
We like to share food.
We all like to say, if you're gonna go hang out, what are you gonna do?
We're gonna go eat while we hang out, right?
So that is something that I think we just naturally wanna do with our babies, but we actually could be doing harm.
And I think people don't realize that.
So tell us a little bit about that.
So on that free download that people will get after they take the quiz, there's a whole long list of, it's called extra bonus, the stuff no one tells you about starting solids.
That's kind of where I live.
All the things I do is like all the things no one tells you.
Like I just wish someone would tell you some of these things.
And so when you start, some parents might start early because they're concerned about their baby size.
So it's like if your baby is smaller than normal or larger than normal, there's an argument to be made with why you should start solids earlier.
So if they're small, then you might hear, well, your baby needs solids to get more calories.
That's simply just mathematically incorrect.
So your breast milk is gonna have much more calories per ounce than food is.
Like if you think about giving your baby one ounce of sweet potato, it does not have as many calories as one ounce of breast milk.
And then it doesn't actually end up in their body.
It ends up in their face, in their hair, in their clothes, everything else.
So just...
Now, if your baby is very-
On the back of a pouch, the nutritional value of those is like almost nothing.
Like maybe a gram of protein, maybe not even, but it's just like a filler.
It's for fun.
I'm not saying it's bad to give your baby those, but it's definitely not an equal exchange.
Not at four months of life because they're not consuming that kind of volume, but more importantly, well, before I go into why it's not a good idea to maybe start so early, besides your baby being really small, so that's something someone might run a rush to solids to make them bigger.
That doesn't happen.
But then if they're really large and they're eating all the time, then you might be tempted to start solids because they're big and they need more calories.
And so those are two like big reasons.
And then the misunderstanding about increased breastfeeding.
So a lot of times people, their babies are between four and six months and they're starting to nurse more frequently because they're distracted during the day and they come in for these like little snack feeds as opposed to like the big, you know, 15, 20 minute feed that they were having before uninterrupted swallowing the whole time.
Now between four and six months, they're super distractible.
And they do these like, I don't know, like chicken nugget version nursing sessions, like drive-bys, you know?
And so they're thinking, oh, my baby's nursing so much more frequently, but they're not eating full feeds.
And then, so we think like, oh, well, they need more food because they're eating more often.
Maybe my milk's going down.
So you're tempted to start solids.
Those are like two big reasons.
There's other reasons listed in this free download, but those are the two that I'll park on.
And then you're talking about nutritional value.
Yeah, that's another whole subject that I would love to get into in a bit, but knowing what the nutrients your baby needs is really important because starting with vegetable purees probably is not going to give them the vital nutrients that they need.
Because remember, the way the recommendations are, it's stated by the World Health Organization and our American standards, is that babies should be breastfed or formula fed for six months exclusively with the addition of solid foods at six months to complement breastfeeding or milk, not to substitute.
So we are just complimenting.
So when you complement, the idea is to add something that maybe your breast milk, I don't want to say is deficient in, because that's not necessarily true, but maybe something in addition that your breast milk maybe isn't strong in.
For example, that would be iron and fat.
So do you see why maybe like a carrot puree does not have any iron and doesn't have any fat in it?
It has minerals in it and some vitamins, but your breast milk does too.
So that's kind of where some of the, how parents can be confused.
They don't know where even to start.
Yeah, I always, I had this conversation with a client yesterday.
We were talking about, you know, when do we introduce solids?
And they were like, well, I heard four months.
I was like, hmm, no, that used to be the recommendation that's really not anymore.
And I found just the easiest way to explain it to people is just anything, any solids that were offered before, you know, that one year of age is kind of just for fun.
Like it's getting baby exposed to new things.
It's letting them taste different flavors, you know, kind of, it's just kind of for fun.
They don't necessarily need it.
Yeah, different textures.
It's, you know, they don't necessarily need it and they'd be completely fine if they didn't have it because breast milk does offer everything that they need, but it does give them, you know, that little bit of added exposure, which is why we don't need to be starting it before six months of age.
Definitely.
I, there's a lot of, I mean, I was so blown away with what I learned about the role of food based on, like if they're six months, if they're eight months, if they're nine months, if they're 10 months, there is something called the window of opportunity.
And it is between, you know, I don't have my chart in front of me, so I don't wanna lie, but I know that it's somewhere like between eight and 12 months of life.
And that is the opportunity to develop tastes for food that your baby might not ordinarily like if you introduce them after 12 months of life.
Yeah.
So fish and sour things like sauerkraut and kimchi, those are really great sources of probiotics, like naturally occurring.
But that's not something your 14 month old is gonna be willing to accept.
So you do have this window of opportunity to introduce these maybe more, what I would consider offensive flavors because I don't like sour food and I don't like any fermented food and I barely like yogurt if it's too sour.
But if you can introduce these things during that window of opportunity, you're almost paying your future self and your future baby a favor by kind of getting those flavors in there at that age.
And there's a lot more I can say about some of the risks of early introduction to solids.
And once again, it is kind of laid out in this free download, but digestive issues are a huge one.
So I'm not sure how many of you remember with your kids or have maybe some of your clients tell you that their baby is struggling with constipation after they started solid foods.
This is a really, really, really big problem.
And it can last for a long time.
Like your baby could suffer from chronic constipation through potty training.
And that makes potty training really difficult.
And that is all because of the kinds of food or how early we're starting the food.
And then also when we're starting foods too early, there's been plenty of research.
And now the World Health Organization has put their seal of approval that introducing foods before six months of life does not decrease the risk of allergies.
Oh, I'm so glad you said that.
Actually, if you're introducing foods before six months of life, especially before four months of life, you could increase the risk of allergies because their immune system is not mature enough.
And so you put a solid food in their body at three or four months of life, there's a food protein attached to it, many food proteins.
If the immune system is not mature enough, then what happens is the immune system's like, there's an invader, there's an invader.
And so it starts to make antibodies towards that food protein.
So as they get older and reintroduce that food protein, then you could have a heightened response.
So introducing foods, I had a parent tell me that her baby's four months old and her, I'm not gonna say the medical professional, I don't wanna bash anyone's profession, but her medical provider recommended that she introduce all of the food allergens.
Like a lot.
At four months.
Rourke's you can buy for this.
Like in one week kind of a thing.
So she did like a mixed nut butter, like with all the different nuts mixed together, egg, milk, like all the things in one week.
That is highly, highly, highly dangerous.
Let's not do that.
And when I say it's dangerous, your baby is not gonna have usually an anaphylaxis response on the first exposure of an allergen.
It usually takes subsequent exposures and it gets worse more time they're exposed, but you almost like muddle all the reactions together.
So you can't tell if they're reacting, but also you're just, excuse me, there's no better way to say this.
You're pissing off their immune system by introducing all these inflammatory complex food proteins to their diet.
That's not what they're made for.
So I have like a quick question that might not be applicable to what you're saying, but it's something that I deal with all the time as a sleep consultant.
So when, as a sleep consultant, when I, and I don't talk about that much on this podcast, but I help people with the whole picture, not just sleep, right?
Because there's so many things that go into sleep and feeding is one of those things.
And so oftentimes if somebody has a baby that is under a year old and they have introduced solid foods, and we say solid foods, but that could be a puree or baby-led weaning or whatever, which I'm sure we'll get into.
They always ask me like, what order should I feed my baby in?
Because again, the majority of the nutrition needs to be coming from the breast milk.
These other things are supplemental.
So as a lactation consultant too, what do you recommend on kind of the order of operations here?
Is it you feed a full feed of breast milk or formula and then add the foods?
Or is it like, oh, well, the baby's rejecting foods and we need them to start exploring.
So we've got to give it to them when they're really hungry.
Yeah, that's something else that's gonna be on this.
It's called a, what is my download called?
It's like a, let me tell you, ultimate solids readiness checklist.
Okay, and one of the things you asked about is addressed on there.
So depending on the age of your baby, between six and nine months, for sure at six months of life, we're wanting to give them a full milk feed an hour before having solids.
And the other thing you should know is that we're not going for three meals a day.
Our goal between six and nine-ish months is, for sure six to eight months is one meal or one food exposure per day, maybe even every other day if the baby is, if it's a stressful event.
We really want this to be a calm, fun, I want you to consider it art class for the first month because that's what it is.
It's all about touching the food.
They need to touch their food to learn about texture and a little bit of autonomy, but it really does help them not become a picky eater.
It's one of the things we can do to help them not be a picky eater later.
So if you're that mom like me that I was like, holy moly, this is way too messy.
Can we just wrap this kid in saran wrap?
Then let's put him in his diaper or her and do that art class or mealtime right before bath time once a day or once every other day.
Now, when the baby starts realizing, I like this and she'll grab the spoon or she'll open her mouth and she'll lean in and look like she wants more food in her body, that's when it becomes, she realizes, oh, there's no, I get satisfied from this.
When that clicks in her brain and you see that, then you can start offering her food first and then milk later.
We just never wanna bring a hangry baby to the meal table because if they don't realize that they're gonna get satisfied with the food that's coming, once they make that connection and they get excited to sit down at the table and they realize they're gonna get a happy tummy with food, then it doesn't matter what order you give the milk.
But to begin with, we really need to set the set to be a really pleasant, positive, happy experience.
So offering them their milk feed first, waiting an hour and then having art class is gonna be the way I start that recommendation.
And my recommendation for how you do that changes based on the baby's behavior and we go into that more.
Well, that's actually why I made a course on this because there's so much nuance and we can't possibly cover it all in a podcast episode because there's four or five hours of content I cover in the course, but it does change.
My advice does change based on the baby's behavior.
That makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I mean, every kid is gonna go at a different pace too.
Like some kids are gonna be all about it right from the get go and others are gonna need a little bit of time to kind of figure out what they're doing and what tastes they like and all that different stuff.
I used to nanny and I had my son and two little boys that were with me all the time and they were all about the same age and kind of approaching food at about the same age.
And it was just so interesting watching the three of them just approach it at totally different paces.
Like one was just so hesitant with everything.
Everything was like, I don't know if I like this.
And then the other little boy would put anything in his mouth at any time and be absolutely thrilled with it.
And then my son is somewhere in the middle and kind of always has been.
So every kid's gonna be very different.
And yeah, it's a lot about parent temperament and like the energy that you give off too.
So depending on your culture, that plays a big role.
Like, I don't know, I'm from a Puerto Rican background and a lot of Latin families just wanna feed the babies.
Like they just wanna totally just, they just feel so happy just stuffing them until they're like a blimp.
But even if they don't wanna eat it.
So that actually kind of goes into what you asked in the beginning, like how do you know when your baby's ready or like what the proper time is?
And I did mention an age, but there's also developmental signs.
And one of them, of course, is them being able to sit up with minimal support.
But one that people don't always realize is the ability for your baby to tell you that they're done.
So what they don't want anymore, they need to have that ability to express that to you.
And then you need to have the ability to read that.
And you have to respect it.
As soon as your baby starts pushing their head away or slapping like the food away from their face, mealtime is over.
Let's not try to convince them to have a little bit more.
We really start to set up, sometimes it could be a negative feedback loop when you're having a power struggle and they feel like you're not gonna respect their nose.
Even if you know they're not full, it's just part of this learning process.
And the last thing I'll say about that is another sign for readiness, which babies usually do this really early, is showing interest in food.
So understand that your baby needs to meet four developmental marks before you consider starting food.
So if your baby's six months old and only meeting three of the four, then don't start solids, even though they're six months.
If your baby is seven months and now has all four signs, then yes, that's when you start food.
So just because they're showing interest in food does not mean, oh, let's go ahead and start.
And the reason for that is those four other developmental signs help protect your baby from choking.
So if we skip making sure they meet for the four developmental signs, then you do increase your risk of your baby choking.
Oh my gosh, you're like giving me flashbacks to when I introduced food to my son.
I don't remember what age he was, but he was in a high chair.
I remember having a little thing in front of him.
I was trying to spoon feed him like carrots or whatever.
And he was just like doing all the things you say, like, right, he's not wanting it, right?
And I'm like, bro, you're eating the food.
That's what I said to him.
No, I'm just kidding.
I know, I understand.
Come on.
So he wouldn't do it.
And I was like, husband, here, you try, right?
And so my husband's trying and my husband, he's like the most patient man, but he got like real annoyed.
And so he had this bowl of carrots with a spoon.
My son would not take it.
And my husband like slapped the, in an aggressive way, but just like, like on the table with the food.
Just like puree on the thing.
My son who would not try it, reaches and drags his hand through it and tries it.
I was like, you are so independent.
He wanted no such thing as an adult putting food in his mouth.
He was like, I will do it my darn self.
I never thought I would do baby lead weaning, but I did because he was not into purees.
He wanted to pick it up and do it himself.
That's a good point.
I was terrified of choking like you just said.
Can you tell us a little bit, how do you deal with worries about choking and allergies and all of those things?
That's my jam.
That's why I have this course because there's a live component because there's some things you just can't do self-paced.
You can't just watch a video and be like, oh, now I feel better about not choking or allergies.
So there is a live component to it.
But I want to confess to you, if anyone's feeling, I hope no one is feeling like, holy moly, I started this completely wrong.
Oh my gosh, would I?
I just want to tell you, I have an 18 year old who's going to go to college and he's going to be a great adult.
And like, he's a wonderful human being.
He's very smart and articulate and like, whatever.
I'm not going to start gushing on him, but I did everything wrong, okay?
I started feeding him at four months old.
He wouldn't open his mouth.
So I put on baby Einstein.
And when he laughed, I was sick of spoon in his mouth.
All the things, I'm so...
And everything went wrong.
I did everything 100% wrong.
I just want to tell you.
So he's all right.
It was stressful.
So my whole goal is to teach people how to do things in a manner to foster a positive relationship at the dinner table for you and your family and your baby, because I did not have peace in my dinner table for a long time.
So to answer your question about choking, four developmental signs for sure you want to wait.
The second thing you can do to help prevent choking is going to be learning how to prepare foods for your baby, which would be if you are doing purees, your baby will have a much less, a lower chance of choking.
However, the real deal is you cannot feed your baby purees forever.
Like that looks really, it's just inappropriate to have a 14 month old still having purees.
They really need to learn how to pick up food, put it in their mouth.
There's hand-eye coordination.
They have to really learn how to use their master muscles and their jaw.
You'll hear from dentists that they're noticing the molars and things like that.
A lot of them aren't, they're getting impacted and not coming out as much because they're noticing kids are not eating whole foods anymore.
They're eating a lot of pouches and slurpee type foods.
So the action of chewing and picking up and all that is very important.
And moreover, you want to go to dinner and not have to feed your kid.
Like it's kind of a pain.
But when you are preparing solid foods, you want to make sure to steam or boil or roast food so that they are soft enough that if you put them on your tongue and you squish them between your tongue and the palate, they would easily mash.
So what that does is if your baby has sweet potato, let's say, and you put it in a cube and it's steamed nice and soft or roasted.
And let's say they get excited and they like, or there's a lot of saliva in their mouth and it slips to the back of their throat.
When it gets there, there's a muscle in their throat that contracts and has a peristaltic motion.
That contraction will work as long as it's nice and soft.
It'll just squish.
And then when he swallows with the saliva, the peristaltic or the contraction type motion in their throat will prevent it from getting actually caught in there.
And that is what choking is.
So the first is to know how to prepare foods, but also I would say to know the difference between choking and gagging.
And so I have a lot of videos.
I always thought my son was choking.
Yeah.
Choking is completely silent.
So it's like, if I'm a baby and I'm eating, om nom, and there's no sound and eyes get big and there's no air moving in that airway, take your baby out of that high chair and just big strokes in between their shoulders.
I personally have had this happen with my child choking on a candy because I was potty training.
I told you I'd done all the things wrong.
I don't know.
He was potty training.
And I was bribing him with candy in a jewelry store and that happened.
He was really big though.
He was like three years old or something.
But the point of the story is that that really is not something.
So just so you know, my child never choked on food at a dinner table.
He choked on hard candy and that is a choking risk.
But really a baby to choke while you're feeding them food is very, very, very unlikely.
If you are preparing the food in that fashion I just shared with you, so it's soft enough for them to mash between their palate and their tongue.
And if they've met all four developmental signs.
So I'm not sure if that helped to answer that question.
So we're not offering-
I was the person ripping my kid out, even when they're gagging.
My husband would be like, Ciarra, he's fine.
I ripped him out of that thing.
So I'm like doing this all the time because I was worried that he was choking.
I hear a kid in the restaurant across the thing and I hear it, I'm like, he's choking.
He has his own parents.
If they're coughing and making sounds, they are not choking.
Choking is completely silent.
That's one of the questions I get a lot.
Should I do baby lead weaning or that's another term for self-feeding?
Or should I do purees?
And I spent a lot of time talking about it really depends on your family's temperament.
If you're going to be freaked out all the time and have this high anxiety mealtime, then start with purees and I can help you transition into textured purees and then solid food once you have a little more confidence.
If you're like, nothing really bothers me.
I'm pretty cool.
Then I just want them to eat what we eat just without the salt and sugar.
Then let's do that.
Like if you're not going to be, because I have this video in the course and it's a picture, a video of this baby picking up food, putting it in his mouth, gagging, eyes watering and everything.
Then he throws up and then he just puts more food in his mouth and he keeps going.
That is very typical.
But if that's going to freak you out and you're going to be like, I need therapy now, then let's not do that route.
Let's choose another route.
Yeah.
There's options for everybody.
I know I did purees with my son and then when I had my daughter, I just, I had a two year old and I wasn't going to do the whole puree thing and figure out whatever my two year old was doing.
So we did baby lead weaning with her.
And I don't know if I would have been able to do it with my first because I would have been so anxious.
And then by the time I had a two year old and a baby that was ready to start solids, I was like, nothing could shock me at this point.
I'm ready to roll with it.
And I was totally comfortable with that.
But I think the first time around, it would have been a little bit scary.
Yeah.
And you're not going to mess up your kid if you do one way or the other.
Like I always say this, there's never, I say, you know, there's not a, it's not binary.
It's not like, oh my gosh, this is the only way to do it, or this is the only way.
Like it's going to be fine.
I just told you how messed up I did all the things.
And I have a functioning human being who's going to be great.
So just try not to stress too much about which choice, like which manner you do it in.
And you can do a mix of self-feeding and purees, which is really kind of cool.
But you, as the parent, need to figure out where you are so that your baby can feed off your energy.
Because you do not want to start having a power struggle over food.
So when I first started feeding my son, I read like all these things about what things I should give him first and like what what order should I present foods and when should I introduce allergens?
I did like all of these different things.
So and I mean, I don't even know if any of it was really true.
It was just crap I found on the Internet.
So what is what would you say is the best first foods to offer babies?
That is a great question.
I think the question I think about is what nutrient does my baby need most at this age?
And then that's the food I'm going to give them.
So that's what I learned is what is a nutrient.
So I'm not sure how many of you know, but around six months of life or even before your pediatrician might start recommending you give your baby vitamin D drops.
And then at six months for sure, they start asking you to give your baby iron drops, which is usually known as polyvice all you get it in the grocery store is black and it's gross and it's stinky.
And that's for iron because after six months of life, your baby's iron stores from placenta and being inside of you have been depleted and breast milk.
Breast milk has sufficient iron for when they were younger, but as they get older, they need more iron for brain development.
So people don't realize this is for the brain.
Of course, iron is really helpful for energy levels and making new red blood cells and neuromuscular development.
But the brain is where we're at.
So, you know, really high level, not going too nerdy, not getting into details.
To me, based on what I've learned, iron and fat, so DHA for brain development, are going to be really important.
So then you're like, well, where do I get iron from?
You know, and so there's meat sources and there's some, we call that heme, and then there's non heme sources, like you might have heard of spinach is high in iron.
What you should know is that plant based sources of iron, their absorbability is between 5 and 15 percent.
And then animal sources of iron, their absorbability is between, I think it's like 30 and 40 percent.
So that's something just to consider.
The other thing I'm going to say before I completely answer this question is please know that you may have heard not to introduce sweet foods to your baby first and I want to debunk that myth.
Yeah, debunk that myth because your breast milk is sweet.
So your baby's already programmed to prefer sweet things.
So you can't really, you already like that's what it is.
That's how that's why we like sweet things.
So I'm not concerned about that.
So a sweet potato or banana like fine.
The reason I say that is because the next thing that you might have heard is you can only introduce one food at a time.
That is not true either.
What is true is you do not want to introduce more than one allergen at a time.
So that part is true and we have a whole section on how to introduce allergens.
But you can introduce, let's say sweet potatoes and ground beef together.
And then you get vitamin A, you get high iron source and you create a fat source.
So that's why this answer to this question is a little bit longer.
I want you to know you can introduce more than one food at a time.
Iron and fat for your baby's brain is vital and they really need small, small portions of food.
I'm talking about like you start off with a teaspoon and if you eat a teaspoon, that's a win.
And we work our way up to a tablespoon and then a couple of tablespoons.
In our course, we do have like actual measurements of what they, how much vitamin is in each serving of certain food.
But a great first food, I mean, when you're first introducing food, it's kind of like I said, art class.
So it could be a pureed sweet potato, a pureed carrot because we're just exploring the flavor.
It is not for nutrients.
It is for a happy art class.
And once we realize, okay, this belongs in my mouth, I'm willing to open and consume the food, that's when you're going to pay attention to the actual nutrient density.
And you'll start figuring out, okay, do I feel comfortable with giving him texture food?
Because I'm okay with gags, gagging and coughing, or am I going to puree the heck out of this, add some breast milk, make it nice and smooth, like the baby food jars, and introduce, let's say, grass-fed ground beef with sweet potato in a very thin, pureed fashion.
It just depends on how your baby is responding and how you are responding to all the faces and sounds that are coming from him.
But generally speaking, like avocado gets a lot of airtime right now, and it's because it has great fat and fiber in it.
I'm not concerned about fiber at this age, but it's a great source of healthy fat.
When I talk about fats, hemp seed is a great one.
We want avocado, coconut cream, coconut oil.
We, however, want to stay away from canola oil and processed oils for other reasons I can talk about at another time.
So I'm not sure if that helps to answer your question, but in summary, I will say, giving your baby jars of pureed vegetables is not going to meet the nutritional needs that we're looking for outside of breast milk.
It's a great art class food to start with, but not the most nutrient dense food.
I love the visual of art class because I feel like it sets an expectation what needs to be had.
Like we can't expect that it's gonna be clean.
We, you know, I hope you have a dog clean up the mess on the floor, you know?
That is, it is what it is.
And we want them to be excited about painting.
We want them to be excited about exploring it.
And then they're more likely to try it if it's neat, it's kind of fun.
So this may be a pretty nuanced question, but how much food versus milk should babies be consuming?
I assume it's different at different ages, but it's like, you don't want to give them too much food because then that takes up space in their belly and then they're not gonna eat a full feed of milk and kind of how do you navigate that?
That is such a good question.
I made this thing up called Milk Math.
I'm still in the middle of putting all the things into the course, like the little visuals and PDFs, but it's a calculation of like, just so people, because there's some of my families that want like exact numbers and some of the dads want exact numbers.
And so it's called Milk Math because it tells you if your baby's just getting breast milk, it's about 20 to 24 calories per ounce.
And they have about 700 to 900, excuse me, they have, as milliliters, they have between 25 and 30 ounces per 24 hours.
So if you do the math, that's how many calories your baby gets in a 24 hour period.
And so our goal, and I'm gonna start from big picture and go into little picture.
Our goal is that by 12 months of life, your baby is mostly eating solid foods as a form of nutrition.
And then breast milk or formula will be the beverage.
So that is the goal for 12 months of life.
That is not the goal for nine or eight or seven months of life.
So the reason I say that is because many people think that at 12 months of life, they're supposed to replace 25 or 30 ounces of breast milk or formula with cow's milk.
That's not the goal.
The goal is to replace those 25 to 30 ounces of breast milk or formula with solid food.
And then the milk that you choose to give, it will either be breast milk or a milk substitute or herbal tea or water, no juice, no caffeine, no sugar and no toddler milk.
Please, that was also on the World Health Organization.
No toddler milk.
There's no need for that.
That's complete marketing.
Please don't do that.
Unless your baby has a problem and they cannot eat solid food, they should be getting all of their nutrients from solid food by 12 months of life.
So that's our big picture.
That's our goal by about 12 to 14 months.
We're replacing milk with solid food.
So you're not giving solid food.
And then on top of that, giving your baby 30 ounces of milk per day, because that means they're not getting the nutritional components to thrive from whole food sources because milk has calcium, like cow's milk has calcium and vitamin D in it and some fat.
It doesn't have all the other micronutrients that all these other foods have in them.
And it doesn't have iron.
So now that's a 12 months.
If we back it into six, seven, eight months, foods first start to art class, then they're opening their mouth.
They're like, oh, give me more.
This is good.
So what you're going to do is offer and feed your baby as much food as they show interest for.
You are not gonna change the volume of milk that you offer your baby.
However, what you will notice is maybe your baby won't finish the bottle or your baby won't nurse as long.
So we are letting the baby be like the driver's wheel, take the wheel on how much milk they consume.
Once you start noticing a pattern, because you don't want to keep wasting milk.
So if you're like, okay, I'm pumping and I'm at work and I keep sending my baby with four ounce bottles, but he's only drinking three ounces and it's been two weeks, then you're like, okay, well, I'm only gonna send three ounce bottles now because he's eating more food at school.
The thing is babies are not consistent.
And so one day they're gonna wanna eat a ton of food and not a lot of milk.
And then the next day they're not gonna wanna do that.
And then that will drive us crazy because we've prepared all this food, we've prepared this milk and now they're wasting all the TLC that I did to prepare this food.
And that is something you just have to get comfortable with because they are not as predictable, as stable.
Like their blood sugars change really quickly.
How they're feeling, if they're feeling unsafe or they're feeling stressed, they're gonna want more milk.
If they're feeling, I don't know, super distracted, they're gonna eat and breastfeed differently every single day.
So to answer your question, since the goal is to get them by 12 months of life to transition to mostly solid food for their nutrients, that is the goal.
How quickly that happens during those next six months, I have no idea, it depends on your baby, but we're following their lead and we're gonna keep offering them the same amount of milk, but we're not gonna make them drink that milk.
We're just gonna let them finish when they're finished.
And you will notice as they increase their solid food, they will decrease the amount of nursing sessions or bottles that they want.
Does that help to answer that question?
No, no, cause you know us type A mamas can't handle all that.
We're gonna need some exact numbers, please.
I know, that was the hardest part for me, honestly, with just, that's the hardest part of parenting, is you just don't get to know.
That starts with pregnancy, right?
I just don't get to call the shots.
Your baby and your body call the shots.
And you're like, well, I guess I'm just a passenger here.
That was very tempting.
It's good to set these reasonable expectations, because I think a lot of parents have pretty unreasonable expectations.
We experienced that in pregnancy with families, them planning births.
We've experienced that with sleep consulting, has a lot of unreasonable expectations where they think that I'm just gonna help their baby sleep through the night at four months.
And I'm like, it is very normal for your baby to still be waking up in the middle of the night.
I am not promising that.
And not only that, I don't really think it's developmentally free it.
So with food is just another thing that we have to set reasonable expectations for.
I mean, if it helps you feel better, gosh, I lost my train of thought.
I was about to say something.
It'll come back to me.
But there's a range of what is expected and what is normal.
And knowing that by 12 months, we want our babies to eat more solid food as opposed to milk and just letting them kind of lead the way.
I know it's not the most comforting thing, but it does have that goal of what we're looking for.
And I hope people feel comfortable.
Yeah, I hope people are comfortable knowing that they don't need to fit in 25 and 30 ounces of cow's milk at 12 months of age plus all this food.
That's really a hard expectation to meet, but they can.
The next question I get is, well, how are they supposed to meet their calcium needs if they're not getting milk?
And that's when you get cheese, yogurt, things like that in there.
You know, smoothies, like green smoothies.
If you put spinach in there with a banana and apple and some coconut oil, there you go.
You're good.
Yeah.
And babies aren't robots.
We talk about this all the time in every facet of every service that we provide.
Babies just aren't robots.
And just because your baby did something one day doesn't mean that it's gonna be consistently happening all the time now.
That's what I was gonna say.
I remember this might give some people comfort.
Instead of looking at the day to day, okay, my baby needs this amount of iron, this amount of, you know, whatever, and they only eat this amount of solid food.
Oh my gosh, what are we gonna do?
I would kind of take a step back and look at the seven day period.
Has my baby had a couple different colors in their diet and a couple different food sources over the seven day period?
Did they have a little bit of meat?
Did they have a little bit of whatever, oil?
And then over a seven day period, how did we do?
And that's how I would judge how things are going as opposed to digging into the day to day.
They should have like an app for like bait, like you know how they have MyFit foods for adults?
They should have one for babies.
Something for babies.
Let's track it.
It sounds to me like the basic formula here is, you know, we want to start solids after six months when they're showing the signs.
We want to make sure they're mostly eating solids by, you know, 12 months.
And that's how they're getting most of their nutrition.
And everything in between is, we don't really know.
We're just going to see what your baby wants to do.
And if you want to learn more about what those signs are and that formula is, then you can sign up to take a great class, like what you offer, and kind of learn a little bit more about what all of that looks like.
So yeah, can you tell us?
Did we miss anything?
I'm sure there's a million questions.
I mean, I go through a lot in the course, but I think we covered all the things.
I mean, I think there's a lot of...
We can do a whole another thing on just allergies, but I think that's something that is best kind of talked about in an individual setting, because every family's story is a little different.
And I have some podcasts on allergies too, but yeah.
We refer people to those all the time.
When they come to us and they're worried about that, I'm like, this is a great podcast episode to listen to.
I refer people there too, because I'm like, I don't think I can say the same thing a hundred times over.
I don't want to repeat myself again.
Yeah, I might forget something.
So tell us how they can find this all.
Yeah, I think this course is something that I do with individuals one-on-one, but there's just more of a demand.
So I just don't have the time to do it individually.
So I put it into a course.
It's something that you can do over a four week period.
It is going to be offered several times per year.
So you can just go to milkdiva.com forward slash, I think it's nutrition, but you would go to the Milk Diva page.
I should know my own webpage, right?
Yeah, you go to milkdiva.com and all the way to the right hand side, it says, Baby's First Bites.
And that would be where you could take a quiz to get the free download on if your baby's ready.
And then I'll also send you some emails with some more knowledge just about feeding, like tips, you'll get that in your email until you're waiting for the course to open.
But the course will be, it's a web-based module type learning.
And then there is a live component if you choose to do that part where we get to get together in a group setting and ask questions based on each module.
But there's four modules and then there's a fifth bonus module for your grandparents or caregivers.
It's like a condensed version of everything in the other four courses so that you can just say, hey, please don't feed my baby soda.
Or like, here's the things you should know about portion sizes or milk versus solid foods or respecting their no.
So that will be just like a little mini crash course for the caregivers and the grandparents.
So your whole family can be on the same page, but that's kind of the gist of it.
It's a lot of fun.
It's a great resource.
I love that extra little piece that you're saying is added there.
That's really needed because a lot of times that communication is tough.
Yeah, my mom gave my baby soda at three months old and I have a picture of it to prove it.
I love her, but in certain cultures, anything to get the baby to laugh and smile is like go.
And I'm like, you just basically gave my baby liquid crack.
Like, thanks a lot.
Well, thank you so much for doing this with us.
We really appreciate it.
And I can't wait until we have some clients that have taken this course because this is really cool new offering.
I'm really excited about it.
It's fun, it's a lot of fun.
I love all the things food anyway.
Well, we'll talk to you soon.
See you later.
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