Food, glorious food!
… aaaaand I broke!
Yup, it finally happened. We started Baby Boy on rice cereal this morning (after, ahem, much holding-out on my part).
The yogurt incident yesterday was the final straw. He was ready. I knew it, I felt it, I couldn’t deny it.
Darling Husband came home from work early this morning (after the overnight shift), and I had the little plastic bowl and spoon set on the counter, the little bag of pumped breastmilk all ready for mixing, and the brand-new box of baby cereal — Nestle Rice Cereal, after much research and package-scouring.
We got Baby Boy settled in his new highchair, put on his adorable dinosaur bib (that matched his sleeper, joy!), and mixed up his cereal (one teaspoon of cereal to two teaspoons of breastmilk).
I knew all along that I wanted Darling Husband to be the one to feed him his first meal of cereal, so I let him go to town while I took photos and ran the camcorder to capture the big event.
He loved the cereal! Darling Husband was very skilled at spooning it in (note to self: try to be as tidy when it’s my turn to feed him), and he ate every bite happily.
And you know what? It was fine. It was a relief. The earth didn’t stop turning because my baby, for the first time in his four-and-a-half months of life, ingested something other than breastmilk.
I still feel a little bit of guilt over the fact that I went against the recommendation that babies have nothing but breastmilk for the first six months. That was my plan. I believed in the merit of it, and I thought it would be no problem to follow through with it.
But before the guilt gets too extreme, I immediately remind myself of the following things:
- I am still breastfeeding, and that is still where he’s getting most of his nutrition. I plan to keep breastfeeding until he’s a year old, hopefully.
- My doctor said to start formula or cereal at four months
- Baby Boy is way above average in size, so it makes sense that his body needs a bit of iron-fortified cereal (especially since I’ve had so many issues with iron)
- It’s important for Baby Boy to have a happy, healthy mommy who is somewhat rested (and not a mommy who resembles the walking dead … and gets no more than two hours sleep in a row … for more than eight weeks … Zzzzz)
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Heather's Handmade Life 