Thursday, December 16, 2010

A Busy Day: Vaccines, A Weigh In and Maggie's First Food!

Maggie is five months old and today, after she got her vaccines, I asked if I could weigh her to see how much she's grown. The answer....


... she is now 19 lbs 6 oz.

And that leads me to my confession of the night. Tonight, for the very first time in her entire life, Maggie had non- milk food.

My goal, with both Sadie and Maggie, has been to wait until they were 6 months old to start rice cereal. But Maggie has been absolutely ravenous pretty much around the clock, for the past few weeks.

Her growth makes it pretty evident that she's getting lots of milk (she's worn 18 and 24 month outfits the last few days... and the 24 month one is a tad big...), but she was still hungry, even right after she'd eaten (and she would be frustrated that I didn't have much milk 15 minutes after she'd had a big feeding). I guess it's just hard to be 20 lbs and survive on milk alone (and she does nurse on demand, whenever she wants, around the clock).

That last sentence might get me lots of comments that sound something like this: "Your baby absolutely did not need food. I breast fed my baby without starting solids for 18 months and he weighed 37 lbs when he was your babies age and was just fine without solids" (actually you guys are great so I don't really expect to get that here... other places... if I posted this, I'd definitely expect it!).

Here's what it came down to... Maggie was hungry. And she seemed ready to eat. She actually maneuvered her way across the living room, rolling and belly crawling towards her sister, to throw herself on Sadie's plate to attempt to eat her toast. She would literally lunge, mouth wide open, at every single piece of food that went past her (it was kind of sad to watch).

This morning I began to think about the situation and questioned my own motivation. I was striving to meet some standard (six months) because that's what everyone says you're supposed to do, but it no longer felt like it was what was best for my baby... and that's what I really needed to do. Maggie's doctor said she was ready for rice cereal a month and a half ago...

So we bought cereal and Maggie had a great time. I didn't realize I had my camera with me right away, so we missed the first part of the feeding, but Maggie took her first bite of food, looked at all of us and smiled. She then grabbed the spoon and kept trying to force it back into her mouth. However we did get this on camera:



And then there's the interview with Maggie afterwards:



And she didn't seem hungry afterwards, which I think is a good sign! Time to get some rest! We've had a very busy day!

7 comments:

  1. Looks like Maggie is a pro at this who eating cereal thing. She looks very happy about being feed something that will keep her full for more than five min. Think if you had to love on milk or even chicken soup alone for a day or too. I know I'd be hungry all the time.

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  2. What a beautiful picture! Don't worry about this decision. When my oldest was a baby, our doctors recommended solids at 4 months. Only 2.5 years later with my second, it was 6 months. Two years later with my youngest, my doctor recommended any time after 4 months AND when our baby was exhibiting the signs your Maggie did. With him he happened to be a bit older but I really think it will be just fine.

    Your best statement was exploring your motivation. That's always the question to ask - what's the best thing for YOUR baby?

    I'm glad to hear about the impending move! =)

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  3. If she is begging for solids- just give them to her!

    Life can surprise you- I breastfed my kids for at least 12 months- baby #4 was in the NICU for 5 weeks- I pumped, etc and we nursed (badly) for 6 months. I just wanted to get to the 6 month mark. Then I gave it a rest and we were both more peaceful

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  4. Noooooo - I just lost my whole response lol.

    Such a cute big baby :-) Her and Zavier are the same size now! His growth has slowed since he got mobile, stayed at 18 for over a month... I was really happy when I saw he got over 19 a couple weeks ago.

    You already know I'm a huge advocate of waiting until 6 months or later (esp after the mess w/ Kalila, but not the only reason) but... I'm not going to give you a hard time either. It may be best, but every child is different and if you (the mama) think its what she needs and best for her I can't really say its not. Wouldn't just be rude, would be wrong.

    With us, we did wait but pretty much skipped the one feeding a day bit. There are some days he only gets solids once (or not at all) but most he has it twice... Not the norm, or recommended necessarily, but he loves to eat. It hasn't decreased the amount of milk he's taking in or I'd slow down. Does he need that much? Maybe not lol... but he's in charge, he wants it I'll give it (as long as its not causing probs of course). Anyways point being wouldn't just be rude or wrong but make me a hypocrite of sorts too lol.

    I need to catch up on your posts, but I really only have a second here. I keep meaning too though.

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  5. I waited six months even though my mother's intuition told me Susi was ready to eat solids around the age of four months. By the time I finally fed her, she grabbed the spoon and stuck it in her mouth. Boy, was she way overdue for solids!Looking back, I should have just fed her solids a lot earlier.

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  6. Yeah, I have no regrets about starting HB on solids at five months. I wish that it hadn't been that way or rather I wish he didn't have the weight issues that he still has. But as I said, it was start the solids or starve. I picked the solids.

    How tall is Maggie? She's got to be pretty tall to be about 19 1/2 lbs. HB isn't even 19 1/2 lbs, but again he has weight problems and he's basically no longer on any percentage chart. So don't take my question to imply anything. I'm just being nosy.

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  7. My sister started her first son around 5 months on homemade baby food...he was tolerating and doing well with it so she kept it up once a day for a while until he got old enough to up that. She would actually mix the baby food with the rice cereal too.

    She nursed him almost his whole first year and would have kept going but got preggo with twins and was feeling much sicker while nursing.

    The twins just started a few weeks ago on solids once a day (not every day) and are doing good...messy but good! I think it definitely is "know your baby" thing...at least that what it seemed for her...I'll have to speak for myself in the future after I'm a mom! ;)

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