JUDGEMENT-FREE POST: Please note that this not how you *should* do things. This is just a window into how I did things, and I relied mostly on my instincts. Do what feels right mama. *Should precedes shame* so I strongly encourage you not to *should yourself*! Parenting is hard enough as it is. You’re doing great!!
We started solids with Baby H at about 5.5 months. Prior to having a baby I was fairly strict on the “wait til 6 months” approach, and then as I’ve learned with babies, you really have NO idea how things are going to go, until you get there. So when she was clearly ready, we started!
My Approach
There is a lot of discussion about which is better, purees or baby-led weaning. In my experience, you need to trust your instincts! We started with purees because historically, moms would have likely chewed the food before giving it to the kid, and purees mimic that (as does chewing the food, which you can totally do). I also really wanted to get some of the important nutrients missing from my milk (iron, zinc) into her, so I didn’t want to rely on her getting it in her mouth on her own! Not to mention food waste. We spend a pretty penny on our food, and I hate unnecessary food waste so having her throw food all over the place kind of makes me cringe. Luckily the dog helps out there, which makes me feel less stressed about it! So we started with purees of real food (thinned out with bone broth or breastmilk) increasing the thickness of the purees as she developed her eating skills!
Why I Didn’t Do One Food At A Time
First of all, this makes for an incredibly bland diet. It kind of makes sense to me that if we want to develop a robust palate in our kiddos, we need to give them interesting foods with lots of flavours!
But more importantly, we have a relatively short window before kids enter their neophobic phase. Often at 2, kids become less likely to try new things – although check out Holistic Little Sprouts for great tips for working around that! If we try one ingredient per week, and you start at 6 months, you get maybe 26 foods in by the time they’re a year. Also, I don’t think historically mamas would have taken the time to make special meals for their kids.
So instead, I made lovely flavoured foods – food that we would also want to eat! I made sure she had liver or salmon, or at least egg yolk, most days, and other than that we played around with fun-flavoured soups that I made for the whole family!
Three Meals at the Table
Part of what we want to teach her, is that meals happen at the dinner table with family. For that reason, we don’t feed her and then eat ourselves. And we don’t wait to eat dinner after she goes to bed. We all eat together. At breakfast and lunch, at least one of us eats with her as well. When she was just starting solids, we gave her liver or salmon at one meal, and breastmilk popsicles at the other two. Making sure she was always at the table with us for meal time.
Favourite Recipes
Chicken Liver Pate I like this recipe because it doesn’t use garlic or onion, which may upset a baby’s belly in the beginning. I modified to use bone broth instead of cream, coconut oil instead of butter, rosemary instead of thyme, no allspice because I didn’t have any, and a gala apple instead of a green one!
Egg Yolk – I have nothing against a whole egg! But starting with purees makes a whole egg a little challenging. A hard boiled egg yolk, mixed with breastmilk turns into a great puree!
Salmon with Ginger & Orange I modified this recipe, using the juice of ½ an orange, and a piece of ginger pressed through a garlic press. Then pureed it with bone broth.
JUDGEMENT-FREE POST: Please note that this not how you *should* do things. This is just a window into how I did things, and I relied mostly on my instincts. Do what feels right mama. *Should precedes shame* so I strongly encourage you not to *should yourself*! Parenting is hard enough as it is. You’re doing great!!
Introducing foods to your baby can be a fun, but also intimidating process. The best advice I can give is to (a) understand when a baby is ready for food, (b) identify your goal with food intro and (c) have a few resources you can trust!
When Is A Baby Ready For Food?
There are 3 things you want to look for:
Interest. Ideally your kid is expressing an interest in what you’re doing when you’re eating. They might want to grab your food, or try putting things in their mouth. This is a little tricky, because as of 4 months most babies put everything into their mouths, and suddenly are a lot more interested in the world, so this isn’t the only consideration for being food-ready.
Sitting Up Independently. For safety reasons, it is best if your kid can sit up, mostly unassisted. Sticking them in the bumbo doesn’t count!
No More Tongue-Thrust Reflux. The tongue thrust reflex is an important safety reflex in newborns. If something solid gets in their mouth, the tongue automatically pushes it away, to protect the airway. This tends to disappear somewhere between 4-7 months. (NOTE: I struggled to find a video showing the tongue-thrust reflex, other than this one, but I’m posting cautiously. I promise I’m not judging this family, it’s just a great example of the reflex!)
My 2 Goals with Food Intro
NUTRITION: My first goal was nutrition – obviously! Breastmilk is notoriously low in iron and zinc, and no matter how many supplements you take, it won’t become sufficient for your kiddo. That’s why the recommendation from the medical community is to start with iron-fortified grains. Since I am a real-foodie, the idea of using a fortified food as a first food doesn’t sit well with me. Not to mention grains are full of anti-nutrients that actually inhibit nutrient absorption and can contribute to poor gut-health. A lot of real-foodies, or those who follow baby-led weaning principles, choose root veggies as an alternative. But, those don’t contain the nutrients babies need! So instead, I went straight to the source of iron…meat, specifically liver. The first food that we gave Baby H was pate – specifically my friend Megan Garcia’s Pate. Although I modified the recipe to be dairy-free (I used bone broth and coconut oil), and I used ingredients I had on hand such as chicken livers (instead of beef), rosemary and a gala apple.
FUN & FLAVOUR: To avoid becoming too clinical about food, I also started introducing fun, high-flavour foods. While babies don’t need fruits & vegetables til around 1 year, I played around with them to help develop her palate. I took a page out of the book French Kids Eat Anything (stay tuned for a post on this amazing book) and started with fun soups. I also did not worry about introducing one food at a time, since that (a) didn’t make intuitive sense to me (b) there’s no evidence to back that up and (c) food should taste good, not bland! So my soups contained big flavours like cumin, ginger, coriander, and even Thai curry! Things we wanted to eat!
Megan Garcia – my friend Megan is a wonderful resource. She has a ton of free information to get you started. But even better, she has a course you can take, which walks you through nutrition and introducing foods to your baby! Great for anyone who wants to go into this stage with all the knowledge and confidence!
CanDo Kiddo – I subscribe to Rachel’s newsletter, and there was one video that really resonated with me. It showed the stages of muscle development as a child learns to move food through their mouth. It was absolutely fascinating. She also has great info on her blog, as well as a course you can take to boost confidence!
I can’t tell you how many people have told me to “just relax, whatever you do before hand, you will inevitably end up eating take out most of the first few months with a newborn”. Aside from the fact that nutritionally, I couldn’t imagine trying to heal/recover from pregnancy, labour & delivery on takeout, OR creating breast milk from nutrient-deplete foods, I know that I simply cannot eat those kinds of foods if I want my body to work properly (more on my health journey here!).
Gluten and vegetable oils will instantly cause massive inflammation in my body, specifically joint pain (E.g. once during my pregnancy I had multiple vegetable oil exposures over the course of 3 days and on the 3rd night I woke up in tears with bilateral pulsing pain of my hands, wrists and elbows. Yeah, not fun.)
Dairy causes massive digestive distress in me, but it’s also the food my husband is highly allergic to (instant congestion – with a history of asthma – followed by bad eczema that takes months to go away), so since we’re both very reactive, I’m not going to expose our little one to milk before he/she has developed a solid gut. Odds aren’t super great for him/her tolerating dairy well.
Gluten-free flours contain corn (which really does a number on my gut), so even gluten-free options are not really options in my world (other than Cup of Tea Bakery which uses rice, tapioca and potato as their flour – no corn! Except some of their products use quinoa and/or bean flours, so I still have to be quite careful.)
While others may think that I’m just Type A-ing it, or being obsessively healthy, not being prepared food-wise is a disaster waiting to happen for me. And by disaster I literally mean PAIN.
So in an effort to prevent pain (as well as set the stage for my healing/recovery and kicking off my kiddo’s postpartum nutrition well), I started stocking my freezer and keeping my pantry full, when I was around 7.5 months pregnant. Here’s what I did…
NOTE: I’m sure I’ll do a follow up post after the baby arrives about how beneficial and/or useless this was, or what I should have made. LOL
Pre-Baby Food Prep
Freezer Meals
Chicken “Noodle” Soup – We got a bunch of soup birds from our favourite farm – The Shulist Family Farm. Starting in July, I would make a batch of broth in my instant pot, pull off the meat and turn it into soup. I always add white rice, because we both tolerate it great and I know I’ll need lots of carbs once the baby comes.
Easy Paleo Hamburger Pie – I tripled the recipe (and made a few mods like adding sautéed onion and a broth/tomato paste combo in lieu of tomato sauce). Had one batch for dinner and leftovers. Froze the other 2 portions!
Banana Muffins – I made 2 dozen of these delicious, high-fat, high-nutrient (nut-free!) muffins, as well as another 2 dozen lemon blueberry, following more closely to the original recipe.
Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce – I tripled this recipe (which is already doubled) and froze multiple litres in 2 cup portions, which will be perfect for last minute meals like spaghetti squash bolognese.
Chicken Liver Pate – anyone who follows me on Instagram knows this is my go-to recipe for getting liver into me! Why liver you ask? Check out this post! I doubled up the recipe and portioned it into 10 half cup servings. Not only will liver help me stay nutrient-replete while nursing, but it will also provide lots of life-giving nutrients to kiddo (specifically folate, vitamin A, D, K2 and all the B’s), AND give me what I’m sure will be a much-needed energy boost.
Bone Broth – like it’s going out of style. Go read the post on bone broth for the health benefits (healing, building new tissues) and you’ll see why I prioritize this incredible food. I’ve got lots frozen in little pucks, ready to be added to rice, last-minute soups/stews or slow/pressure-cooked meats. My Instant Pot is also always ready to make more broth, as soon as I run out!
Mirepoix – I pre-chopped about 20 cups of onion, carrot and celery, flash froze on lined baking sheets and then stored in large ziploc freezer bags. Pre-prepared mirepoix will make slow/pressure cooking SO easy. Take any piece of tough meat (brisket, chicken thighs, pork shoulder), throw in a few handfuls of mirepoix and a puck or 2 of bone broth and you’re good to go.
Sweet Potato Flatbreads – This is one of my favourite of Diane SanFilippo‘s recipes, so I quadrupled it! I love them thrown in the toaster and slathered with ghee. Or as a sandwich for a fried egg. So good!
Lactation Cookies – but I modified them to be nut-free, since I don’t do great with large volume of almond flour. I also added blessed thistle and fenugreek (2 research-based galactagogues), omitted walnuts & chocolate chips, and added collagen.
Burger Patties – every time I’ve made something with ground meat over the last few weeks, I pulled out twice as much meat as I need. So normally I would use 1 lb ground beef for 4 burgers (one each for dinner, leftovers for lunch) or taco night/leftovers. Now I grab 2lbs (and often a combo of ground beef & ground pork – such a solid flavour combo), and do what I normally do, while also making 4 extra patties to flash freeze. I quickly amassed a few dozen burger patties! This isn’t anything too complicated, but you can cook a burger patty from frozen, and a ¼ lb of meat thaws a lot quicker than an entire pound.
Additional Recipes I Plan To Make (pending early arrival)
Chili (but I’ll add beef heart because, nutrients), Ginger Carrot Soup, Butternut Squash Soup (but I’ll go easy on the thai curry paste, probably just use a little yellow curry paste instead of loads of red like I normally do!) and likely more muffins…
Pantry/Freezer Stock
Carbs/Starch
Sweet Potato Noodles (found in the rice noodle section of Asian grocery stores)
Frozen wild salmon (from Costco) for my go-to, super-fast Salmon en Papillote
Lots of roasts/large pieces of meat like pork shoulder, tip/blade roasts and brisket for easy, high-volume slow/pressure-cooker meals like pulled pork and shredded beef (hello leftovers!)
My 3 favourite oils: olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil (all from Costco!)
Ghee (I make my own following these directions with Rolling Meadow grassfed butter)
Shredded coconut
Perishables
eggs (multiple dozens since they last so long and cook up so quick!)
veggies with a long fridge-life like kale and broccoli would be my typical go-to’s (and I’ll still eat them), but they also tend to be slightly notorious for causing belly distress in little one’s, so this will be a bit of an experiment. I can eat an entire head of cauliflower raw, or a massive bowl of cabbage, and have no gut reaction, so it might be okay!
boxes of pre-washed organic spinach and baby-kale
organic apples & pears (things you can eat with one hand!)
Beyond Babies
While this post is specifically about what I did to prepare for baby’s arrival, there are a lot of great tips that can be totally applied to your normal, every day life. Making a double batch of something and freezing for last minute meals, keeping healthy muffins on hand, stocking your pantry with delicious and nutritious items – these habits will help keep you on track and healthy throughout your life!
Okay mamas, help a newbie out! What else should I be making to get ready for kiddo’s arrival??
JUDGEMENT-FREE POST: Please note that this not how you *should* do things. This is just a window into how I did things, and I relied mostly on my instincts. Do what feels right mama. *Should precedes shame* so I strongly encourage you not to *should yourself*! Parenting is hard enough as it is. You’re doing great!! 
