Making baby food sounds scary. I mean, for most of us, making dinner every night sounds daunting.
But here’s the deal, when I decided to take charge of our family’s health by meal planning and adding in healthy supplements to our diet, this included even the little ones in our household. Enter book, Super Baby Food. My bible to making baby food.
Let me tell you the straight forward facts:
1. It’s not very time consuming to do
2. It’s MUCH more of a cost savings than you think. Dave and I figured out that the cost was 17 cents per jar versus what you would pay at the store (@$1.50)
3. It’s envigorating looking back and knowing you gave your little one the best possible first meals!
Here I will keep it simple and hold your hand through the entire process. You can do it!
1. Gather your resources. Mine were the book, Super Baby Food and the website Wholesome Baby Food. Here is a Quick Start Guide to get you started.
2. Educate yourself on the safety issues of safely preparing, freezing and storing homemade baby foods. There are simple steps to doing it the right way. For example, most foods expire in the freezer after two months of being stored.
3. Don’t reinvent the wheel! Wholesome Baby Food has awesome charts for what kinds of foods to introduce at what ages. For examples, they recommend you don’t feed a 4 month old carrots because they are tough on their digestive systems. These charts will keep you in line as to what to introduce and when.
4. The AAP recommends that an infant not be started on solid foods until after 6 months of age. Many people I have talked to start solids at 4 months. I started both my girls at 6 months. Breastfeeding is simple and it gives them what they need so I waited until 6 months. Different strokes for different folks is so true here!
5. That’s really it! Finger foods come after the introduction of solids and eventually, your child will be eating what you are eating. An important warning is to read over the forbidden foods. Your mom or in-laws might try to give your infant honey since this is what they did when they were raising their children. Honey is a forbidden food. It’s our jobs as parents to be educated on this stuff!