5 month old A2!

A2 is now 5-1/2 months old.  I just got to her 5 month pictures the other day, and also belatedly measured her on the tree chart.  You know how much I like consistency on stuff like that and it barely ever happens on time.  Regardless, she’s got the sticker on and I’ll do something with these eventually, maybe arrange each one on her 1st birthday party invite like I did for Eebs.

EB and A2, living life in too small PJs

That’s what I get for staging a photo shoot before breakfast.

Over the past week I’ve noticed that I couldn’t make as much leche as this BEBE needs.  I’m hoping it doesn’t have to do with so much pumping instead of nursing lately since I’m working like bananas right now, but I had a feeling that it had to do with food.  Like, it was time to feed this small human actual human food not from a human.  Well, a little bit from a human.  Tonight A2 had her first solid food.

You might wonder when it’s time to introduce solids like infant cereal.  I remember trying to feed EB solids around 4 months and her not really taking to it.  So I waited.  Part of me wanted her to be an infant a little longer, too.  The sooner she eats, the farther she is from my womb.  Tear.

I knew A2 would need to try her first food in between 4-6 months so I was looking and waiting patiently for certain signs.  Here’s what I noticed that made my mama instincts go into overdrive and made me send Hubs to the store for fortified rice cereal STAT.

• I can’t produce as much milk as she seems to want to eat
• She wakes up a lot in the night and seems irritable (from a growth spurt)
• She stuffs anything in her mouth, mostly ice teethers, my hands, and wads of my hair (seriously, this is an issue)
• She looks like a baby bird when I put food in my own mouth
• She is a baby toothless alive zombie and wants to eat my face when I snuggle her cheeks

Last night was the final straw.  We are trying to make the transition from in the middle of the bed to the bassinet again so we can then transition her to the kids’ room.  She was falling asleep fine, not waking up when I moved her to the bassinet.  But in the middle of the night she was just awake.  Staring at me in the dark on my chest communicating telepathically for me to feed her real food for crying out loud.  Well, that’s what I figured she was doing.  Why else would she fuss from 2 to 5 am?  Wah.  I was so tired this morning I was the definition of a crazy person.  That’s when A2′s transmission belatedly got to my brain – she would sleep longer if she was full, she’s obviously in chew mode, and these chichis weren’t cutting it on their own anymore.

So I give you (and Gram Gram since she was there for EB’s 1st foods and missed this – mom got the pleasure of) Baby’s first solid foods!  Eebs even helped.  Way cute, Intertron.  I am pushing my bedtime I’m so desperate to share this photographic gold.  You’re welcome.  A satisfied baby toothless alive zombie.

Oh, you want to put something in my mouth? Awesome, let’s do that.

What…is this?

Oh hey! Didn’t see you there. Just eating some grub, you know.

Open wide!

I’ll eat that food and gnaw on the spoon for a while, if you don’t mind.

More?

A couple of tips:

• Mix only a little bit of breast milk with fortified rice cereal to get a paste-like texture.  Don’t make too much at once because you’ll waste that valuable chichi milk if she’s not into it.  You can always make more.
• Only introduce one food at a time, then wait 3 days before adding a new one to see how BEBE reacts.  If you introduce more than one and she has an allergic reaction to it, you don’t know which food caused it.
• Once you know BEBE is fine with infant cereal and certain veggies, add the jar or homemade puree to the milk + cereal.  Three birds, one stone.

Mama Jells.