The timing on when to start feeding your newborn baby food may seem confusing. If you’ve ever surveyed your neighbors, your own mom, your doctor, and child care provider, all of them have different answers.
KING 5’s Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician at the Everett Clinic and known online as "Seattle Mama Doc," gives some guidelines about this controversial subject and explains why the data these days is really mixed.
When to start feeding baby food
- 4 months of age is a great time to start offering baby food
- Look for signs of feeding readiness: if your baby is watching you eat, smacking lips
- Once daily, offer baby foods on a spoon
- No single baby food is the perfect “first food”
- You choose the order of foods, no data any order is better
- Only feed baby rice once a week, consider other cereals first
How to prevent allergies and eczema
- Start slowly introducing foods at 4 months of age
- Introduce grains before 6 months, fish before 9 months, and egg before 11 months
- A breastfeeding duration over 9 months is ideal
- DON’T wait on high-allergy foods until your baby is 1 year of age
Links
- A study about why introducing foods at 4 months is safe and increases iron levels
- Seattle Mama Doc's blog post: No baby food before 4 months (increases obesity risk)
- A study about how early baby food may protect against allergies & asthma
- Seattle Mama Doc's blog post: arsenic levels in rice products
More about Dr. Swanson: Facebook | Twitter: @SeattleMamaDoc | Read Her Blog
